Part 107

The note, the accounts, the rosebud, and his own photograph, he restored to their places again. The other photograph he took between his finger and thumb, and held it towards the bars of the grate. There he held it for half-a-minute or more, meditating.

‘It is a great risk to run, even for such an end,’ he muttered.

Suddenly, impregnated with a bright idea, he jumped up and left the office for the front parlour. Taking up an album of portraits, which lay on the table, he searched for three or four likenesses of the lady who had so lately displaced Cytherea, which were interspersed among the rest of the collection, and carefully regarded them. They were taken in different attitudes and styles, and he compared each singly with that he held in his hand. One of them, the one most resembling that abstracted from the letter in general tone, size, and attitude, he selected from the rest, and returned with it to his office.

Pouring some water into a plate, he set the two portraits afloat upon it, and sitting down tried to read.

At the end of a quarter of an hour, after several ineffectual attempts, he found that each photograph would peel from the card on which it was mounted. This done, he threw into the fire the original likeness and the recent card, stuck upon the original card the recent likeness from the album, dried it before the fire, and placed it in the envelope with the other scraps.

The result he had obtained, then, was this: in the envelope were now two photographs, both having the same photographer’s name on the back and consecutive numbers attached. At the bottom of the one which showed his own likeness, his own name was written down; on the other his wife’s name was written; whilst the central feature, and whole matter to which this latter card and writing referred, the likeness of a lady mounted upon it, had been changed.

Mrs. Manston entered the room, and begged him to come to breakfast. He followed her and they sat down. During the meal he told her what he had done, with scrupulous regard to every detail, and showed her the result.

‘It is indeed a great risk to run,’ she said, sipping her tea.

‘But it would be a greater not to do it.’

‘Yes.’

The envelope was again fastened up as before, and Manston put it in his pocket and went out. Shortly afterwards he was seen, on horseback, riding in a direction towards Tolchurch. Keeping to the fields, as well as he could, for the greater part of the way, he dropped into the road by the vicarage letter-box, and looking carefully about, to ascertain that no person was near, he restored the letter to its nook, placed the key in its hiding-place, as he had promised the postman, and again rode homewards by a roundabout way.

3. AFTERNOON

The letter was brought to Owen Graye, the same afternoon, by one of the vicar’s servants who had been to the box with a duplicate key, as usual, to leave letters for the evening post. The man found that the index had told falsely that morning for the first time within his recollection; but no particular attention was paid to the mistake, as it was considered. The contents of the envelope were scrutinized by Owen and flung aside as useless.

The next morning brought Springrove’s second letter, the existence of which was unknown to Manston. The sight of Edward’s handwriting again raised the expectations of brother and sister, till Owen had opened the envelope and pulled out the twig and verse.

‘Nothing that’s of the slightest use, after all,’ he said to her; ‘we are as far as ever from the merest shadow of legal proof that would convict him of what I am morally certain he did, marry you, suspecting, if not knowing, her to be alive all the time.’

‘What has Edward sent?’ said Cytherea.

‘An old amatory verse in Manston’s writing. Fancy,’ he said bitterly, ‘this is the strain he addressed her in when they were courting--as he did you, I suppose.’

He handed her the verse and she read--

‘EUNICE.

‘Whoso for hours or lengthy days Shall catch her aspect’s changeful rays, Then turn away, can none recall Beyond a galaxy of all In hazy portraiture; Lit by the light of azure eyes Like summer days by summer skies: Her sweet transitions seem to be A kind of pictured melody, And not a set contour. ‘AE. M.’

A strange expression had overspread Cytherea’s countenance. It rapidly increased to the most death-like anguish. She flung down the paper, seized Owen’s hand tremblingly, and covered her face.

‘Cytherea! What is it, for Heaven’s sake?’

‘Owen--suppose--O, you don’t know what I think.’

‘What?’

’”The light of azure eyes,”’ she repeated with ashy lips.

‘Well, “the light of azure eyes”?’ he said, astounded at her manner.

‘Mrs. Morris said in her letter to me that her eyes are black!’

‘H’m. Mrs. Morris must have made a mistake--nothing likelier.’