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“Well, what do you think of her?”

“I think she is wonderfully beautiful,” I answered guardedly.

“That, of course,” he replied irritably. “You knew that before you came!”

“I think she is very clever too,” I remarked.

Barrington Cowles walked on for some time, and then he suddenly turned on me with the strange question–

“Do you think she is cruel? Do you think she is the sort of girl who would take a pleasure in inflicting pain?”

“Well, really,” I answered, “I have hardly had time to form an opinion.”

We then walked on for some time in silence.

“She is an old fool,” at length muttered Cowles. “She is mad.”

“Who is?” I asked.

“Why, that old woman–that aunt of Kate’s–Mrs. Merton, or whatever her name is.”

Then I knew that my poor colourless friend had been speaking to Cowles, but he never said anything more as to the nature of her communication.

My companion went to bed early that night, and I sat up a long time by the fire, thinking over all that I had seen and heard. I felt that there was some mystery about the girl–some dark fatality so strange as to defy conjecture. I thought of Prescott’s interview with her before their marriage, and the fatal termination of it. I coupled it with poor drunken Reeves’ plaintive cry, “Why did she not tell me sooner?” and with the other words he had spoken. Then my mind ran over Mrs. Merton’s warning to me, Cowles’ reference to her, and even the episode of the whip and the cringing dog.

The whole effect of my recollections was unpleasant to a degree, and yet there was no tangible charge which I could bring against the woman. It would be worse than useless to attempt to warn my friend until I had definitely made up my mind what I was to warn him against. He would treat any charge against her with scorn. What could I do? How could I get at some tangible conclusion as to her character and antecedents? No one in Edinburgh knew them except as recent acquaintances. She was an orphan, and as far as I knew she had never disclosed where her former home had been. Suddenly an idea struck me. Among my father’s friends there was a Colonel Joyce, who had served a long time in India upon the staff, and who would be likely to know most of the officers who had been out there since the Mutiny. I sat down at once, and, having trimmed the lamp, proceeded to write a letter to the Colonel. I told him that I was very curious to gain some particulars about a certain Captain Northcott, who had served in the Forty-first Foot, and who had fallen in the Persian War. I described the man as well as I could from my recollection of the daguerreotype, and then, having directed the letter, posted it that very night, after which, feeling that I had done all that could be done, I retired to bed, with a mind too anxious to allow me to sleep.

PART II.

I got an answer from Leicester, where the Colonel resided, within two days. I have it before me as I write, and copy it verbatim.

“DEAR BOB,” it said, “I remember the man well. I was with him at Calcutta, and afterwards at Hyderabad. He was a curious, solitary sort of mortal; but a gallant soldier enough, for he distinguished himself at Sobraon, and was wounded, if I remember right. He was not popular in his corps–they said he was a pitiless, cold-blooded fellow, with no geniality in him. There was a rumour, too, that he was a devil-worshipper, or something of that sort, and also that he had the evil eye, which, of course, was all nonsense. He had some strange theories, I remember, about the power of the human will and the effects of mind upon matter.