



Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the Web Archive










A SECRET OF THE SEA.






Transcriber's Notes (Volume 3):
            1. Page scan source: Web Archive
                https://archive.org/details/secretofseanovel03spei
               (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)






A SECRET OF THE SEA.


A Novel.


By T. W. SPEIGHT,
AUTHOR OF
"IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT," "UNDER LOCK AND KEY," ETC., ETC.


IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.




LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON.
1876.

(_All Rights Reserved_.)






CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAPTER

       I.  ELEANOR'S RESOLVE.
      II.  POD'S STRATAGEM.
     III.  VAN DUREN'S DREAM.
      IV.  PRINGLE'S DISCOVERY.
       V.  A FOUND LETTER.
      VI.  VAN DUREN IN WALES.
     VII.  THE MESSAGE TO STAMMARS.
    VIII.  WINGED WORDS.
      IX.  VAN DUREN'S FLIGHT.
       X.  TOLD AT LAST.
      XI.  "AND YOU SHALL STILL BE LADY CLARE."
     XII.  THE STRONG-ROOM.
    XIII.  CONCLUSION.






A SECRET OF THE SEA.



CHAPTER I.
ELEANOR'S RESOLVE.


"I'm in no particular hurry, doctor, to get back to London," Sir
Thomas Dudgeon had quietly hinted to his medical man. "I daresay the
House can get on without me quite as well as with me, so you needn't
hurry yourself to say I'm fit for harness again till you feel quite
sure in your own mind that I am so."

Dr. Welstead was not slow to take the hint, and he kept on calling at
Stammars two or three times a week, and sending one innocuous draught
after another, which draughts Sir Thomas conscientiously poured into
the ash-pan when his wife was not looking, till the baronet's holiday
had extended itself to the beginning of May. But by this time Sir
Thomas looked so well and rosy, and was in possession of such a hearty
appetite, that a vague suspicion that she was being duped began to
haunt her ladyship's mind. She said nothing to her husband, but made
her preparations in silence. Then, one morning at the breakfast-table,
the shell exploded.

"To-day is Wednesday, dear," she said, "and I have made all
arrangements for our going up to town on Saturday morning. Dr.
Welstead seems quite at a loss how to treat you: indeed, country
practitioners, as a rule, are not competent to deal with anything
beyond a simple case of measles; so on Saturday afternoon I will
myself drive you to see Sir Knox Timpany, and wait for you while you
consult that eminent authority, who, I doubt not, will make you as
well as ever you were, in the course of a very few days."

Sir Thomas fumed and fretted, but her ladyship was inexorable. Go he
must; and when he saw there was no help for it, he made a merit of
necessity; but at the same time he registered a silent vow that not
all the wives in England should drag him to the door of Sir Knox
Timpany.

At the last moment, however, the baronet and Gerald started for London
alone. Late on Friday, Lady Dudgeon received a telegram. Her only
sister was very ill, and it was needful that she should hurry off
without an hour's delay. "Considering all that I have done for
Caroline, it is really very ungrateful of her to be ill at a time like
this," she grumbled to her husband. "She knew how anxious I was to get
back to town, and she might have doctored herself up for another month
or two. I hope to goodness she won't die till the season is over. I
can't bear myself in mourning."

"Your only sister, my dear," remarked Sir Thomas, soothingly. "I
wouldn't leave her, if I were you, while there's the least danger.
Your conscience might prick you afterwards, you know."

"Stuff!" was her ladyship's rejoinder. "Of course, I shall do what is
proper; but if I were to die to-morrow, Caroline's first thought would
be how soon after that event she might begin to wear flounces again."

Without wishing his sister-in-law any harm, Sir Thomas would not have
been sorry if her illness had kept his wife at her bedside for half a
year. The thought of having a few weeks, or even a few days, in
London, without being supervised by her ladyship, was to bring back
the feelings of his youth when school broke up for the summer
holidays. In fact, during the three weeks that elapsed before her
ladyship joined him in town, he was more like a schoolboy let loose
than the fancy sketch of him with which the _Pembridge Gazette_ one week
favoured its readers, wherein he was described as a senator, grave and
staid, whose trained and powerful intellect was perpetually engaged in
grappling with the most tremendous social and political problems of
the age.

After a little dinner, quiet and early, at which Gerald generally sat
down with him, Sir Thomas would post off to the House. But an hour or
an hour and a half there was quite enough for him. Whist and a prime
cigar at his club were far preferable to prosy speeches by people whom
he did not know, and on subjects about which he did not care twopence.

Since the day of his confession in the library, Gerald had seen very
little of Eleanor. If they met casually in passing from one room to
another, a bow and a faint smile was all the greeting that passed
between them. When they met at the dinner-table, no ordinary observer
would have noticed any difference in their demeanour towards each
other. Gerald talked as much as ever he had done: he knew that Sir
Thomas and his wife liked him to make talk for them: but fewer of his
observations were now addressed directly to Miss Lloyd than used to be
the case at one time. Sometimes he even turned over the music for
Eleanor when she played after dinner; but had Lady Dudgeon been the
most Argus-eyed of dowagers, instead of the most unsuspicious, she
could not possibly have found fault with his demeanour on such
occasions. He was Sir Thomas Dudgeon's secretary--and nothing more.

Eleanor had received his confession in a spirit somewhat different
from what he had expected. He had thought that her pride would be more
deeply wounded by the deception he had practised on her than it
appeared to be. That it was wounded, he knew full well; but when he
parted from her at the close of the interview, he did not fail to
notice the