rs of the late Countess of Eglington.

As the look in Eglington's face the night she came upon him and Soolsby
in the laboratory haunted her, so the look in her own face had haunted
Soolsby. Her voice announcing Luke Claridge's death had suddenly opened
up a new situation to him. It stunned him; and afterwards, as he saw
Hylda with Faith in the apricot-garden, or walking in the grounds of the
Cloistered House hour after hour alone or with her maid, he became vexed
by a problem greater than had yet perplexed him. It was one thing to
turn Eglington out of his lands and home and title; it was another thing
to strike this beautiful being, whose smile had won him from the first,
whose voice, had he but known, had saved his life. Perhaps the truth in
some dim way was conveyed to him, for he came to think of her a little
as he thought of Faith.

Since the moment when he had left the laboratory and made his way to the
Red Mansion, he and Eglington had never met face to face; and he avoided
a meeting. He was not a blackmailer, he had no personal wrongs to
avenge, he had not sprung the bolt of secrecy for evil ends; and when
he saw the possible results of his disclosure, he was unnerved. His mind
had seen one thing only, the rights of "Our Man," the wrong that had
been done him and his mother; but now he saw how the sword of justice,
which he had kept by his hand these many years, would cut both ways.
His mind was troubled, too, that he had spoken while yet Luke Claridge
lived, and so broken his word to Mercy Claridge. If he had but waited
till the old man died--but one brief half-hour--his pledge would have
been kept. Nothing had worked out wholly as he expected. The heavens had
not fallen. The "second-best lordship" still came and went, the wheels
went round as usual. There was no change; yet, as he sat in his hut and
looked down into the grounds of the Cloistered House, he kept saying to
himself.

"It had to be told. It's for my lord now. He knows the truth. I'll wait
and see. It's for him to do right by Our Man that's beyond and away."

The logic and fairness of this position, reached after much thinking,
comforted him. He had done his duty so far. If, in the end, the
"second-best lordship" failed to do his part, hid the truth from the
world, refused to do right by his half-brother, the true Earl, then
would be time to act again. Also he waited for word out of Egypt; and he
had a superstitious belief that David would retur