eastward, his
heart grew softer towards his child's lover than it would otherwise have
been. How beautiful she had looked with those flushed cheeks and shining
eyes! What was he that he should interfere with her happiness? If the
man that she loved was good and true why should he not marry her,
although he was a kinsman of the Vanes and the brother of a woman whom
Westwood held in peculiar abhorrence? For accident had revealed to him
many years before the relation between Sydney Vane and Florence Lepel,
and she had seemed to him then and ever since to be less of a woman than
a fiend. Yet, being somewhat slow in drawing conclusions, he had never
associated her or her brother with Mr. Vane's death, until, in the
solitude of his cell, he had laboriously "put two and two together" in a
way which had not suggested itself either to himself or to his defenders
at the time of the trial. He himself, from a strange mixture of delicate
feeling and gruff reserve, had not chosen to tell what he knew about
Miss Lepel and Sydney Vane; and only when it was too late did it occur
to him that his silence had cost him his freedom, and might have cost
him his life. He saw it all clearly now. It was quite plain to him that
in some way or other Mr. Vane's death had been caused through his
unfaithfulness to his wife. Some one had wished to punish him--some
friend of hers, some friend of Miss Lepel's. Right enough he deserved to
be killed, said Westwood to himself, as he elaborated his theory. If
only the slayer, the avenger, had not refused to take the responsibility
of his act upon his own shoulders! "If only he hadn't been cur enough;"
Westwood muttered to himself, as he went along the London streets, "to
leave me--a poor man, a common man, that only Cynthia loved--to bear the
blame!"

CHAPTER XXX.

When Hubert Lepel quitted Beechfield, a sudden calm, almost a stagnation
of interest, seemed to fall upon the place. Mrs. Vane was said to be
"less strong" than usual; the spring weather tried her; she must be kept
quiet, the doctor said, and, if possible, tranquil in mind.

"God bless my soul, isn't she tranquil in mind?" the General had almost
shouted, when Mr. Ingledew gave this opinion. "What else can she be? She
hasn't a single thing to worry her; or, if she has, she has only to
mention it and it will be set right at once."

The village doctor smiled amiably. He was a pale, thin, dark little man,
with insight rather in advance o