Something in his tone carried the conviction home to Peggy that he was not speaking without foundation, and for the moment her brave young spirit quailed.
"I have said that you must be more explicit," she found herself saying in a dull, level voice that did not sound in the least like her own. "Disgrace and ruin are strange words to use in connexion with Heron's Carew."
Chesterham pulled his long moustache; his eyes watched her in a savage underhand fashion. "A word from me would send your sister-in-law to prison—it might even be to the scaffold itself—would bring such a terrible disaster upon Heron's Carew as you have never dreamed of."
Peggy gathered up her courage in both hands. She looked him in the face fully, contemptuously.
"It is a lie!" she said very deliberately. "Will you kindly allow me to pass? I have nothing more to say to you."
"But I have something to say to you," Chesterham said grimly. He bent forward and caught her slender wrists in a grip of iron. "You can go to your sister-in-law; you can tell her what I say; I will give you a week to think it over, and then, unless you keep your promise to me, I shall speak and the blow will fall."
Peggy did not speak, she only looked up at him with big, wide-opened eyes in which there lay something of the anguish of a wild trapped thing; then made her way gropingly across the lawn to the house.
A mist seemed to rise up before her and all the pleasant familiar surroundings. The scene she had witnessed in the Lount Wood earlier in the day had shocked her, had completed the tearing of the veil from her eyes that Chesterham's own words with regard to Stephen Crasster had begun, but it had not prepared her for the crass cowardliness, the depth of moral turpitude this interview with the man she once thought she loved had revealed.
From her window she saw Chesterham walk across the lawn to his car, and then, with a curt word to his chauffeur, drive out of the gate.
She had hardly had time to realize the meaning of his threats against Judith; that he should have any power to carry them into effect was impossible, she told herself. Yet Judith had altered so strangely, so terribly of late. The girl remembered her own misgivings, her fear that something was wrong between Judith and Anthony, her certainty that ill-health alone would not account for everything. Her doubt became a certainty that Chesterham's words held a key to the mystery. Not that Peggy believed that Judith's silence veiled any guilty secret. She trusted her sister-in-law too well to think that; but she did fancy that Judith's past might hold some mystery, innocent enough in itself, Out of which Chesterham was trying to make capital. One thing grew clearer out of the chaos in which Peggy's mind was enveloped—the only person who could help her now was Judith.
At this hour Judith was pretty sure to be found at home and alone. She would go to her. Peggy caught up her hat, and without giving herself time to change her mind set off through the Home Wood to Heron's Carew. Judith was not on the lawn; Peggy found her in the morning-room, lying back on the couch among her cushions, looking white and wan.
She started up with a cry of alarm as she saw her young sister-in-law's face.
"What is wrong, Peggy?"
"Nothing much, I hope; but that is what I have come to you to find out," the girl answered vaguely, as she put her arms round Judith and made her lie back. "It may be that everything is right instead of wrong," she went on, while Judith waited, watching her with a nameless fear, her breath coming and going in soft gasps. "I have broken off my engagement with Lord Chesterham."
"You have broken off your engagement to Lord Chesterham!" Judith echoed; then, to Peggy's consternation, she burst into tears. "Oh, it is because I am so glad, Peggy," she sobbed. "So glad; he is a bad man; I don't like him, I am afraid of him."
"Yes," said Peggy softly, taking Judith's hands in hers, and chafing them against her warm young cheek.
"Why didn't you tell me so before, Judith?"
"Oh, it wouldn't have been any use," Judith said beneath her breath. "You wouldn't listen to Anthony or to Stephen."
"No," Peggy said, still keeping the cold hands against her cheek. "But I think I should have listened to you, Judith, if you had told me everything."
"Told you everything?" Judith tore her hands away, she raised herself on one elbow and stared at the girl. "What do you mean?"
Peggy pressed her soft red lips to the pale cheek. "If you had told me all you knew of Chesterham. Do you know that when I told him just now that all was over between us, that I could not marry him, he said that I must, for your sake. That if I did not he would bring some terrible trouble upon you—upon Heron's Carew?"
Judith sat as if she had been turned to stone; her face was marble white, while all her tortured soul seemed to look out of her straining, burning eyes.
"What trouble?" she said hoarsely. "Did he tell you?"
Peggy hesitated a minute, but it seemed to her that perfect frankness was the only thing that could save them now. "He spoke of trouble that would end in open disgrace, in prison—even on the scaffold itself."
"Ah!" Judith drew a long breath.
From beneath her long lashes Peggy's brown eyes watched her very lovingly. "He says he will keep silence only if I marry him. Judith, what am I to do? What are we to do?"
Judith did not answer. She sat motionless, only her eyes altered. Very gradually the light of a great decision dawned in them. At last she moved; very slowly she raised herself to her feet; she held out her hand to Peggy.
"Come!" she whispered. "Come, Peggy."
"Where?" Peggy looked at her with a new-born awe, in which some fear mingled. "What are you going to do, Judith?"
"What I ought to have done long ago," Judith said slowly with her stiff lips. "I am going to take you to Anthony, to tell him everything—so that you must not be sacrificed."
Filled with fear, she hardly knew of what, Peggy tried to hold her back.
"Wait, Judith, wait. Let us think."
But Judith would not pause. Her cold hand gripped the girl's insistently. "Come!"
As they passed into the hall they heard a sob on the staircase. Some one came swiftly towards them. "Oh, my lady—my lady, Master Paul!"
Peggy felt the poor mother's form stiffen. "What is it?" Judith cried wildly. "Speak, woman, speak! What is wrong with him?"
"My lady, we are afraid it is convulsions," the woman faltered. "If your ladyship would come at once."
Chapter XXV
Talgarth was a pleasant old-fashioned house. Tradition had it that it had been built out of the stones from the walls of the convent that had stood close by, and that had been pillaged and destroyed by the orders of the eighth Henry. For the past twenty years Squire Hunter, from whom Stephen Crasster bought Talgarth, had not had money to keep the old place up, and it had acquired a forlorn, neglected look. Stephen Crasster had projected wide-spreading improvements, but the tidings of Peggy's engagement had taken the heart out of him.
Inspector Furnival found Stephen in the library when, in response to repeated invitations, he walked over to Talgarth one summer evening.
Crasster sprang up in surprise as "Mr. Lennox" was announced.
"Why, inspector, this is a welcome surprise," he said, shaking hands cordially. "I have been looking over the notes of a case and trying to make up my mind about it. You are just in the nick of time to give me some help with it."
"Well, I don't know that I shall be of much assistance, sir. It seems to me that my brain is pretty well addled."