"Now, Rupert, the best thing you and Madge can do is to go out for a walk. You can know nothing more until the letter arrives, and it will be better for you to be moving about than to be sitting here quietly. Your mother had best lie down until the letter comes; it cannot be here until five o'clock."
Madge and Rupert as they walked talked the matter over in every possible light, the only conclusion at which they arrived being that whoever might be Edgar's father and mother they would always regard him as their brother, and should love him just the same as before.
"I cannot think why he ran away!" Madge exclaimed over and over again. "I am sure I should not run away if I found that I wasn't father and mother's real daughter. They have been everything to me, and I could not love them a bit less if I did know that I was their adopted child instead of being their real one."
"No, certainly not," Rupert agreed; "but then, you see, Madge, Edgar may have thought that he had been adopted, not as childless people sometimes adopt children, but because they could not help adopting him."
"But that wasn't his fault, Rupert."
"No, that wasn't his fault; but I can understand him feeling that it made a great difference. Oh, I wonder what he is doing! I expect he went up to London by the night mail; he would have caught that at Glo'ster. But what could he do when he got there?"
"Oh, I am not thinking about that!" the girl said. "I am thinking what he must feel when he knows father and mother are not his father and mother, and that you and I are not his brother and sister. It must be awful, Rupert."
"It must be awful," Rupert agreed. "I do not know what I should have done had it been me, and you know it might just as well have been me as Edgar. I wish it were five o'clock!"
The afternoon seemed indeed endless to them all. For the last half-hour Rupert and Madge sat at the window gazing across the park for the first sight of the horseman, and at last they exclaimed simultaneously, "There he comes!"
Captain Clinton, who had been sitting by the sofa holding his wife's hand in his, rose. "I will go and meet him," he said. "Rupert and Madge, you had better go into the library until I call you. I must read it over first to your mother."
Without a word they went into the other room, and from the window watched Captain Clinton as he walked quickly down the drive to meet the groom. They saw him take the letter, and, as the man rode on towards the stables, open it and stand reading it.
"It is very bad," Madge said almost in a whisper, as she saw her father drop his hand despondently to his side, and then with bent head walk towards the house. Not another word was spoken until Captain Clinton opened the door and called them. Madge had been crying silently, and the tears were running fast down Rupert's cheeks as he sat looking out on to the park.
"You had better read the letter here," Captain Clinton said. "I may tell you what I did not mention before, that there was a strong opinion among many at the time, that the confusion between the children arose, not from accident, as was said, but was deliberate, and this letter confirms that view. This is what has hit Edgar so hard."
The letter was as follows:—
"My dearest father, for I cannot call you anything else, I have just heard about my birth from a woman who calls herself my mother, and who, I suppose, has a right to do so, though certainly I shall never call her or think of her so. She has told me about her child and yours getting mixed, and how you brought both up in hopes of finding out some day which was which.
"Rupert and I had noticed for some days a woman looking at us, and she met me this afternoon and said she had some thing of extreme importance to tell me. I went with her and she told me the story, and said that I was her son and not yours. I asked her how she knew me from Rupert, and she said that one of us had a small mole on the shoulder. I knew that Rupert had a tiny mole there, and she said that that was the mark by which she knew your son from hers.
"Then, father, she told me that she had done it all on purpose, and had sacrificed herself in order that I might benefit from it. This was all horrible! And then she actually proposed that I should not only keep silent about this, but offered to come forward and declare that it was her son who had the mole on his shoulder, so that I might get the whole and Rupert none. I don't want to say what I felt. I only told her I would think it over. I have been thinking it over, and I am going away. My dear father and mother, for I shall always think of you so, I thank you for all your love and kindness, which I have received through a horrible fraud. If it had all been an accident, and you had found out for yourselves by the likeness that Rupert was your son, I do not think that I should have minded, at least nothing like so much. I should, of course, have been very grieved that you were not my father and mother, and that Rupert and Madge were not my brother and sister; but it would have been nobody's fault, and I am sure that you would all still have loved me. But to know that it has been a wicked fraud, that I have been an impostor palmed upon you, that there has been a plot and conspiracy to rob you, and that I have a mother who not only did this, but who could propose to me to go on deceiving you, and even to join in a fresh fraud and to swindle Rupert, is so awful that there is nothing for me to do but to go away.
"I feel sure you will all be sorry, and that though I am not your son you would go on treating me as if I were a younger brother of Rupert's. But I could not bear it, father. I could not accept anything from you, for I should feel that it was the result of this wicked fraud, that it was what this woman, I cannot call her mother, had schemed for me to get. Some day when I have made my way, and when all this may not hurt me so horribly as it seems to do now, I will come and see you all if you will let me, to thank you all for the love and kindness that should never have been mine. But that will not be till I am in a position when I can want nothing, for I feel now that were I dying of hunger I could not accept a crust from your hands, for if I did so I should feel I was a party to this abominable fraud. God bless you, dearest father and mother and Rupert and Madge!—Your unhappy Edgar."
CHAPTER IV.
BACK AT SCHOOL.
It was a long time after they had, with many breaks, read Edgar's letter to the end before Rupert and Madge could compose themselves sufficiently to accompany their father into the drawing-room. They again broke down when they met their mother; and it was not until Captain Clinton said, "Come, we must all pull ourselves together and see what is to be done, and talk the whole matter over calmly," that by a great effort they recovered their composure. "Now, in the first place, we must try to find Edgar. He has got twenty-four hours' start of us, but that is not very much. I suppose you think, Rupert, that there is no doubt that he went up to town by the night train."
"I have no doubt that he got away in time to do so, father; but of course he might have gone by the down train, which passes through Gloucester somewhere about the same time."
"I do not think it likely that he did that, Rupert. I should say he was sure to go to London; that is almost always the goal people make for, unless it is in the case of boys who want to go to sea, when they would make for Liverpool or some other port. But I don't think Edgar was likely to do that. I don't think he had any special fancy for the sea; so we may assume that he has gone to London. What money had he?"