“Do you know, Miss Morley,” he said, “that I left my little girl asleep, with her baby in her arms, and with nothing but a few blotted lines to tell her why her adoring husband had deserted her.”

“Deserted her!” cried Miss Morley.

“Yes.  I was a cornet in a cavalry regiment when I first met my darling.  We were quartered in a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived with her shabby old father—­a half-pay naval man.  It was a case of love at first sight on both sides, and my darling and I made a match of it.  My father is a rich man, but no sooner did he hear that I was married to a penniless girl than he wrote a furious letter telling me that he would never again hold any communication with me, and that my yearly allowance was stopped.

“I sold out my commission, thinking that before the money I got for it was exhausted I should be sure to drop into something.  I took my darling to Italy, lived in splendid style, and then, when there was nothing left but a couple of hundred pounds, we came back to England and boarded with my wretched father-in-law, who fleeced us finely.  I went to London and tried in vain to get employment; and on my return, my little girl burst into a storm of lamentations, blaming me for the cruel wrong of marrying her if I could give her nothing but poverty and misery.  Her tears and reproaches drove me almost mad.  I ran out of the house, rushed down to the pier, intending, after dark, to drop quietly into the water and end all.

“While I sat smoking two men came along, and began to talk of the Australian gold-diggings and the great fortunes that were to be made there in a short time.  I got into conversation with them, and learned that a ship sailed from Liverpool for Melbourne in three days.  The thought flashed on me that that was better than the water.  I returned home, crept upstairs, and wrote a few hurried lines which told her that I never loved her better than now when I seemed to desert her; that I was going to try my fortune in a new world; that if I succeeded I should come back to bring her plenty and happiness, but if I failed I should never look upon her face again.  I kissed her hand and the baby once, and slipped out of the room.  Three nights after I was out at sea, bound for Melbourne, a steerage passenger with a digger’s tools for my baggage, and seven shillings in my pocket.  After three and a half years of hard and bitter struggles on the goldfields, at last I struck it rich, realised twenty thousand pounds, and a fortnight later I took my passage for England.  All this time I had never communicated with my wife, but the moment fortune came, I wrote, telling her I should be in England almost as soon as my letter, and giving her an address at a coffee-house in London.”

That same evening Phoebe Marks, maid to Lady Audley, invited her cousin and sweetheart, Luke Marks, a farm labourer with ambitions to own a public-house, to survey the wonders of Audley Court, including my lady’s private apartments and her jewel-box.  During the inspection, by accident, a knob in the framework of the jewel-box was pushed, and a secret drawer sprang out There were neither gold nor gems in it.  Only a baby’s little worsted shoe, rolled in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock of silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby’s head.  Phoebe’s eyes dilated as she examined the little packet.