‘Lady Maulevrier, is this horrible thing true?’ cried her grandson, vehemently.

‘He is mad, Maulevrier.  Don’t you see that he is mad?’ she exclaimed, looking from Hartfield to her grandson, and then with a look of loathing and horror at her accuser.

‘I tell you, young man, I am Maulevrier,’ said the accuser; ’there is no one else who has a right to be called by that name, while I live.  They have shut me up—­she and her accomplice—­denied my name—­hidden me from the world.  He is dead, and she lies there—­stricken for her sins.’

’My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.

’Your grandfather was brought to this house—­ill—­out of his wits.  All cloud and darkness here,’ said the old man, touching his forehead.  ’How long has it been?  Who can tell?  A weary time—­long, dark nights, full of ghosts.  Yes, I have seen him—­the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel, seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for the traitor’s carcass.  She too—­yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me to give up her treasure, to restore her son.’

‘Yes,’ cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve strained to its utmost tension; ’yes, this is Lord Maulevrier.  You have heard the truth, and from his own lips.  You, his only son’s only son.  You his granddaughter’s husband.  You hear him avow himself the instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his paramour’s husband was strangled at his false wife’s bidding, in his own palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches.  You hear how he inherited the Rajah’s treasures from a mistress who died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her, and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence.  Such things are done in the East—­dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate’s passion, or pay for a spendthrift’s extravagances.  Such things were done when that man was Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before his time.  He went there fettered by no prejudices—­he was more Mussulman than the Mussulmen themselves—­a deeper, darker traitor.  And it was to hide such crimes as these—­to interpose the great peacemaker Death between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him—­to save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless until he defiled it—­it was for this great end I took steps to hide that feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of one of England’s oldest earls.  I screened him from