“If Miss Willoughby would accept an allowance”—­

The cool audacity of this proposal to make me an instrument in compromising a felony exasperated me beyond all bounds.  I rang the bell violently, and desired the servant who answered it to show Mr. Harlowe out of the house.  Finding further persistence useless, the baffled villain snatched up his hat, and with a look and gesture of rage and contempt, hurried out of the apartment.

The profession of a barrister necessarily begets habits of coolness and reflection under the most exciting circumstances; but, I confess, that in this instance my ordinary equanimity was so much disturbed, that it was some time before I could command sufficient composure to reason calmly upon the strange revelations made to me by Edith, and the nature of the measures necessary to adopt in order to clear up the mystery attaching to them.  She persisted in her refusal to have recourse to legal measures with a view to the punishment of Harlowe; and I finally determined—­after a conference with Mr. Ferret, who, having acted for the first Mrs. Harlowe, I naturally conjectured must know something of her history and connections—­to take for the present no ostensible steps in the matter.  Mr. Ferret, like myself, was persuaded that the sham resuscitation of his first wife was a mere trick, to enable Harlowe to rid himself of the presence of a woman he no longer cared for.  “I will take an opportunity,” said Mr. Ferret, “of quietly questioning Richards:  he must have known the first wife; Eleanor Wickham, I remember, was her maiden name; and if not bought over by Harlowe—­a by-no-means impossible purchase—­can set us right at once.  I did not understand that the said Eleanor was at all celebrated for beauty and accomplishments, such as you say Miss Willoughby—­Mrs. Harlowe, I mean—­describes.  She was a native of Dorsetshire too, I remember; and the foreign Italian accent you mention, is rarely, I fancy, picked up in that charming county.  Some flashy opera-dancer, depend upon it, whom he has contracted a passing fancy for:  a slippery gentleman certainly; but, with a little caution, we shall not fail to trip his heels up, clever as he may be.”

A stronger wrestler than either of us was upon the track of the unhappy man.  Edith had not been with us above three weeks, when one of Mr. Harlowe’s servants called at my chambers to say that his master, in consequence of a wound he had inflicted on his foot with an axe, whilst amusing himself with cutting or pruning some trees in the grounds at Fairdown, was seriously ill, and had expressed a wish to see me.  I could not leave town; but as it was important Mr. Harlowe should be seen, I requested Mr. Ferret to proceed to Fairdown House.  He did so, and late in the evening returned with the startling intelligence that Mr. Harlowe was dead!

“Dead!” I exclaimed, much shocked.  “Are you serious?” “As a judge.  He expired, about an hour after I reached the house, of tetanus, commonly called locked-jaw.  His body, by the contraction of the muscles, was bent like a bow, and rested on his heels and the back part of his head.  He was incapable of speech long before I saw him; but there was a world of agonized expression in his eyes!”