Chide turned abruptly.

“Lord Broadstone’s messenger?”

“He brought a letter for Mr. Ferrier, sir, half an hour ago.”

Chide’s face changed.

“Where is the letter?” He turned to the doctor, who shook his head.

“I saw nothing when we brought him in.”

Marsham, who had overheard the conversation, came forward.

“Perhaps on the grass—­”

Chide—­pale, with drawn brows—­looked at him a moment in silence.

Marsham hurried to the garden and to the spot under the yews, where the death had taken place.  Round the garden chairs were signs of trampling feet—­the feet of the gardeners who had carried the body.  A medley of books, opened letters, and working-materials lay on the grass.  Marsham looked through them; they all belonged to Diana or Mrs. Colwood.  Then he noticed a cushion which had fallen beside the chair, and a corner of newspaper peeping from below it.  He lifted it up.

Below lay Broadstone’s open letter, in its envelope, addressed first in the Premier’s well-known handwriting to “The Right Honble.  John Ferrier, M.P.”—­and, secondly, in wavering pencil, to “Lady Lucy Marsham, Tallyn Hall.”

Marsham turned the letter over, while thoughts hurried through his brain.  Evidently Ferrier had had time to read it.  Why that address to his mother?—­and in that painful hand—­written, it seemed, with the weakness of death already upon him?

The newspaper?  Ah!—­the Herald!—­lying as though, after reading it, Ferrier had thrown it down and let the letter drop upon it, from a hand that had ceased to obey him.  As Marsham saw it the color rushed into his cheeks.  He stooped and raised it.  Suddenly he noticed on the margin of the paper a pencilled line, faint and wavering, like the words written on the envelope.  It ran beside a passage in the article “from a correspondent,” and as he looked at it consciousness and pulse paused in dismay.  There, under his eye, in that dim mark, was the last word and sign of John Ferrier.

He was still staring at it when a sound disturbed him.  Lady Lucy came to him, feebly, across the grass.  Marsham dropped the newspaper, retaining Broadstone’s letter.

“Sir James wished me to leave him a little,” she said, brokenly.  “The ambulance will be here directly.  They will take him to Lytchett.  I thought it should have been Tallyn.  But Sir James decided it.”

“Mother!”—­Marsham moved toward her, reluctantly—­“here is a letter—­no doubt of importance.  And—­it is addressed to you.”

Lady Lucy gave a little cry.  She looked at the pencilled address, with quivering lips; then she opened the envelope, and on the back of the closely written letter she saw at once Ferrier’s last words to her.

Marsham, moved by a son’s natural impulse, stooped and kissed her hair.  He drew a chair forward, and she sank into it with the letter.  While she was reading it he raised the Herald again, unobserved, folded it up hurriedly, and put it in his pocket; then walked away a few steps, that he might leave his mother to her grief.  Presently Lady Lucy called him.