‘You must not have any wrong thoughts about Tina,’ he said at length.  ’I must tell you now, for her sake, what nothing but this should ever have caused to pass my lips.  Captain Wybrow won her affections by attentions which, in his position, he was bound not to show her.  Before his marriage was talked of, he had behaved to her like a lover.’

Sir Christopher relaxed his hold of Maynard’s arm, and looked away from him.  He was silent for some minutes, evidently attempting to master himself, so as to be able to speak calmly.

‘I must see Henrietta immediately,’ he said at last, with something of his old sharp decision; ’she must know all; but we must keep it from every one else as far as possible.  My dear boy,’ he continued in a kinder tone, ’the heaviest burthen has fallen on you.  But we may find her yet; we must not despair:  there has not been time enough for us to be certain.  Poor dear little one!  God help me!  I thought I saw everything, and was stone-blind all the while.’

Chapter 19

The sad slow week was gone by at last.  At the coroner’s inquest a verdict of sudden death had been pronounced.  Dr Hart, acquainted with Captain Wybrow’s previous state of health, had given his opinion that death had been imminent from long-established disease of the heart, though it had probably been accelerated by some unusual emotion.  Miss Assher was the only person who positively knew the motive that had led Captain Wybrow to the Rookery; but she had not mentioned Caterina’s name, and all painful details or inquiries were studiously kept from her.  Mr. Gilfil and Sir Christopher, however, knew enough to conjecture that the fatal agitation was due to an appointed meeting with Caterina.

All search and inquiry after her had been fruitless, and were the more likely to be so because they were carried on under the prepossession that she had committed suicide.  No one noticed the absence of the trifles she had taken from her desk; no one knew of the likeness, or that she had hoarded her seven-shilling pieces, and it was not remarkable that she should have happened to be wearing the pearl earrings.  She had left the house, they thought, taking nothing with her; it seemed impossible she could have gone far; and she must have been in a state of mental excitement, that made it too probable she had only gone to seek relief in death.  The same places within three or four miles of the Manor were searched again and again—­every pond, every ditch in the neighbourhood was examined.

Sometimes Maynard thought that death might have come on unsought, from cold and exhaustion; and not a day passed but he wandered through the neighbouring woods, turning up the heaps of dead leaves, as if it were possible her dear body could be hidden there.  Then another horrible thought recurred, and before each night came he had been again through all the uninhabited rooms of the house, to satisfy himself once more that she was not hidden behind some cabinet, or door, or curtain—­that he should not find her there with madness in her eyes, looking and looking, and yet not seeing him.