On the third page was a design which made Villiers start and look up at Austin; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window.  Villiers turned page after page, absorbed, in spite of himself, in the frightful Walpurgis Night of evil, strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set forth in hard black and white.  The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Aegipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him:  a world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder.  Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost closed the book.

“Austin!”

“Well, what is it?”

“Do you know who that is?”

It was a woman’s face, alone on the white page.

“Know who it is?  No, of course not.”

“I do.”

“Who is it?”

“It is Mrs. Herbert.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am perfectly sure of it.  Poor Meyrick!  He is one more chapter in her history.”

“But what do you think of the designs?”

“They are frightful.  Lock the book up again, Austin.  If I were you I would burn it; it must be a terrible companion even though it be in a chest.”

“Yes, they are singular drawings.  But I wonder what connection there could be between Meyrick and Mrs. Herbert, or what link between her and these designs?”

“Ah, who can say?  It is possible that the matter may end here, and we shall never know, but in my own opinion this Helen Vaughan, or Mrs. Herbert, is only the beginning.  She will come back to London, Austin; depend on it, she will come back, and we shall hear more about her then.  I doubt it will be very pleasant news.”

VI

THE SUICIDES

Lord Argentine was a great favourite in London Society.  At twenty he had been a poor man, decked with the surname of an illustrious family, but forced to earn a livelihood as best he could, and the most speculative of money-lenders would not have entrusted him with fifty pounds on the chance of his ever changing his name for a title, and his poverty for a great fortune.  His father had been near enough to the fountain of good things to secure one of the family livings, but the son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate.  Thus he fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor’s gown and the wits of a younger son’s grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to make a very tolerable fight of it.  At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but out of the seven who stood before him and the high places of his family three only remained.