“Will he reach it?” I asked, anxiously, having my own idea on the subject.

“Doan’t seem like ut, zur, do ut?  Ur must, an’ ur mustn’t, an’ yit again ur must.  Powerful ’ard place ur be to maake in a starm, to be zure, Lundy.  Zaid the Lord ’ould dezide.  But ur ’ouldn’t be warned, ur ‘ouldn’t; an’ voolhardy volk, as the zayin’ is, must go their own voolhardy waay to perdition!”

It was the last I saw of Le Geyt alive.  Next morning the lifeless body of “the man who was wanted for the Campden Hill mystery” was cast up by the waves on the shore of Lundy.  The Lord had decided.

Hugo had not miscalculated.  “Luck in their suicides,” Hilda Wade said; and, strange to say, the luck of the Le Geyts stood him in good stead still.  By a miracle of fate, his children were not branded as a murderer’s daughters.  Sebastian gave evidence at the inquest on the wife’s body:  “Self-inflicted—­a recoil—­accidental—­ I am sure of it.”  His specialist knowledge—­his assertive certainty, combined with that arrogant, masterful manner of his, and his keen, eagle eye, overbore the jury.  Awed by the great man’s look, they brought in a submissive verdict of “Death by misadventure.”  The coroner thought it a most proper finding.  Mrs. Mallet had made the most of the innate Le Geyt horror of blood.  The newspapers charitably surmised that the unhappy husband, crazed by the instantaneous unexpectedness of his loss, had wandered away like a madman to the scenes of his childhood, and had there been drowned by accident while trying to cross a stormy sea to Lundy, under some wild impression that he would find his dead wife alive on the island.  Nobody whispered murder.  Everybody dwelt on the utter absence of motive—­a model husband!—­such a charming young wife, and such a devoted stepmother.  We three alone knew—­we three, and the children.

On the day when the jury brought in their verdict at the adjourned inquest on Mrs. Le Geyt, Hilda Wade stood in the room, trembling and white-faced, awaiting their decision.  When the foreman uttered the words, “Death by misadventure,” she burst into tears of relief.  “He did well!” she cried to me, passionately.  “He did well, that poor father!  He placed his life in the hands of his Maker, asking only for mercy to his innocent children.  And mercy has been shown to him and to them.  He was taken gently in the way he wished.  It would have broken my heart for those two poor girls if the verdict had gone otherwise.  He knew how terrible a lot it is to be called a murderer’s daughter.”

I did not realise at the time with what profound depth of personal feeling she said it.

CHAPTER V

THE EPISODE OF THE NEEDLE THAT DID NOT MATCH

“Sebastian is a great man,” I said to Hilda Wade, as I sat one afternoon over a cup of tea she had brewed for me in her own little sitting-room.  It is one of the alleviations of an hospital doctor’s lot that he may drink tea now and again with the Sister of his ward.  “Whatever else you choose to think of him, you must admit he is a very great man.”