knew it all the time. I discovered it several days ago, but thought it prudent to meet treachery with her own weapons, and hide my knowledge until every possible step had been taken to recover those papers!”
What wary thoughts, what shrewd suspicions, what deep plans were working, and day by day developing, behind that calm, stolid face, the most practised disciple of Lavater would be at a loss to detect; for an inscrutable man was George.
“I have received him into my house, I have let him give presents and make pretty speeches to my wife, I have seen him stroke the children’s heads, I have shaken him by the hand; and yet for the last four days I knew him to be the blackest traitor that ever overshadowed a home. For the moment, I have allowed him to cast suspicion upon young Thornberg, as it will put him further off his guard.”
“But have you set the police to work?”
“Long ago: but in spite of the efforts of the detectives, who have probably taken both him and Abel into custody by this time, he has outwitted us. My cash, my notes, all my available securities are gone. Some he may have converted into money; others I believe him to have taken in sheer malice. Why, I can hardly tell; for I have always confided in him, and treated him with kindness. He had a quarrel with my father once, on some matter of which I know nothing; and my father, who was a violent man, struck him, I believe, in his rage.”
Charles was about to tell him how that the papers were recovered, and he might sleep calmly that night, but checked himself. No. The child—the child whom they were rather disposed, he feared, to regard as a useless burden, should herself be the harbinger of his good fortune. But had she returned? Where was Effie?
The very question that Cissy asked, when she came hastily into the room: her eyes dried now, and all traces of her grief past, like an autumnal shower. Mrs. Turner, a stout lady, whose head was so thickly covered with curl-papers, that it suggested preparations for a grand pyrotechnical display, so that the proximity of the candle she held in her hand seemed highly dangerous, and momently threatened an explosion, followed in great trepidation, and suggested the searching of all sorts of impossible places.
“I know she must be here, mum,” she said, with a false calmness, as if trying to ward off the horror of her position, by resolutely not believing in it. “Unless,” she muttered, “the gal’s been among the spirits again,”—her general belief, whenever Effie was more than usually strange in her ways.
Cissy—though her face became very white—showed the same determination to cheat herself, and not believe in the possibility of any danger to the child, and suggested going with a lantern towards the garden door. She might be there—she must be there. She walked quickly, pretending to herself that there was no hurry, and not the least cause for alarm, and cried out into the fog in a strange, unnatural voice that none would have recognised as hers, “Effie! Effie!’
As the lantern shot a bar of light into the fog, Effie herself appeared, walking at a leisurely pace towards the house.
“The gal has been among the spirits again,” said Mrs. Turner, in a low voice.
Then Cissy scolded her soundly.
“Naughty Effie! Where have you been? You’ll be the death of us all, some day. Mercy! How cold the child’s hand is! Bring her to the fire. Oh dear!”
Without resistance, or any signs of comprehending what was said to her, the child suffered herself to be led to the fire, and there remained, with the same blank expression, the same imperturbable silence, with which she had stood beside Charles that evening near the hedge.
“Naughty child,” said Cissy, chafing her hands, to warm them. “And what is this she has in the other hand? Who gave you this, child?”
Mrs. Turner nodded her head, knowingly, and said, “The spirits.”
As George took the papers, Charles smiled within himself; for he had made a resolve, quite consistent with his whimsical nature, never to breathe a word of the part he had borne in the transaction, but to leave them to form their own conjectures.
A glance at the paper showed George that he was saved; for there he found not only the securities that had caused him so much anxiety, but a memorandum, showing, in Cairtree’s own clear, neat handwriting, the number of the notes that had been stolen.
“Cissy, we are no more ruined than you thought we were two hours ago!”
Ah, Effie! Years to come they will remember how you came, that foggy night, like a spirit out of the darkness, with a strange light in your eyes, and a message of comfort and restored happiness in your tiny hand, in a time of great trouble.
Something of this Charles seemed to see, as he stooped to kiss her passive face; to see in the far distance how selfishness, ignorance, and unkindness of others would crush her frail and tender nature, and make her life a dark and cheerless journey.
“If at any time you should be inclined to treat her harshly, and impatiently regard her as a burden, remember this night, and then say if her life has been profitless to you! If ever you feel inclined to forget the claims which failings such as hers should render doubly sacred; to make hasty and complaining comparison, when brothers and sisters shall have sprung up around her, so much brighter, and cleverer, and happier than she, remember that whether she comes from the living or the dead, whether she has been among the spirits or no, it is she that has saved you from ruin, and she alone. And now then, good bye!”
“What, going?” says Cissy, starting up.
“Yes, going. I only came down here to see you once more; to know that you were all well and happy.”
He walked towards the outer door, while George and Cissy followed him in blank astonishment.
Too much engrossed in their own affairs, it was only now that they noticed that Charles seemed
