II. — THE UNEXPECTED

“You always put me off like that,” Alice replied. “At any rate, I don’t see what you have to fear. I am sure you could tell me a great deal if you chose. Who is this man that has all the habits and mannerisms of Mr. Faber, who speaks like him, and who has to hide himself from everybody for a few days every six weeks or so? You may say that it is Mr. Raymond Draycott, who came into the property under Mr. Faber’s will, but——”

“Is there any resemblance between them, Miss Alice?” Jane interrupted.

“Oh, I admit the difficulty. One is dark and the other fair. Mr. Faber had a blunt nose, and Mr. Draycott has a regular one. Their mouths and teeth are different, and Mr. Draycott is shorter than my late guardian was. Yet they speak alike, and have the same gestures and the same weaknesses.”

“My present master has a painful form of neuralgia,” Jane suggested.

“So he says,” Alice replied scornfully. “I refuse to believe it. He had too much wine to-night. It was just like Mr. Faber before his attacks began, and these come to the same regular intervals. Mr. Draycott sang the same song. Though he is a stranger here, he knows of things that happened in the house years ago. Moler watches him as a cat watches a mouse. I cannot make out this bewildering mystery. Did Mr. Faber have a brother who disgraced the family? I am sure Mr. Draycott is a relative. If we did not know that Mr. Faber was in his grave, I should be inclined to imagine—but that is absurd.”

“I can tell you nothing whatever about it, miss,” Jane Mason said.

Alice turned away, baffled and disappointed. Mason’s words carried no conviction to her. She did not for a moment believe what the woman was saying, and longed for some friend in whom she could confide. She had but one in the world, and she could think of him only with tears in her eyes. She passed the drawing-room door on the way to her own room. She had no heart for the music that was her one comfort and consolation.

She heard the clicking of the switches presently as the lights downstairs were extinguished, and threw open her window and looked out. The white mist had lifted and a silver moon was hanging in the blue sky. There were lights dotted over the wide stretch of country, and a row of pin-points of flame was visible to the left. By their means Alice made out the outline of Dartdale convict prison.

She crept on to the balcony that ran along the whole of that side of the house, moved by an impulse of curiosity that it was impossible to resist. A light burned dully, as if from behind drawn curtains at the end of the balcony, picking out a bush of crimson roses on the lawn below. The gleam came from Draycott’s window, as Alice knew quite well. It would be no hazardous matter to go along the balcony and ascertain what was taking place inside. It seemed to the girl that she was justified. The dark mystery involved her future happiness, and possibly even more than that. A glimpse of the pin-points of flame from the windows of the prison decided her. She would find out what was passing in the room at the end of the balcony. Snatching up a long black cloak and extinguishing the light in her room, a moment later she was listening to the sound of voices in Draycott’s room. The window was closed and the blind drawn. All Alice could hear was a confused murmur. The two