"AHA!" said Benjamin, complacently. "So the lawyer thinks, as Ido, that you will be highly imprudent if you go back to Mr.Dexter? A hard-headed, sensible man the lawyer, no doubt. Youwill listen to Mr. Playmore, won't you, though you wouldn'tlisten to me?"

(I had of course respected Mr. Playmore's confidence in me whenBenjamin and I met on my return to the hotel. Not a word relatingto the lawyer's horrible suspicion of Miserrimus Dexter hadpassed my lips.)

"You must forgive me, my old friend," I said, answering Benjamin."I am afraid it has come to this--try as I may, I can listen tonobody who advises me. On our way here I honestly meant to beguided by Mr. Playmore--we should never have taken this longjourney if I had not honestly meant it. I have tried, tried hardto be a teachable, reasonable woman. But there is something in methat won't be taught. I am afraid I shall go back to Dexter."

Even Benjamin lost all patience with me this time.

"What is bred in the bone," he said, quoting the old proverb,"will never come out of the flesh. In years gone by, you were themost obstinate child that ever made a mess in a nursery. Oh, dearme, we might as well have stayed in London."

"No," I replied, "now we have traveled to Edinburgh, we will seesomething (interesting to _me_ at any rate) which we should neverhave seen if we had not left London. My husband's country-houseis within a few miles of us here. To-morrow--we will go toGleninch."

"Where the poor lady was poisoned?" asked Benjamin, with a lookof dismay. "You mean that place?"

"Yes. I want to see the room in which she died; I want to go allover the house."

Benjamin crossed his hands resignedly on his lap. "I try tounderstand the new generation," said the old man, sadly; "but Ican't manage it. The new generation beats me."

I sat down to write to Mr. Playmore about the visit to Gleninch.The house in which the tragedy had occurred that had blighted myhusband's life was, to my mind, the most interesting house on thehabitable globe. The prospect of visiting Gleninch had, indeed(to tell the truth), strongly influenced my resolution to consultthe Edinburgh lawyer. I sent my note to Mr. Playmore by amessenger, and received the kindest reply in return. If I wouldwait until the afternoon, he would get the day's business done,and would take us to Gleninch in his own carriage.

Benjamin's obstinacy--in its own quiet way, and on certainoccasions only--was quite a match for mine. He had privatelydetermined, as one of the old generation, to have nothing to dowith Gleninch. Not a word on the subject escaped him until Mr.Playmore's carriage was at the hotel door. At that appropriatemoment Benjamin remembered an old friend of his in Edinburgh."Will you please to excuse me, Valeria? My friend's name isSaunders; and he will take it unkindly of me if I don't dine withhim to-day."

Apart from the associations that I connected with it, there wasnothing to interest a traveler at Gleninch.

The country around was pretty and well cultivated, and nothingmore. The park was, to an English eye, wild and badly kept. Thehouse had been built within the last seventy or eighty years.Outside, it was as bare of all ornament as a factory, and asgloomily heavy in effect as a prison. Inside, the deadlydreariness, the close, oppressive solitude of a deserted dwellingwearied the eye and weighed on the mind, from the roof to thebasement. The house had been shut up since the time of the Trial.A lonely old couple, man and wife, had the keys and the charge ofit. The man shook his head in silent and sorrowful disapproval ofour intrusion when Mr. Playmore ordered him to open the doors andshutters, and let the light in on the dark, deserted place. Fireswere burning in the library and the picture-gallery, to preservethe treasures which they contained from the damp. It was noteasy, at first, to look at the cheerful blaze without fancyingthat the inhabitants of the house must surely come in and warmthemselves. Ascending to the upper floor, I saw the rooms madefamiliar to me by the Report of the Trial. I entered the littlestudy, with the old books on the shelves, and the key stillmissing from the locked door of communication with thebedchamber. I looked into the room in which the unhappy mistressof Gleninch had suffered and died. The bed was left in its place;the sofa on which the nurse had snatched her intervals of reposewas at its foot; the Indian cabinet, in which the crumpled paperwith the grains of arsenic had been found, still held its littlecollection of curiosities. I moved on its pivot the invalid-tableon which she had taken her meals and written her poems, poorsoul. The place was dreary and dreadful; the heavy air felt as ifit were still burdened with its horrid load of misery anddistrust. I was glad to get out (after a passing glance at theroom which Eustace had occupied in those days) into the Guests'Corridor. There was the bedroom, at the door of which MiserrimusDexter had waited and watched. There was the oaken floor alongwhich he had hopped, in his horrible way, following the footstepsof the servant disguised in her mistress's clothes. Go where Imight, the ghosts of the dead and the absent were with me, stepby step. Go where I might, the lonely horror of the house had itsstill and awful voice for Me: "_I_ keep the secret of the Poison!_I_ hide the mystery of the death!"

The oppression of the place became unendurable. I longed for thepure sky and the free air. My companion noticed and understoodme.

"Come," he said. "We have had enough of the house. Let us look atthe grounds."

In the gray quiet of the evening we roamed about the lonelygardens, and threaded our way through the rank, neglectedshrubberies. Wandering here and wandering there, we drifted intothe kitchen garden--with one little patch still sparelycultivated by the old man and his wife, and all the rest awilderness of weeds. Beyond the far end of the garden, dividedfrom it by a low paling of wood, there stretched a patch of wasteground, sheltered on three sides by trees. In one lost corner ofthe ground an object, common enough elsewhere, attracted myattention here. The object was a dust-heap. The great size of it,and the curious situation in which it was placed, aroused amoment's languid curiosity in me. I stopped, and looked at thedust and ashes, at the broken crockery and the old iron. Herethere was a torn hat, and there some fragments of rotten oldboots, and scattered around a small attendant litter of tornpaper and frowzy rags.

"What are you looking at?" asked Mr. Playmore.

"At nothing more remarkable than the dust-heap," I answered.

"In tidy England, I suppose, you would have all that carted awayout of sight," said the lawyer. "We don't mind in Scotland, aslong as the dust-heap is far enough away not to be smelt at thehouse. Besides, some of it, sifted, comes in usefully as manurefor the garden. Here the place is deserted, and the rubbish inconsequence has not been disturbed. Everything at Gleninch, Mrs.Eustace (the big dust-heap included), is waiting for the newmistress to set it to rights. One of these days you may be queenhere--who knows?"

"I shall never see this place again,"I said.

"Never is a long day," returned my companion. "And time has itssurprises in store for all of us."

We turned away, and walked back in silence to the park gate, atwhich the carriage was waiting.

On the return to Edinburgh, Mr. Playmore directed theconversation to topics entirely unconnected with my visit toGleninch. He saw that my mind stood in need of relief; and hemost good-naturedly, and successfully, exerted himself to amuseme. It was not until we were close to the city that he touched onthe subject of my return to London.

"Have you decided yet on the day when you leave Edinburgh?" heasked.

"We leave Edinburgh," I replied, "by the train of to-morrowmorning."

"Do you still see no reason to alter the opinions which youexpressed yesterday? Does your speedy departure mean that?"

"I am afraid it does, Mr. Playmore. When I am an older woman, Imay be a wiser woman. In the meantime, I can only trust to yourindulgence if I still blindly blunder on in my own way."

He smiled pleasantly, and patted my hand--then changed on asudden, and looked at me gravely and attentively before he openedhis lips again.

"This is my last opportunity of speaking to you before you go,"he said. "May I speak freely?"

"As freely as you please, Mr. Playmore. Whatever you may say tome will only add to my grateful sense of your kindness."

"I have very little to say, Mrs. Eustace--and that little beginswith a word of caution. You told me yesterday that, when you paidyour last visit to Miserrimus Dexter, you went to him alone.Don't do that again. Take somebody with you."

"Do you think I am in any danger, then?"

"Not in the ordinary sense of the word. I only think that afriend may be useful in keeping Dexter's audacity (he is one ofthe most impudent men living) within proper limits. Then, again,in case anything worth remembering and acting on _should_ fallfrom him in his talk, a friend may be valuable as witness. Inyour place, I should have a witness with me who could takenotes--but then I am a lawyer, and my business is to make a fussabout trifles. Let me only say--go with a companion when you nextvisit Dexter; and be on your guard against yourself when yourtalk turns on Mrs. Beauly."

"On my guard against myself? What do you mean?"

"Practice, my dear Mrs. Eustace, has given me an eye for thelittle weaknesses of human nature. You are (quite naturally)disposed to be jealous of Mrs. Beauly; and you are, inconsequence, not in full possession of your excellentcommon-sense when Dexter uses that lady as a means ofblindfolding you. Am I speaking too freely?"

"Certainly not. It is very degrading to me to be jealous of Mrs.Beauly. My vanity suffers dreadfully when I think of it. But mycommon-sense yields to conviction. I dare say you are right."

"I am delighted to find that we agree on one point," he rejoined,dryly. "I don't despair yet of convincing you in that far moreserious matter which is still in dispute between us. And, what ismore, if you will throw no obstacles in the way, I look to Dexterhimself to help me."

This aroused my curiosity. How Miserrimus Dexter could help him,in that or in any other way, was a riddle beyond my reading.

"You propose to repeat to Dexter all that Lady Clarinda told youabout Mrs. Beauly," he went on. "And you think it is likely thatDexter will be overwhelmed, as you were overwhelmed, when hehears the story. I am going to venture on a prophecy. I say thatDexter will disappoint you. Far from showing any astonishment, hewill boldly tell you that you have been duped by a deliberatelyfalse statement of facts, invented and set afloat, in her ownguilty interests, by Mrs. Beauly. Now tell me--if he really try,in that way, to renew your unfounded suspicion of an innocentwoman, will _that_ shake your confidence in your own opinion?"

"It will entirely destroy my confidence in my own opinion, Mr.Playmore."

"Very good. I shall expect you to write to me, in any case; and Ibelieve we shall be of one mind before the week is out. Keepstrictly secret all that I said to you yesterday about Dexter.Don't even mention my name when you see him. Thinking of him as Ithink now, I would as soon touch the hand of the hangman as thehand of that monster! God bless you! Good-by."

So he said his farewell words, at the door of the hotel. Kind,genial, clever--but oh, how easily prejudiced, how shockinglyobstinate in holding to his own opinion! And _what_ an opinion! Ishuddered as I thought of it.