Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes
face that you do!”
The girl rose and stood for a moment, her hands pressed to her head, then she crossed the room slowly. As she sat down to the piano her expression altered.
“Oh!” she exclaimed delightedly. “I—I think—I believe—I remember!”
Davenant placed a symphony of Beethoven’s on the stand and took his place beside her, watching her face critically.
For a moment the white fingers strayed over the keys in a vague uncertain fashion; then they altered, settled on the right notes, and the opening chords rang out. It was evident from the beginning to all in the room that they were listening to a real musician, one, too, whose touch and technique showed that she must have received a careful training.
“Capital! Thank you very much!” Davenant said as she finished and rose from her seat with flushed cheeks.
“That was quite right, was it not?” she asked with childish delight. “It is a step in the right direction, I believe. Fancy, until to-day I have not known that I could do anything! The rest—ah, surely the rest will come soon, will it not, Mr. Davenant?”
Sir Arthur had joined the group at the piano.
“Are you so tired of us then?” Davenant heard him whisper under cover of rearranging the music; he caught too the upward look with which she rewarded the speech, and his face darkened.
But Hilda had appealed to him.
“Oh, yes. I feel quite sure that your memory will be as good as ever in a very short time,” he said as he looked across the room. “Mavis, do you remember you promised to be kind to me this morning? I want you to walk as for as the village with me. Will you?”
Mavis hesitated a moment, but a glance at his anxious face decided her. She caught up the coat and hat she had thrown down a few minutes before and put them on.
“Don’t say that I keep you waiting. You will not mind if I take the dogs—they are waiting for me in the hall.”
Outside the air was fresh, in spite of the heat; rain had fallen heavily during the preceding night, and the storm had served to clear the air; the dogs gamboled round joyfully.
Mavis lifted up her face appreciatively and drew a deep breath.
“How charming everything smells! We will go by the Home Coppice and across the footpath that brings us out near the Wishing Well. It is the nearest way, and it will be delightfully cool this morning. What do you think of Hilda, Garth?”
“She is very beautiful.”
Mavis laughed as, screened from the house by the trees, she tucked her arm under his.
“Certainly, anyone can see that, stupid boy! I mean, how do you like her? Is she not perfectly delightful?”
Garth hesitated; he looked away from the gay, piquant face of the girl at his side into the green, leafy depths of the Home Coppice.
Mavis gave his arm a little shake.
“If you let your mind stray to your briefs when you are with me, sir, I shall turn back. Why do you not answer my question?”
“Well, I paused,” Garth said reluctantly, “because I am afraid my answer, if I speak truthfully, will not please you, Mavis, and—”
“What do you mean?” Mavis asked, looking at him in astonishment. “Surely you do not mean that you do not like Hilda?—Oh, Garth, and she is so sweet and lovable!”
Garth pulled his moustache perplexedly.
“I don’t trust her,” he said slowly at last. “To my mind there is something about her that does not ring true, but I think she is a capital actress, Mavis.”
Mavis drew her hand from his arm.
“What do you mean?” she said coldly. “Garth, it is not like you to be so suspicious, and when you know how fond I am of Hilda—”
“Ah, don’t you see that is just what makes me so anxious, because you are brought into daily contact with her?” Garth interrupted. “Mavis, you know I never liked the idea of this girl staying on at the Manor in the way she’s doing for an indefinite length of time, and now that I have seen her—”
“Well, now that you have seen her—” Mavis repeated in displeased accents.
“I dislike that idea more than ever,” Garth finished. “I think I could give a pretty good guess at her object in coming to you, Mavis. I wondered to-day whether you were all blind but myself. If Lady Laura were to take the course I should advise, and send her to the seaside with a nurse or an elderly woman to look after her, I would guarantee that the young lady would soon recover her memory.”
Mavis came to a sudden stop in the middle of the pathway.
“Which is as much as to say you think that she has not lost it at all—that she is pretending and deceiving us all!” she cried indignantly. “Oh, Garth, I did not think you would be so uncharitable!”
Garth looked down at her flushed face tenderly.
“I can’t help having my own opinion, Mavis. Her pleasure in finding she could play and that pretty little speech about it were all done for effect, I am certain.”
Mavis’s mouth looked mutinous and she drew away from the hand he outstretched to her.
“Do you imagine that you know better than the doctors?”
“I may be a better judge of human nature than the doctor who has seen her,” Garth said quietly. “I have had a pretty wide experience of the scurvy side of things at the courts, you know, but I merely give you my opinion for what it is worth, Mavis. You may all be right and I may be entirely wrong, only I know that I hate the thought of you living with this woman seeing her every day and—Oh, can’t I make you understand how I hate it for you?”
Meeting the appeal in his eyes, Mavis softened.
“Silly boy!” she said with a laugh. “What harm could she do me, I should like to know, even if it were as you fancy, which I am quite sure it is not?”
“I don’t know,” said Garth thoughtfully. “Yet I have the strangest feeling—presentiment—call it what you will—that harm will come of it. Naturally Lady Laura—none of you—can have failed to note Arthur’s growing infatuation.”
“Ah, no. Poor boy, you are looking at everything through jaundiced eyes,” Mavis said, patting his arm, her short-lived wrath evaporating as she saw the real anxiety in his face. “Arthur thinks her very beautiful—he is painting her for his Elaine—but it is Dorothy he cares for.”
Garth made no response, but his dark face looked unconvinced. He drew Mavis’s arm through his.
“Don’t let us talk of it any more, Mavis. I have something much nearer my heart to say to you this morning; my father was talking to me last night. He is very anxious to see me settled, Mavis.”
“Oh!” The swift, hot colour surged over the girl’s face; her hand fluttered restlessly and tried to draw itself away.
Garth held it in a close, warm clasp.
“He was speaking of ways and means, Mavis. To all intents and purposes he is putting me into poor Walter’s place and making the eldest son of me—that is, as far as the unentailed property is concerned. The title, naturally, must be Walter’s, and the secured estate and the income of the latter, after my father’s death, if we should be in ignorance of his whereabouts, will have to accumulate for him, or for his children if he should have any. My father suggests that he should make over to us the house at Overdeen—the Priory, it is called; and then—for you would not have me give up my profession, would you, Mavis?—I thought I might look out for a little house in Kensington, and you will come to me. You will not keep me waiting long, will you, sweetheart?”
The girl’s hot face was downcast; beneath