forgiven and welcome." Sophy spoke cheerfully, for she really believed what she said.
"Are you sure to be able to slip out unobserved?"
"Quite sure, Robert. I shall go up to bed at eight, and ask not to be disturbed, as I wish to sleep. I shall bring a bag with me, and shall put on a thick veil, so as not to be recognized by any one as we go through Canterbury. I have, as I told you, plenty of money. Good-bye now, Robert, I must not wait here any longer."
"Good bye, dear, till this evening."
He looked after her as she went lightly away among the trees, her footsteps scarcely sounding in the limp, new-fallen autumn leaves, and a shade of compunction came over his face. He was certainly a blackguard, he knew it well, but, by heavens, he would try to make this little girl happy. They would be rich some day, and then they would travel for years, and when he came back his evil name would have died out, and he could then lead a quiet, happy life, perhaps at the old house there; and then—and then, who knows; perhaps little children would grow up round him: surely then he must be happy. Could it be—good God! could it be possible that he might yet turn out a good man after all? "Yes, there was hope for him yet." And as Robert Gregory turned away, there was a tear in his eye, which was even now growing heavy and red from long excesses and hard drinking, and a sigh, and a half prayer from the heart, from which for long years such things had ceased to rise.
The next morning at ten o'clock, as Sophy had not come down to breakfast, Mr. Harmer, as he went into the library, desired the servant to take his compliments to Miss Needham, and inquire how she felt. Presently the servant came into the library looking very pale and scared. "If you please, sir, Miss Sophy is not in her room, but there was this letter for you laying on the table." So saying, the girl hastily left the room, to relate to the other servants the extraordinary fact that Miss Sophy was not in her room, and that her bed had not been slept in.
The letter to Mr. Harmer was as follows:—
"My dearest Grandpapa,
"If you were other than you are, this letter would not be written; I should not dare to plead my cause with you; but I know you so well—I know how kind and good you are—and so I venture to hope for your forgiveness. I am very wicked, grandpapa; I am going away without your consent to be married. He—my husband that is to be—is named Robert Gregory. He has told me frankly that men do not speak well of him, and that when he was young he was wild and bad. He tells me so, and I must believe him; but he must have been very different to what he is now—for now I know him to be good and noble. I have known him long—I own it with shame that I have never told you before, and many tears the concealment has cost me; but, oh, grandpapa, had I told you, you would have sent him away, and I should have lost him. He and you are all I have in the world; let me keep you both. He showed me kindness when all the world, except you—my kindest and best of friends—turned their backs upon me, and I could not give him up. While I write now, my eyes are full of tears, and my heart bleeds to think of the pain this will give you, after all your goodness to me. Oh, forgive me. Do for my sake, dear, dear grandpapa, see him and judge for yourself. I only ask this, and then I know you will forgive him and me. Write soon to me—only one word—say you forgive me, and let me be your little Sophy once more. I shall not love you the less for loving him, and much as I love him, without your forgiveness my life will indeed be miserable.
"Write soon, grandpapa—write soon, and say you forgive me, and that I shall again be your own—
"Sophy."
Presently the Misses Harmer—who always breakfasted much earlier together, and then retired to a dressing-room they had fitted up as a small oratory—were surprised at loud talking, and confusion in the house. In a short time their own maid knocked at the door, and then came in with a face full of excitement, to say that Miss Sophy had not slept in her bed, and that they had searched the whole house, and found no signs of her.
"Does my brother know?" Miss Harmer asked, after hearing the whole story very quietly to the end.
"I can't say, ma'am; there was a letter on Miss Sophy's table, which Mary took into Mr. Harmer, in the library, when she first found it, and he has not come out since."
The Misses Harmer, with their usual deliberate walk, went down stairs, and then into the library.
Mr. Harmer was sitting at the table, with his back to the door, and did not turn round at their approach. They went up. Beside him on the table lay an open letter—the one from Sophy;—in his hand was a pen, and before him a sheet of paper. On it he had written: "My dearest Sophy, come back; I forgive"—but the handwriting was strangely indistinct, and the last word, the word "forgive," was large and sprawling, like a schoolboy's writing, and then the pen stopped, and had stopped for ever;—Herbert Harmer was dead.
Chapter XIII.
A Bad Business.
"Mr. Harmer is dead! Sophy Needham is missing!"
Such was the news a groom, riding into Canterbury for a doctor, brought; such was the telegram which a friend at once sent down to us at Ramsgate.
Mr. Harmer dead! Sophy Needham missing! It flashed like wildfire through Canterbury, and the quiet old town was again shaken out of its lethargy by the intelligence. Mr. Harmer, during his lifetime, had been a standing topic of conversation; he had on several occasions quite roused it from the even tenor of its way, but this last sensation was greater and more astounding than any of its predecessors, and Canterbury enjoyed it with proportionate gusto.
"Sophy Needham eloped with that notorious reprobate, Robert Gregory"—for the Misses Harmer, by their invectives on reading the letter, at once had told those round them with whom Sophy had fled— "and poor Mr. Harmer gone off in a fit in consequence!!" It was indeed a terrible affair, and it was not mended in the telling. By the time the tale had made its round, it had swollen to extraordinary proportions—fresh additions were made by each mouth through which it passed, until at last it was extremely difficult to find out what the truth of the matter was.
From the simple report that Sophy Needham had eloped with Robert Gregory, and that it had killed poor Mr. Harmer, the transition was easy to—"and he had killed poor Mr. Harmer;" and details of the supposed murder grew till it became a tragedy of the most coldblooded description.
The groom's statement that the Misses Harmer were in a dreadful state about it, soon lost the last two words, and grew into,—"The Misses Harmer were also attacked, and were lying in a dreadful state."
Altogether, although Robert Gregory and Sophy were undoubtedly much to blame, and had acted very wrongly, I believe they would hardly have recognised themselves or their doings, in the two fiends in human shape, whose deeds were commented upon in Canterbury that afternoon.
The next day the real truth of the story became known, and there was some feeling of disappointment that things were not as bad as had been reported; but even then the opinion in respect to Sophy and her lover were hardly modified;—give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him.
This couple had been accused of murder and violence, and, although the charge was now disproved, yet it was universally agreed that these crimes might, and in all probability would have been perpetrated, had the fugitives been detected at the time of their flight. Sophy's conduct was so atrocious, her ingratitude to Mr. Harmer so base, that there was no question that a nature so depraved would hesitate at nothing. The ladies of the Canterbury
