When can you start, Hyde?"
"Now, sir, if that will suit Mr. McKay, and I can have the horses."
The matter was speedily arranged, and in the early afternoon our hero
and Hyde were jogging back to Balaclava, at the head of a string of
animals led and ridden by a small selected fatigue-party of regimental
batmen and grooms.
It was the first occasion on which the two friends had conversed
freely together for months.
McKay had most to tell. He spoke first of the offer to go on the
headquarter-staff which he had refused. Then of the strange accidents
by which he had become heir presumptive to the earldom of Essendine.
Last of all, of the narrow escape he had of his life.
Hyde pressed him on this point.
"You fell overboard--lost your balance, eh? Entirely your own doing?
Mrs. Wilders did not help you at all?"
"How on earth, Hyde, did you guess that? I never hinted at such a
thing."
"I know her--do not look surprised--I know her, and have done so
intimately for years. There is nothing she would stick at if she saw
her advantage therefrom. You were in her way; she sought to remove
you, as, no doubt, she, or some one acting for her, had removed Lord
Lydstone, and--and--for all I know, ever so many more."
"Can she be such a fiendish wretch?"
"She is a demon, Stanislas McKay.
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