---

      The door swung idly. In that unused western wing of the great gloomy house, dust had gathered thickly, but thickest on the threshold of that partly open door that by the will of the former owner of the place had never once been closed for nearly seven years. For the will that disinherited his only son, and made a cousin his heir, signified in the terms of a command that the Cedar Room should never be occupied, nor the door shut by night nor day, and that free egress and ingress should be allowed at all hours to the repudiated heir when he should be released from the term of imprisonment he was then undergoing.

      There were yet five years to run of the son's sentence when the father had died, and the new owner of the Castle, who frankly preferred the Berkeley-square house and a delightful apartment in Paris to the gloomy splendours of a place five miles from anywhere, very seldom came near The Towers at all, though, even had he brought 50 guests, there would have been room and to spare without that panelled room, over-shadowed by the boughs of a great cedar tree that looked in at its broad casement, and from which it took its name.

      Why was the door to be always, night and day, left ajar? The door to the boy's mother's heart had been open, wide open to the end; black shame had slammed that of the father in the son's face, and he had died at bitter enmity with him, leaving him a beggar, and yielding most unwillingly to the mother's dying entreaty: "Let him have the right to his own room — let him when he is free, come here, and stand before my portrait, and read in my eyes that I never doubted him, never believed in his guilt, or even for one moment ceased to love him; then let him go forth again into the world, heartened up to face it, and under a changed name wipe out the dishonour that the guilt of another brought into his life, and that other was a woman, else would he have spoken out and cleared himself of the charge."

      For the mother's instinct was unerring — a bad woman was at the bottom of it. Her "straight boy" as she used to call him because he never looked at a certain class of women, and had never met a good one who pleased at once his fastidious taste and his heart. His young mother and he had always been chums and inseparable companions until he went to Sandhurst, and he was no more than a boy, just nineteen, when the crash cams, and two years later she had closed her eyes on a world of which the light for her was extinguished. But a little while before she died, while her attendants slept, she had come in the grey of early morning to her boy's room, and with gasping breath and failing limbs set herself to do the thing that she willed to do, and she had turned at the door to meet her own eyes in the picture, and charged them solemnly with what they should say to him when he came, and then she had stolen away, and only by the dust upon her wrapper did her women know she had left her bed that night, though none knew whither she had gone, or with what desperate fear she had dreaded pursuit. And no one knew what was in the long letter to her son which she caused to be conveyed to him; and afterwards, when all her magnificent jewels were found missing and a great search and scandal were caused thereby, it was supposed that she had found means to send them away into safe hands that they might be converted into money for her son when he should be launched penniless on the world; it was found too that she had realised her stocks and shares and drawn out all her money in the bank, but her man of business refused to say whether he had been party to the matter, and the money was her own to do with as she willed, and Kenelm of Kenelm was a proud man, and would make no inquiries, and none ever knew what he thought about the matter.

      And if the ruin of her boy broke the mother's heart the loss of her broke her husband's, so that in less than three years from the day when the boy was found guilty of forging a brother-officer's name the old family was wiped clean out of Kenelm Towers, and the new one reigned in absence, only sending now and again the daughter of the house, a slip of a girl, with her governess and maids, to dance lightly to and fro in the wilderness of rooms, making a sunshine in the old dusty place.

      The old housekeeper, who had known young Kenelm from his birth, was still there, and for a long while, hers was the only foot that ever crossed the threshold of the Cedar Room, where she went to air, and clean, and straighten it, just as if its owner might walk in at any minute, and she never failed to test the window sash to see that it moved smoothly up and down, for what if Mr Kenelm should choose to enter by that way instead of the door? Many a night, when set on some boyish scheme of mischief, he had let himself out, and climbed back to his chamber by the great limbs of the cedar tree, for the room was at the back of the Castle, and looked into a quiet court — probably it was for this very reason that he loved it, so sweet is freedom to the heart of a boy.

      And always at the door Mrs March would turn, and say, "Ma'am, I know the very day and hour he will be free — and he'll find me here to meet him, come when he may;" and the mother's eyes, would smile back with that eager, welcoming look in them that the painter had so vividly caught one day when she saw her baby toddling towards her, and tears would roll down the waiting woman's cheeks as she thought of how the two pairs of eyes would meet . . . for she never doubted that the boy would come — the love between them had been too intense to make the least wish of one disregarded by the other, but she herself was never to see that meeting between the quick and the dead, for she died rather suddenly just six months before the son came out of prison, fretting bitterly that she had not been able to keep faith with her beloved mistress.

      But before that happened she had made friends with the little girl who had shot up to be a maiden during those infrequent visits to The Towers, and there was no picture before which Letty paused so often, and looked at so earnestly, as that of young "Mr Kenelm," painted especially for his proud mother in his first scarlet coat, and which hung apart from all the rest in the picture gallery.

      "Had he no other name than Kenelm?" she said one day as she and Mrs March stood before it.

      "Kenelm Kenelm, Miss Letty, so the eldest son of the house was always named, and he was the only one."

      "It's a beautiful face," said the child musingly, but when she was sixteen she said, "it is a noble face," and at seventeen found lines of sternness in the young soldier's features that unconsciously subdued her, so that gradually he passed into her mind as a hero, as one who had a capacity for great deeds and might have bean living a great life. With the single eye of childhood she had early grasped, as Mrs March could not, the purity of thought and heart that underlay the vivid colour and brightness of youth; other men's faces showed coarse to her beside the memory of his, and, however long her absences from The Towers, she never failed to go and greet him on her return, and she secretly made a sketch of him, and consulted it often, even in all the turmoil of a first season.

      And, strangely enough, she knew nothing of the black stain that had wiped out all the glory of the boy's life, for Mrs March's lips refused to utter the truth, and without absolutely lying, she had given the girl to understand that he was dead. As Letty rarely saw her father, and never had any real conversation with him, it came to pass that when Mrs March lay a-dying, and sent for her, she gave a solemn promise to do a certain thing for the poor woman in pure ignorance of what it meant, yet could never find it in her heart to be angry because she was not told the truth.

      "Miss Letty," said the old woman with difficulty, for already death was dealing with her, "she will ask me when she sees me: 'How did you keep your promise to me, Annie?' and I shall have to say, 'My lady I was called and had to come away, but I asked Miss Letty — Miss Letty ——'"

      "Yes, yes," cried the girl, who was holding the trembling figure up to her arms, "tell me quick — and I will do it."

      "On Christmas Day — (he comes out on Christmas Eve, and will not waste a getting here)," she muttered under her breath, "no matter how gay you may be, and I hear the master is to fill the Castle for the first time with guests for the New Year — get away by yourself early in the morning and slip into the west wing, taking a bottle of wine, and bread and meat, and set them there on the table under her picture; but if you find the door locked and barred do not seek to enter — inside there will be a soul in agony, alone with God and her ——"

      She paused, and Letty wiped the sweat from the stone-cold brow. She thought it but the delirium of death, yet was resolved only to comfort her, and promised again.

      "— tell no one — least of all your father — what will be inside that room on Christmas morning (for they two never broke faith with one another) must not be disturbed . . . in the sky above, in the earth below, there is no love like that love . . . but, please God, you will get there first. And when day is advanced steal secretly there again . . . the place will be empty, the door once more ajar . . . perchance the food untouched, but her eyes will say to him, 'eat!' and he will be sore and weary —" the voice trailed off; a few disconnected phrases followed, then for a moment the life in her flared up, to meet Letty's reiterated: "I promise," and then followed the silence of the grave.

II.

      Kenelm Towers showed through the darkness like an illuminated and enchanted castle, whose lights flashed a thousand reflections in the moat below, and far along the countryside made a beacon towards which turned many eyes and hearts, for it was the first time its owner had come hither with any state, and now he had brought not only half a hundred guests with him, but had bidden the whole county to come and share with them his Christmas revels.

      During that Christmas Eve snow had fallen at intervals, blotting out persistently the tracks made by the carriages that had all day been busy in conveying the rapidly arriving guests to the Castle, and when all were safely housed the pure white mantle spread as if in quiet contentment over the scene, and the starlight showed a deeply blue and serene sky.

      The last arrival had shivered and turned white when, with loud reverberation of horses' feet in the courtyard, the carriage had drawn up at the entrance to the Castle. This (at a distance) airy, fairy palace of delight, that on approaching it plunged you deep into the gloom of a fortified castle, this was the forfeited home of that poor boy whose term of punishment was up to-day, while she came as an honoured guest to the place of which she should have been master! How could she have dared to do it — what strength of evil in her weak character had nerved her to the outrage, made her believe it possible that she could carry the thing through? Huddled in her furs and laces, and bedizenments, she shook as if she were a prisoner going to her doom, and the portcullis in act of falling to close her in, and Mr Kenelm who was in waiting to receive her, was greatly concerned at her pallor, and drew her at once to the fire in the great hall, concerning himself about her in a way quite unusual to that very self-contained and haughty personage.

      And while she smiled she longed to scream and scream, and her teeth chattered when she tried to speak, while she drank the wine he gave her at one draught. But she was so fragile that it was no wonder that the long journey bad tired her, and so beautiful that nothing could ever make her appear less so, and presently he escorted her to her room, and the lookers-on smiled — there was really no reason why he should not adore Lady Norman, but it was shockingly bad taste to show it so openly.

      He was a handsome man of 45, with a courtly air and manner, also a look of character and great virility, which partly explained Etta Norman's attraction for him, for she was one of the most helpless of women, and as he tenderly supported her steps, she was more like an exquisite wraith than a living creature.

      On their way through the picture-gallery she stopped dead opposite young Kenelm's portrait, and put up her hand to her throat as if she were choking.

      "The black sheep of the family," said he, lightly, "to whose — accident — I owe all this," and he waved his hand comprehensively around him. "Oddly enough, my daughter, though here so often, never knew the story till by chance it was spoken of before her last night."

      "You are sure he was guilty?"

      He shrugged his shoulders.

      "The law," he said, and paused. "Poor devil," he added, and paused again. "I had forgotten it, but believe his sentence expires this very day. And his poor mother — she worshipped him — had an idea that he would come back — here — directly he came out. So his room is ready for him — come when he will — in the western wing, I am told, though I have never ordered it. You may know it because all the other doors are locked, but his door stands always ajar" — he stopped with an abrupt exclamation, for Lady Norman was drooping in a dead faint to the ground.

*       *       *       *      *

      Towards morning the western wing saw re-enacted an almost precisely similar scene to the one of five years ago, but the mother, however heavily weighted had not been bowed down by sin — this trembling, shuddering creature, who floated like drift-weed down the dark corridor, might have been a disembodied soul in pain, bearing a corpse-light in her hand, with which to guide her to the scene of her crime. Long before she came to it she saw that door ajar, and, entering it, the light she carried smote full on the mother's face with its eager look of greeting, and she cowered before it as a visible human thing, and set the light on the ground and kneeled down before that poor mother, and confessed, at last, and poured out the troth, and pleaded for pardon . . . so might she have pleaded to earthly ears; and earthly ears were there, and heard, for Letty had barely reached the room with the food as she had promised when faint footsteps in the corridor warned her of some one approaching, and extinguishing her light she hid herself and burden behind a screen, and waited.

      "He did it to save me me . . . his colonel's wife! I gambled recklessly, I was deeply in debt . . . and I made love to him . . . and he loved me . . . I was his first love . . . but the boy was straight, and would not wrong my husband . . . and I forged the cheque . . . it cleared me of all my debts . . . my husband had sworn to put me away if ever I got into debt again . . . and I asked Kenelm not to betray me . . . and he . . . loved me."

      Was it fancy, or did the bother's face suddenly grow convulsed with awful anger and grief? Looking from behind the screen Letty saw the shadowy figure writhing in the dust, saw the pale gold hair covering it as with a mantle, and in this wreck of a woman suddenly understood how the boy's young heart had been caught . . . for in very pity of her helplessness he had made himself the scapegoat and let her go scot free.

      Only two hours ago she had been the centre of attraction, the most ethereally beautiful out of the many beauties the host's tact and taste had brought hither that night, and now . . . now Letty's head reeled with the wonder of it all, and it scarcely startled her when the sash of the window suddenly descended and a man leaped lightly into the room.

      If he saw the shrouded figure on the ground he heeded it not, but snatched the light up, and as a man blind and deaf to all save one over-mastering need he stepped swiftly to where his mother's eyes met his full, and loudly and passionately he cried out:—

      "Mother! mother!" Ah! those were no painted eyes that met his, that was no painted breast beneath which the heart leaped wildly to meet that cry of love and agony . . . as he had pictured her through those years of degradation and pain, believing in him, loving him, strengthening him, so she looked now, only she could not speak . . . try as she would she could not speak — could not tell him he was as dear, as absolutely in her eyes without sin as when he had stood a little child at her knee . . . and the only tears that he had known since boyhood crowded to his eyes and fell heavily in the dust at his feet. He wanted her arms round him . . dully he looked down on something that stirred, arose, and the woman who had been his ruin rose up like a ghost before him.

A white figure rose up before him.

      "I came," she stammered, "I came ——" then put both her hands before her face to hide the scars that disfigured his. Shall a man go through hell, live daily with wild beasts in human form, and yet there be no mark upon him? Perhaps it was well for his mother that she carried the memory of an unlined, boyish face with her to another world.

      "I had not seen your home, Kenelm," the woman said pitifully. "I had not seen your mother's face" — she paused and desolately looked up at it, "but now, since fate has brought us here together, this very night shall be told the truth, and nothing but the truth. The man who is heir in your place shall be wakened, it shall all be set down in writing — my maid is here to attest it — she knew everything, but kept silence for my sake — and your name shall be cleared. My husband is dead. Were he living I fear I could not — dare not ——" she stopped abruptly, and snatching up the light she seized his hand, and with feverish strength dragged him with her out of the room.

*       *       *       *      *

      Letty still knelt there, cramped and stupefied when half an hour later Kenelm came back to the room, this time accompanied by her father, who was half-stunned by the story which Etta Norman and her maid had confessed to him.

      "I fear I cannot give you back the estates which your father entailed on me, and my daughter after me," he said, but Lady Norman's confession, as she insists, shall be placed in the hands of the authorities to-morrow" — he sighed heavily, "and meanwhile I will send the servants here —"

      But Kenelm cut him short. He only wanted to be alone — wanted no servants, no preparations made for his comfort, and when the door closed he looked long at his mother, and presently said gravely, and just as if she could hear —

      "Noblesse oblige. I had to do it, mother. I loved you both, and I sacrificed you."

      Then he kindled the fire Letty had laid in the morning, drew a small key from his pocket, and with it unlocked a secret door known only to himself and his mother, hidden in a panel of the wall.

      It was here that in her dying letter she had commanded him to look for her last message. In amazement he drew out one by one the jewel cases, the bags of gold and notes, all the property that she had secretly realised, and put there just before she died to enable him to start the world afresh when he came out of prison. He piled them on the table, closed the panel, then bowing his head upon his arms wept as a man weeps but once in his life at the thought of that great love which had believed in him, planned for him, and so implicitly trusted in his love to obey her wish that she had died almost content, knowing that he was provided for.

      Hark! what is that? Had she indeed found voice to come and comfort him? For close at hand he heard a sigh, a moan, and starting up, he dashed aside a heavy screen to see a girl kneeling there, ice-frozen, her stiff arms embracing a bottle of wine and generous dole of food, and, intuitively guessing her errand there, he looked up to his mother, as if asking her blessing on the truest and sweetest face he had ever seen.

      "And I have got my hero back," said Letty shyly, as later he accompanied her to the inhabited part of the castle, and she looked very earnestly at he sterner, older cast of the features that through long years she had learned by heart, and, thank God, no mark of shame was there, for the knowledge of his innocence and his own indomitable spirit had carried him through an ordeal from which not one man in a thousand ever emerges unbrutalised.

*       *       *       *      *

      There is no dust on the threshold of the Cedar Room now, and often Kenelm and Letty enter the chamber hand in hand and linger there so dear is it for its associations for them both, but the mother's picture is gone. It hangs in their chamber on the other side of the castle, where her boy's children wave their little hands to the pretty lady who "talks," and her face turns to them in as radiant a look of love and welcome as ever it held for a son and the girl he loved, when the two stood before her and begged her blessing. But for her, they had never met, and the truth had never been told — but for her love there had not been left a door ajar.

(The End.)