e. Next morning the lifeless body
of "the man who was wanted for the Campden Hill mystery" was cast up by
the waves on the shore of Lundy. The Lord had decided.

Hugo had not miscalculated. "Luck in their suicides," Hilda Wade said;
and, strange to say, the luck of the Le Geyts stood him in good
stead still. By a miracle of fate, his children were not branded as
a murderer's daughters. Sebastian gave evidence at the inquest on the
wife's body: "Self-inflicted--a recoil--accidental--I am SURE of it."
His specialist knowledge--his assertive certainty, combined with that
arrogant, masterful manner of his, and his keen, eagle eye, overbore the
jury. Awed by the great man's look, they brought in a submissive
verdict of "Death by misadventure." The coroner thought it a most proper
finding. Mrs. Mallet had made the most of the innate Le Geyt horror
of blood. The newspapers charitably surmised that the unhappy husband,
crazed by the instantaneous unexpectedness of his loss, had wandered
away like a madman to the scenes of his childhood, and had there been
drowned by accident while trying to cross a stormy sea to Lundy, under
some wild impression that he would find his dead wife alive on the
island. Nobody whispered MURDER. Everybody dwelt on the utter absence of
motive--a model husband!--such a charming young wife, and such a devoted
stepmother. We three alone knew--we three, and the children.

On the day when the jury brought in their verdict at the adjourned
inquest on Mrs. Le Geyt, Hilda Wade stood in the room, trembling and
white-faced, awaiting their decision. When the foreman uttered the
words, "Death by misadventure," she burst into tears of relief. "He did
well!" she cried to me, passionately. "He did well, that poor father! He
placed his life in the hands of his Maker, asking only for mercy to his
innocent children. And mercy has been shown to him and to them. He was
taken gently in the way he wished. It would have broken my heart for
those two poor girls if the verdict had gone otherwise. He knew how
terrible a lot it is to be called a murderer's daughter."

I did not realise at the time with what profound depth of personal
feeling she said it.

CHAPTER V

THE EPISODE OF THE NEEDLE THAT DID NOT MATCH

"Sebastian is a great man," I said to Hilda Wade, as I sat one afternoon
over a cup of tea she had brewed for me in her own little sitting-room.
It is one of the alleviations of an hospital doctor's lot that