Philip was exuberant. It was clear that he did not suffer from my doubts. I saw Philip afresh now. He was all enthusiasms for whatever obsessed him at the moment, and I thought again and again: He's very young. So was I for that matter, but it seemed to me that I had grown up since my engagement. Grown up, yes, and left Philip behind.

It was the Sunday before our wedding day. There were six more days to go. We were to be married at St. George's Hanover Square and then go back to the Lorings' house for the reception. In the late afternoon we should leave for Venice.

I should have been congratulating myself on my good fortune and at times I did, but not for long. Into my thoughts would creep an insidious notion that I was making a mistake, a mistake fraught with danger, and that I would never again be the old Ellen who, even as a Poor Relation, had enjoyed life wholeheartedly and had often been able to laugh at her own misfortunes.

In the afternoon Philip and I walked through the Park to Kensington Gardens. We skirted the Palace and watched the ducks on the Round Pond; then we walked back across the grass and sat by the Serpentine and talked. Philip was gay. At least he had no doubts, capable as he was of complete absorption in the moment. I remembered that even as children when we would be doing something which would assuredly bring us some punishment, he had never thought ahead. I have never known anyone who had such a capacity for living in and enjoying the moment. It is a great gift. Darling Philip, I was to be grateful later that he possessed it.

"Six whole days," he was saying. "It seems a lifetime. I'll be glad when all the fuss is over. It won't be long, Ellen, before we're sailing down the Grand Canal with our gondolier soothing us with his beautiful song. Aren't you pleased?"

"Of course. It'll be wonderful."

"It was always us, wasn't it? As soon as I came home from school I'd ask if you were there. Of course we always had to have Esmeralda trailing on, but I wanted to be with you in spite of that."

"You're cruel to Esmeralda. In the first place you should have been kinder to her in your youth and in the second place you should have married her."

"As we're not allowed two wives in this country and I'd already decided on you, how could I?"

"You were always obstinate."

"And what of you? Ours will be a nice explosive union, Ellen. We shall argue and fight and make it up and love each other until the end of our days."

"Let's try to do that, Philip," I said.

He took my hand and held it firmly.

"I've no qualms," he told me seriously.

"It's not too late to get out of it even now. If you'd like more time..."

"More time! I want less time. A week's a hell of a long way off."

And so we chatted on that seat in the Park and afterwards I tried to remember every word that was said in case in that conversation there might have been some clue to what followed. Try as I might, I could remember nothing. It seemed to be the sort of conversation Philip and I had had a thousand times.

In the evening we went to church and afterwards I walked home with Cousin Agatha, Cousin William and Esmeralda. We retired early, for there was never entertaining on Sundays, and I sat by my window for some time looking out on the gardens and thinking that this time next week I should be married. Philip and I would be on our way to Venice.

I rose as usual without an inkling of what might have happened. Then Rollo rode over in the midmorning.

Rose, her face the color of chalk, came into my bedroom, where I was sorting out my clothes. Bessie was with her, peering from behind her back.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"There's been some accident. I don't know rightly what, but Mr. Rollo Carrington's here and he's asking to see you."

I went down to the drawing room. Rollo was standing by the fireplace.

"Is anything wrong?" I cried.

I saw his face then—pale, drawn and anxious. He didn't look like the Rollo I had known.

"Something terrible has happened," he said. "You must try to be calm."

"It's Philip," I said.

"Yes," he nodded. "Philip."

"He's ill... ."

"He's dead."

"Philip...dead! Oh no, that can't be. How could it... ?"

"Philip was found dead this morning."

"But he wasn't ill."

"He was found shot."

"Shot! But who... ?"

Rollo shook his head slowly and sadly.

"It appears the wound was self-inflicted," said Rollo.

I felt myself growing dizzy. Rollo caught me and held me for some moments until I regained my strength.

"There's a mistake," I said shrilly. "I don't believe it."

"No, alas. There is no mistake."

Everything was collapsing about me. It was like a bad dream. I'd wake up. I must. The world had become a strange place full of distorted nightmares. And the greatest of these was that with Rollo standing before me saying in a low tragic voice: "Philip is dead. He took his own life."

What did it mean?

Dead Man's Leap

I lay on my bed. I did not want to move. I couldn't believe it. Philip dead! Philip who had been so full of life! It was impossible. And to take his own life. He, who had been so happy! Only the day before he had talked exuberantly of our future. What could have happened so suddenly to make him do such a thing?

Esmeralda came and sat by my bed. I wanted no one but I could just bear her. She was so quiet. She took a handkerchief soaked with eau de cologne and laid it on my forehead. I knew I should never smell that scent again without remembering this day.

I kept seeing Philip in scenes from the past. The day we set the fields on fire—that mischief in his eyes! He had wanted to let it blaze for a while before we gave the alarm. How his eyes had shone! How they had danced! We'd be punished for this but let us enjoy it while it lasted. Philip at the dance, proposing to me, serious suddenly, assuring me that he would always look after me.

And now he had done this.

"I don't believe it," I said. "It's not true. It can't be."

Esmeralda said nothing. What was there to say?

A great deal would be said of course and they would soon start saying it.

That very day it was there in the newspaper, the great headlines: "Suicide of Bridegroom-to-Be. Six days before he was to have married Miss Ellen Kellaway, Philip, son of Josiah Carrington, took his own life. What is the story behind the tragedy?"

Everyone believed that there was a story and that I was the one who held the vital clue.

Why should a young man who had every blessing shoot himself a few days before his wedding? It could only be that life had become too much for him to endure, so he had taken this way out. That he was to have been married in six days' time was the theme of the story.

I lay in my room, the Venetian blinds drawn to keep out the sun. The sun that could not warm the coldness that invaded me. I could not eat; I could not sleep. I could only lie on my bed in shocked stillness and ask myself: Why? Why?

Esmeralda told me what had happened. I commanded her to and in the same way that she had obeyed my orders when she was young she did now: "He was shot with one of the guns from Trentham Towers. He must have brought it from there."

"It's not possible. That would mean that he had planned it."

She was silent and my mind went back to that occasion when I had been with him in the gun room at Trentham Towers. I remembered the satin-lined case and the silver-gray pistol which he had taken out and touched so lovingly. There had been an empty compartment in the case and he had talked, jokingly I had thought, about keeping a pistol under his pillow. What could he have meant? Was it really true that he had done this? Had he then been serious when he had talked of burglars? Even so, what could have possessed him to turn the pistol on himself? Was it possible that I, who had thought I knew him so well, had been mistaken? Was there a darker side to his nature which he had never allowed me to see? I could not believe it.

"He couldn't have killed himself!" I cried out. "He was talking to me only the day before. Imagine, Esmeralda, the despair a man must be in to take his own life! Can you imagine Philip ever in despair? I never saw him so. Did you? He wasn't the sort of man who could hide his feelings. He never attempted to. I knew Philip. Nobody knew him better, and I say it's impossible. I shall never believe it."

But it had happened.

Esmeralda said: "The newspaper people have been here. They want to see you. There'll be an inquest. You'll have to go."

I roused myself. "I want to go," I said. "I want to discover the reason for this."

It was like a dream. I saw their faces... Mr. Josiah Carrington looking unlike himself; his face pale and distorted with grief, Lady Emily more bewildered than ever with a tragic look in her eyes. And Rollo grown cold and stern; his eyes like ice; they looked searchingly at me, making me shiver.

There could only be one verdict. Suicide. I wanted to cry out my protest.

Not Philip! He never could. Anyone who knew him must be aware of that. But that was the court's verdict.

There followed the funeral. I begged not to go. I just lay on my bed, weak from my emotions, lack of food and sleep.

"Mother thinks you should go to the country," Esmeralda said. "I'm to go with you. The press keep calling. She says it's better to go away for a while."

So we went and what a comfort Esmeralda was! I think in her mind was the belief that I had saved her from this ordeal and that she might so easily have been in my position if Philip had asked her to marry him as everyone had expected him to.

I felt a little better in the country, but I still could not sleep well. When I dozed I dreamed of Philip, the pistol in his hand and the blood on his bed. I dreamed too that other dream. I was in the room with the red carpet and the painting and Philip was with me.

He said to me: "You always felt the doom, didn't you, Ellen? Well, now here it is. I'm dead... I killed myself. I had to because I could not marry you."

I woke up calling out to him.

They were nightmare days.

I was in the country for two weeks and then Rollo came to Trentham Towers.

He walked over to see me. Esmeralda came to tell me he was there, and I went down into the small sitting room, and as he stood before me and bowed stiffly I thought how he had changed, as I must have done.

He insisted that we be alone that we might talk. He came straight to the point: "I want you to tell me why Philip killed himself," he said.

"If only I knew."

"Don't you know?" he asked harshly.

"How could I? If I had known what he was going to do I would have found some way of stopping him."

"There must have been something... ."

"I knew of nothing."

"Who else would?"

"It must have been something he kept to himself."

"He was not that sort of person." Rollo kept his eyes on me. "There was simply no obvious reason. He had no anxieties. It must have been something in his private life, for he was never deeply involved in our business affairs. Are you absolutely sure that there were no differences between you? Because there appears to be no other reason why he could have taken his life."

His eyes were cold and I believed he hated me because he actually suspected that I was somehow involved in Philip's death. It was more than I could bear.

I cried out: "It was a greater shock to me than to you. I was to be his wife."

He came close to me, his lips tight, and I noticed that he clenched his hands tightly together as though he were suppressing an impulse to do me an injury, so much did he blame me for his brother's death.

"I think you know something," he said.

"I have told you I have no idea how he could possibly have done such a thing."

"It must have been something to do with you. Perhaps you had deceived him and he had discovered this. You betrayed him and this shattered him. He was very inexperienced of the world and he killed himself rather than face the consequences of what you had done."

"You can't believe such nonsense. It's lies... wicked cruel lies."

"Who was the man I found with you in the house in Finlay Square?"