Chapter Twenty Seven.

Chapter Twenty Seven.The Summons.Cassandra returned home to fight her battle hour after hour with weary reiteration. In her mind was one predominating determination,—to be loyal to the son she had borne, and to bring no shame upon his name, but against the cold rock of that decision dashed the waves of a passionate desire. She was starving for love, and the gates of her woman’s kingdom stood open entreating her entrance. All that she had longed for, all that she had dreamt, was waiting for her; the lifting of a hand would bring it to pass. Duty faced passion in grim stolidity; passion lashed itself in fury, only to fall abashed before that impenetrable front. Cassandra had sufficient strength to hold fast to her determination; sufficient weakness to regret its power, and to long, wildly, weakly, overwhelmingly for courage to throw everything to the winds, and snatch her hour of joy.Grizel had prophesied that the joy would be but of an hour, that continued happiness was impossible under wrong conditions, and in her heart Cassandra acknowledged the truth. Both Dane and herself had lived their lives in an atmosphere of convention and morality; they were not the stuff to defy the world, and live undaunted by snubs and chills. The first wild rapture would be succeeded by mutual loneliness, mutual remorse. On each would press a burden of responsibility for that other dear wrecked life. Cassandra acknowledged the inevitability of regret, in imagination lived through it, saw the cloud on Dane’s face, felt the cramp at her own heart, but even so... even so... they would have had their hour! If the ship were sunk, there would be treasure saved from the wreck. Better to sail forth for the high seas, facing dauntlessly tempest and fire, than to spend the whole of life in a backwater, anchored to a stone!So the battle waged, hour after hour in weary repetition. Cassandra fought vainly to sink the woman in the mother, and resurrect the old thrills of devotion. She thought of the baby who had lain in her arms, the little cooing, kicking cherub who had been the light of her eyes; she thought of the first toddling steps, of the first coherent word, of the first, the very first time that the little arms stretched out, of the little dimpled baby splashing in a bath. One by one she recalled the landmarks sweet to a mother’s heart, but before them all, veiling them like a cloud, stood the image of a stolid, freckled-face boy in an Eton suit, a boy who signed his letters “Raynor,” considered affection bad form, and preferred to spend the “hols” visiting other fellows’ homes. It was not for the adorable baby of old, but for the Eton-suited boy of to-day that she was to sacrifice her love!Would he care? Would he really care? Guiltily she allowed her mind to wander down the forbidden path. He would hear nothing. Bernard would keep everything from him until—the divorce. The case would be undefended, no savoury morsels would appear in the newspaper to whet the appetites of the unclean, the vast majority of readers would not notice its presence. Eventually, of course, something would have to be said. Cassandra winced as she imagined Bernard’s bluff words to his son: “Look here, boy, never speak of your mother again. She’s not coming back. Some day you’ll understand; until then do as you’re told, and keep your mouth shut. She’s dead. D’you understand that? Dead and buried so far as concerns us. Never speak of her again.”Bernard would not abuse a mother to her son, his sense of fair play was too strong; he would simply shut her out from his life, and leave the boy to form his own judgment later on. But with the sharpness of dawning adolescence Bernard junior would sense something wrong, something shameful, flush unhappily beneath the servants’ gaze, and return to school miserably dreading that the fellows had heard!No! Cassandra could not do it. She could not shame her child. She could not step down from the pedestal on which the most prosaic of sons instinctively places a mother. Every fresh struggle ended in the same most piteous, most womanly cry: “I can’t. I can’t. But oh, Dane, Dane, Iwant to!”During these three days Cassandra stayed entirely within the grounds and denied herself to visitors, but she had a constant terror that Teresa would call and force an interview. The girl must suspect some such meeting as had taken place in the summer-house; must realise that her own fate hung in the balance. What more natural than that she should want to plead her own cause? Cassandra stiffened in anticipation. Nothing, she knew, would induce such a reckless disregard of duty as to hear it advocated from Teresa’s lips. For Heaven’s sake, for herownsake, let the girl keep away!But the days slipped past, and Teresa did not appear, and a new terror dawned in Cassandra’s heart. Suppose instead of coming to herself, the girl went to Bernard and warned him of the threatened danger to his house! Every time that her husband entered the room afresh, Cassandra glanced at his face with an eager scrutiny, and every time Bernard smiled with unruffled cheerfulness and said, “Feeling better, old girl? Had your tonic?”Grizel had laid down strict injunctions as to the treatment of her patient on her return to the Court, and had perjured herself by giving the Squire a highly pessimistic opinion of his wife’s health, the result of which had been a certain amount of bluff kindliness and unfailing enquiries as to the consumption of tonics. Cassandra detested the idea of Bernard’s hearing the truth from Teresa’s lips, but there were occasions when she burned to tell him herself, occasions when it would have been the greatest relief in the world to say, “I am not ill. I am not suffering from shock. I am in love. I want to elope with your friend Dane Peignton. I am breaking my heart because it’s my duty to stay.”Imagination pictured his face as he stood and listened. The steely eyes, the glint of teeth, the ruddy colour surging up over the thick throat, the large clean-shaven face, up to the roots of the short sandy hair. “You can look me in the face,” he would say, “anddareto say such a thing? Have you no shame?”“Why should I have shame?” she could hear herself answer. “I have done no wrong. I am breaking my heart to do what is right. I am not ashamed, but I am dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy!” But Bernard would have no compassion. He would make no distinctions. She would henceforth be contemptible in his eyes. To the end of their life together he would regard her with suspicion; enquiring into her every action, reading guilt into the simplest friendship. The horror of that suspicion sealed Cassandra’s lips.The days passed by, Wednesday arrived, and Teresa had not moved. Cassandra vouchsafed a grudging admiration. There was—as Grizel had said—something fine about the girl’s restraint. What was she thinking, what was she doing all these days, when of a certainty Dane must be standing aloof, waiting for the message which never came? How could she bear it, caged in that tiny house, with the terrible mother probing for explanations? Cassandra recalled how Mary had declared that it was impossible even to cry without attracting curious rappings at the door. She heaved a sigh of thankfulness for the blessing of space.Wednesday morning passed by, lunch hour came bringing with it Bernard, and the inevitable enquiryretonics, two o’clock arrived, three o’clock. In another half-hour she would leave the house, take her way to the summer-house, meet Dane once more, look deep into his eyes, feel the clasp of his arms. All life seemed concentrated into those next few hours, the expectation had been in her heart since the moment when she had parted from him four days before; the near prospect of meeting had mitigated every pang. Now that that meeting was at hand every other feeling was merged in joy. The moment was hers, she seized it greedily, with no consciousness of guilt. She was going to do right, she was going to say goodbye,—surely even Teresa would not grudge her her short hour!Cassandra put on a shady hat, and stood before the long mirror regarding her own reflection as a woman will who is about to meet her lover. The white dress fell in soft lines accentuating her long slimness, the hat was white also, a simple affair of straw, with a twisted scarf ofcrêpe, the gold-flecked hair, the soft carmine of the cheeks, the blue, pathetic eyes gained an added beauty from the lack of colour.Cassandra knew that she was beautiful at that moment, she also knew that that beauty would plant a sharper thorn in Dane’s heart, but being a woman she rejoiced nevertheless. If she could have made herself more lovely, she would have done it unto ten times ten. She turned from the mirror, opened the door of her room, and crept quietly downstairs. It was her desire that no one should see her or know that she had left the house. Once the great hall was reached she would slip into the library, and thence through the open window to a side path giving access to a shrubbery, thereby avoiding observation from upstair windows or from the gardeners at work on the terrace beds. Then let what might happen, she would be undisturbed for the afternoon.She had reached the lowest step, the library was but a few yards away, when fate shot her bolt. The door of Bernard’s office opened, and he came towards her, telegram in hand. Many telegrams arrived at the Court. Cassandra was too much a woman of the world to share the fear with which many of her sisters regard the orange-coloured sheets, but she needed no words to tell her that this message was no mere business communication. At the mere sight her heart died within her. There was just one thing on earth which she lived for at that moment, and the telegram had come to block her way. She stood still and cold waiting Bernard’s explanation.“Look here, I say,—here’s bad news! The old Mater. Taken worse this morning. Another stroke. The second this time, so it may mean the end. Jevons has been looking up the trains.”Cassandra did not speak. The old Mater was a venerable and disagreeable old lady whose bronchitic tendencies had made it necessary to abandon the dower house and make her abode in a more southern county. The necessity had been to the daughter-in-law a matter of continual thanksgiving, but to the Squire a real regret. His intensely conventional nature recognised the duty of honouring a parent, and he had a genuine and rather touching affection for the cross old woman, who rarely opened her mouth except to grumble and lament. To Cassandra the mother-in-law had been an unmitigated trial, and she could not affect to feel regret at the prospect of an end to a weary invalidism. The knife-like pang which rent her heart had no connection with the house of Raynor.“You—you are going down at once?”“What do you think! Of course we’re going. I was just coming up to tell you to get ready.”The pang of presentiment had been well founded. Cassandra felt the hopelessness of a trapped animal, but desperation nerved her to a feeble protest.“Me? Bernard!oughtI to come? She’ll be unconscious. I couldn’tdoanything. I should only be another person in the house—giving more trouble.”The blue eyes had their most steely glance as he turned upon her.“More shame to you if you did! You can nurse her, can’t you? Take your turn with the maid? She has a prejudice against hired nurses. Good heavens, have you no feeling? My mother ill—dying—and you talk of staying at home! What’s the matter if she is unconscious? Your duty is to go and look after her, and I’ll see that you do it.” He pulled out his watch and looked at it hastily. “You have twenty-five minutes before the car comes round. Get Rogers to put a few things in a bag—just what you want for to-night. She can bring along the boxes to-morrow. Goodness knows how long we may have to stay...”He wheeled round and went back to his room, and Cassandra dragged wearily upstairs. Twenty-five minutes—in twenty-five minutes’ time Dane would be awaiting her in the summer-house, and she herself would be leaving the house, leaving the neighbourhood, travelling down to the wilds of Devon, there to remain for goodness knew how long, out of sight, out of touch,—a prisoner, when of all times in her life she most longed to be free.Wild impulses flocked into her mind, an impulse to turn back, make her escape into the shrubbery, and fly to keep her tryst. If Dane were waiting, would it be possible to reach him, to explain, feel for one moment the grip of his arms, and get back in time to change her dress, and be ready for the car? No, it was impossible. Moreover, what if Dane had not yet arrived? When she had gone so far, would she have courage to drag herself from the spot, where at any moment she might behold him approaching? She knew she had not, and for one wild moment wondered if she could dare still further; deliberately disappear, deliberatelystayaway until Bernard was forced to depart alone, but even while one by one the questions raced through her brain she continued to drag wearily up the great staircase. Here was an illustration of the greater struggle on a lesser plane. Her heart was vagrant, panting to escape, but the chains of duty held. Bernard was her husband; he was in trouble; he demanded her help; at whatever cost to herself that help must be given.Cassandra gave instructions to her maid, and retired to her boudoir to send a telephone message to the one person in Chumley who would come to her aid. Grizel was at home, and her voice came over the wire clear and distinct.“Yes, it’s me. I’m alone. What is it?”Cassandra’s words came haltingly. Her proud spirit had difficulty in framing that message.“This is Wednesday... Wednesday afternoon. You remember what was to happen on Wednesday afternoon?... Bernard has just had a wire to say that his mother has had a stroke. He is going to her at once—we are both going. He says I am to nurse her... We leave in—er—in a quarter of an hour... Grizel! I... I was just starting for the summer-house, when he met me with this news. There is no time for—anything... Willyouexplain?”Grizel’s voice came back in instant reassurement.“Cassandra, I will! Leave it to me... Cassandra, darling,howlong are you to be away?”“I don’t know. How should I? Goodness knows!” cried Cassandra bitterly.Like a faint, sweet echo came back the words in Grizel’s deepest tones:“Goodness knows!”

Cassandra returned home to fight her battle hour after hour with weary reiteration. In her mind was one predominating determination,—to be loyal to the son she had borne, and to bring no shame upon his name, but against the cold rock of that decision dashed the waves of a passionate desire. She was starving for love, and the gates of her woman’s kingdom stood open entreating her entrance. All that she had longed for, all that she had dreamt, was waiting for her; the lifting of a hand would bring it to pass. Duty faced passion in grim stolidity; passion lashed itself in fury, only to fall abashed before that impenetrable front. Cassandra had sufficient strength to hold fast to her determination; sufficient weakness to regret its power, and to long, wildly, weakly, overwhelmingly for courage to throw everything to the winds, and snatch her hour of joy.

Grizel had prophesied that the joy would be but of an hour, that continued happiness was impossible under wrong conditions, and in her heart Cassandra acknowledged the truth. Both Dane and herself had lived their lives in an atmosphere of convention and morality; they were not the stuff to defy the world, and live undaunted by snubs and chills. The first wild rapture would be succeeded by mutual loneliness, mutual remorse. On each would press a burden of responsibility for that other dear wrecked life. Cassandra acknowledged the inevitability of regret, in imagination lived through it, saw the cloud on Dane’s face, felt the cramp at her own heart, but even so... even so... they would have had their hour! If the ship were sunk, there would be treasure saved from the wreck. Better to sail forth for the high seas, facing dauntlessly tempest and fire, than to spend the whole of life in a backwater, anchored to a stone!

So the battle waged, hour after hour in weary repetition. Cassandra fought vainly to sink the woman in the mother, and resurrect the old thrills of devotion. She thought of the baby who had lain in her arms, the little cooing, kicking cherub who had been the light of her eyes; she thought of the first toddling steps, of the first coherent word, of the first, the very first time that the little arms stretched out, of the little dimpled baby splashing in a bath. One by one she recalled the landmarks sweet to a mother’s heart, but before them all, veiling them like a cloud, stood the image of a stolid, freckled-face boy in an Eton suit, a boy who signed his letters “Raynor,” considered affection bad form, and preferred to spend the “hols” visiting other fellows’ homes. It was not for the adorable baby of old, but for the Eton-suited boy of to-day that she was to sacrifice her love!

Would he care? Would he really care? Guiltily she allowed her mind to wander down the forbidden path. He would hear nothing. Bernard would keep everything from him until—the divorce. The case would be undefended, no savoury morsels would appear in the newspaper to whet the appetites of the unclean, the vast majority of readers would not notice its presence. Eventually, of course, something would have to be said. Cassandra winced as she imagined Bernard’s bluff words to his son: “Look here, boy, never speak of your mother again. She’s not coming back. Some day you’ll understand; until then do as you’re told, and keep your mouth shut. She’s dead. D’you understand that? Dead and buried so far as concerns us. Never speak of her again.”

Bernard would not abuse a mother to her son, his sense of fair play was too strong; he would simply shut her out from his life, and leave the boy to form his own judgment later on. But with the sharpness of dawning adolescence Bernard junior would sense something wrong, something shameful, flush unhappily beneath the servants’ gaze, and return to school miserably dreading that the fellows had heard!

No! Cassandra could not do it. She could not shame her child. She could not step down from the pedestal on which the most prosaic of sons instinctively places a mother. Every fresh struggle ended in the same most piteous, most womanly cry: “I can’t. I can’t. But oh, Dane, Dane, Iwant to!”

During these three days Cassandra stayed entirely within the grounds and denied herself to visitors, but she had a constant terror that Teresa would call and force an interview. The girl must suspect some such meeting as had taken place in the summer-house; must realise that her own fate hung in the balance. What more natural than that she should want to plead her own cause? Cassandra stiffened in anticipation. Nothing, she knew, would induce such a reckless disregard of duty as to hear it advocated from Teresa’s lips. For Heaven’s sake, for herownsake, let the girl keep away!

But the days slipped past, and Teresa did not appear, and a new terror dawned in Cassandra’s heart. Suppose instead of coming to herself, the girl went to Bernard and warned him of the threatened danger to his house! Every time that her husband entered the room afresh, Cassandra glanced at his face with an eager scrutiny, and every time Bernard smiled with unruffled cheerfulness and said, “Feeling better, old girl? Had your tonic?”

Grizel had laid down strict injunctions as to the treatment of her patient on her return to the Court, and had perjured herself by giving the Squire a highly pessimistic opinion of his wife’s health, the result of which had been a certain amount of bluff kindliness and unfailing enquiries as to the consumption of tonics. Cassandra detested the idea of Bernard’s hearing the truth from Teresa’s lips, but there were occasions when she burned to tell him herself, occasions when it would have been the greatest relief in the world to say, “I am not ill. I am not suffering from shock. I am in love. I want to elope with your friend Dane Peignton. I am breaking my heart because it’s my duty to stay.”

Imagination pictured his face as he stood and listened. The steely eyes, the glint of teeth, the ruddy colour surging up over the thick throat, the large clean-shaven face, up to the roots of the short sandy hair. “You can look me in the face,” he would say, “anddareto say such a thing? Have you no shame?”

“Why should I have shame?” she could hear herself answer. “I have done no wrong. I am breaking my heart to do what is right. I am not ashamed, but I am dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy!” But Bernard would have no compassion. He would make no distinctions. She would henceforth be contemptible in his eyes. To the end of their life together he would regard her with suspicion; enquiring into her every action, reading guilt into the simplest friendship. The horror of that suspicion sealed Cassandra’s lips.

The days passed by, Wednesday arrived, and Teresa had not moved. Cassandra vouchsafed a grudging admiration. There was—as Grizel had said—something fine about the girl’s restraint. What was she thinking, what was she doing all these days, when of a certainty Dane must be standing aloof, waiting for the message which never came? How could she bear it, caged in that tiny house, with the terrible mother probing for explanations? Cassandra recalled how Mary had declared that it was impossible even to cry without attracting curious rappings at the door. She heaved a sigh of thankfulness for the blessing of space.

Wednesday morning passed by, lunch hour came bringing with it Bernard, and the inevitable enquiryretonics, two o’clock arrived, three o’clock. In another half-hour she would leave the house, take her way to the summer-house, meet Dane once more, look deep into his eyes, feel the clasp of his arms. All life seemed concentrated into those next few hours, the expectation had been in her heart since the moment when she had parted from him four days before; the near prospect of meeting had mitigated every pang. Now that that meeting was at hand every other feeling was merged in joy. The moment was hers, she seized it greedily, with no consciousness of guilt. She was going to do right, she was going to say goodbye,—surely even Teresa would not grudge her her short hour!

Cassandra put on a shady hat, and stood before the long mirror regarding her own reflection as a woman will who is about to meet her lover. The white dress fell in soft lines accentuating her long slimness, the hat was white also, a simple affair of straw, with a twisted scarf ofcrêpe, the gold-flecked hair, the soft carmine of the cheeks, the blue, pathetic eyes gained an added beauty from the lack of colour.

Cassandra knew that she was beautiful at that moment, she also knew that that beauty would plant a sharper thorn in Dane’s heart, but being a woman she rejoiced nevertheless. If she could have made herself more lovely, she would have done it unto ten times ten. She turned from the mirror, opened the door of her room, and crept quietly downstairs. It was her desire that no one should see her or know that she had left the house. Once the great hall was reached she would slip into the library, and thence through the open window to a side path giving access to a shrubbery, thereby avoiding observation from upstair windows or from the gardeners at work on the terrace beds. Then let what might happen, she would be undisturbed for the afternoon.

She had reached the lowest step, the library was but a few yards away, when fate shot her bolt. The door of Bernard’s office opened, and he came towards her, telegram in hand. Many telegrams arrived at the Court. Cassandra was too much a woman of the world to share the fear with which many of her sisters regard the orange-coloured sheets, but she needed no words to tell her that this message was no mere business communication. At the mere sight her heart died within her. There was just one thing on earth which she lived for at that moment, and the telegram had come to block her way. She stood still and cold waiting Bernard’s explanation.

“Look here, I say,—here’s bad news! The old Mater. Taken worse this morning. Another stroke. The second this time, so it may mean the end. Jevons has been looking up the trains.”

Cassandra did not speak. The old Mater was a venerable and disagreeable old lady whose bronchitic tendencies had made it necessary to abandon the dower house and make her abode in a more southern county. The necessity had been to the daughter-in-law a matter of continual thanksgiving, but to the Squire a real regret. His intensely conventional nature recognised the duty of honouring a parent, and he had a genuine and rather touching affection for the cross old woman, who rarely opened her mouth except to grumble and lament. To Cassandra the mother-in-law had been an unmitigated trial, and she could not affect to feel regret at the prospect of an end to a weary invalidism. The knife-like pang which rent her heart had no connection with the house of Raynor.

“You—you are going down at once?”

“What do you think! Of course we’re going. I was just coming up to tell you to get ready.”

The pang of presentiment had been well founded. Cassandra felt the hopelessness of a trapped animal, but desperation nerved her to a feeble protest.

“Me? Bernard!oughtI to come? She’ll be unconscious. I couldn’tdoanything. I should only be another person in the house—giving more trouble.”

The blue eyes had their most steely glance as he turned upon her.

“More shame to you if you did! You can nurse her, can’t you? Take your turn with the maid? She has a prejudice against hired nurses. Good heavens, have you no feeling? My mother ill—dying—and you talk of staying at home! What’s the matter if she is unconscious? Your duty is to go and look after her, and I’ll see that you do it.” He pulled out his watch and looked at it hastily. “You have twenty-five minutes before the car comes round. Get Rogers to put a few things in a bag—just what you want for to-night. She can bring along the boxes to-morrow. Goodness knows how long we may have to stay...”

He wheeled round and went back to his room, and Cassandra dragged wearily upstairs. Twenty-five minutes—in twenty-five minutes’ time Dane would be awaiting her in the summer-house, and she herself would be leaving the house, leaving the neighbourhood, travelling down to the wilds of Devon, there to remain for goodness knew how long, out of sight, out of touch,—a prisoner, when of all times in her life she most longed to be free.

Wild impulses flocked into her mind, an impulse to turn back, make her escape into the shrubbery, and fly to keep her tryst. If Dane were waiting, would it be possible to reach him, to explain, feel for one moment the grip of his arms, and get back in time to change her dress, and be ready for the car? No, it was impossible. Moreover, what if Dane had not yet arrived? When she had gone so far, would she have courage to drag herself from the spot, where at any moment she might behold him approaching? She knew she had not, and for one wild moment wondered if she could dare still further; deliberately disappear, deliberatelystayaway until Bernard was forced to depart alone, but even while one by one the questions raced through her brain she continued to drag wearily up the great staircase. Here was an illustration of the greater struggle on a lesser plane. Her heart was vagrant, panting to escape, but the chains of duty held. Bernard was her husband; he was in trouble; he demanded her help; at whatever cost to herself that help must be given.

Cassandra gave instructions to her maid, and retired to her boudoir to send a telephone message to the one person in Chumley who would come to her aid. Grizel was at home, and her voice came over the wire clear and distinct.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m alone. What is it?”

Cassandra’s words came haltingly. Her proud spirit had difficulty in framing that message.

“This is Wednesday... Wednesday afternoon. You remember what was to happen on Wednesday afternoon?... Bernard has just had a wire to say that his mother has had a stroke. He is going to her at once—we are both going. He says I am to nurse her... We leave in—er—in a quarter of an hour... Grizel! I... I was just starting for the summer-house, when he met me with this news. There is no time for—anything... Willyouexplain?”

Grizel’s voice came back in instant reassurement.

“Cassandra, I will! Leave it to me... Cassandra, darling,howlong are you to be away?”

“I don’t know. How should I? Goodness knows!” cried Cassandra bitterly.

Like a faint, sweet echo came back the words in Grizel’s deepest tones:

“Goodness knows!”

Chapter Twenty Eight.Farewell!The old Mater was not unconscious. The mysterious physical lightning had smitten the left side of the body, left a drawn, disfigured face, and a helpless arm and leg, but the spirit within was untouched. By the time that her son arrived, the old Mater had realised what had happened to her, and was seething with bitterness and rebellion. It was a terrible sight to see the blaze of the living eye in the dead face; a piteous thing to listen to the mumbled words which proceeded from the twisted lips.The tears came into the Squire’s eyes as he stood by his mother’s bed, he knelt on the floor beside her, and stroked her brow with his big sunburnt hand; with extraordinary sharpness he divined the meaning of her muffled speech. Throughout that evening, and for hours at a time throughout the days which followed, he sat by her bedside, ministering to her wants with clumsy eagerness. Cassandra was for the time being too intensely absorbed with the tragedy of her own life to feel any active interest in what was passing before her eyes, but subconsciously the various pictures photographed themselves on her mind. Bernard smiling, indifferent to snubs, persuading his mother to eat, to swallow her medicine; Bernard, suppressing yawns, sitting up to the small hours to be “at hand”; Bernard holding the cold hand between his own warm palms, and by force of his strong electric current soothing the patient to sleep. He was nottryingto be patient; hewaspatient, out of pure loving kindness and compassion. Slowly, gradually, the knowledge penetrated into Cassandra’s brain, and she asked herself sadly wherein she had failed, that this quality of tenderness was so lacking towards herself! For some months after their marriage Bernard had been the most ardent of lovers, then passion waned, and with no appreciable second stage, neglect had taken its place. She had been bitterly surprised, bitterly wounded, but what had she done to recapture her husband’s love, and turn it into a more enduring form? Had she once realised, as Grizel Beverley had realised in the midst of her bridal joy, that love is a tender plant, which can only preserve its fragrance when tended with unremitting care? Cassandra looked back and saw herself retiring into a chilly reserve, meeting neglect with neglect, indifference with indifference, disdaining to invite a love which was not voluntarily bestowed. It had seemed, at the time, the only way of preserving her dignity, but as she watched her husband by his mother’s bedside, there came a sudden realisation that if she had thought less of pride, and more of love, the barrenness of their joint lives might have been averted. If she had used her woman’s wiles,—smiled, cajoled, even in those early days, wept a few,—just a few, pretty, becoming tears, to enforce her need, the barrier would never have grown so high: Cassandra had been accustomed to put all the blame on her husband’s shoulders, and to congratulate herself on being immaculately free from blame; never till this moment had she realised that to a man of the Squire’s temperament, her attitude of chill detachment, and smiling indifference, was of all things the most exasperating. If she had blazed in anger, even to the extent of facing an occasional battle royal, the corroding bitterness would have found a vent, and reconciliation opened the way to fresh tenderness.“It’s my fault as much as his!” Cassandra acknowledged, and the admission softened her heart.The old Mater did not die. The critical days dragged slowly past, and she grimly held her own. In all human probability she would live on for months, for years, until the lightning fell for the third time. To Cassandra such a recovery seemed a piteous thing, but the Squire’s rejoicings were whole-hearted, and the old Mater herself wore an air of triumph. Apparently life was dear to her still, and the prospect of lying in bed, with one half of her body already dead, held more attractions than the celestial choirs on which she pinned her faith. There was a grim irony in hearing the twisted lips murmur fragments of her favourite hymn—“Oh, Lamb of God, I come!” and Cassandra’s sense of humour could not resist the reflection that the old lady was exceedingly loath to go!Grizel wrote that she had given Dane the necessary explanation, and after four days’ incessant consideration, Cassandra wrote and despatched the following letter:“I was coming to you, as I promised; I had counted every moment of every day as it passed, longing for the time to arrive; in another minute I should have been on my way, and then,—what was it?—fate, chance, providence, God?—Somethingintervened, and it became impossible for me to meet you, then, or later. I don’t know how long we shall be here. My husband’s mother is recovering, but she cannot bear him out of her sight. He is an angel of goodness to her, and in some wonderful way seems to be able to lend her some of his own strength. We may be here for months; it will certainly be many weeks; so I can’t come, Dane, I can’t have the one joy I longed for... the one more hour together, before we said good-bye!“It may be for the best. I may look back in years to come, and be thankful, but I’m not thankful now. It seems hard, and cruel, and unjust, that I could not have that little hour, and it made it harder, being so near. Oh, Dane, that journey! Can you for a moment imagine how desperately, achingly miserable I was, steaming farther and farther away with every moment; thinking of you sitting waiting! I wonder what you thought.—I wonder what you feared? But you must have been sure of one thing, at least,—that my heart was with you!“Dane! I want you to burn this letter after you have read it. I must tell you all that is in my heart, but it is best for both of us that it should not be preserved. I was going to say, that you should forget it, but I know that will not be possible.“I am going to stay at my post, Dane, and try to make more of it than I’ve done till now. I told you that in making my decision I had no consideration for Bernard, but that was a mistake. Imustconsider him, for he is the principal person in life. He does not love me, but since coming here, I have begun to see that that is partly my own fault. I was very young when we married, and I took it for granted that he would remain for ever an adoring lover. When he grew cool and careless—it was humiliatingly soon!—my miserable pride made me treat him as indifferently as he treated me, and so we have grown apart. I thought he was incapable of tenderness, but watching him with his mother, I wonder if it is simply that I have shown no need. Oh! I’ve made a failure of it all—with the boy too, it seems, though Ididlove him; I did pour out my love... What is wrong with me, that the people who should love medon’t, and when someone comes along who does, we must be parted?“Did you think I should come to you that night? Now that it is past and over, I can tell you that I very nearly did! An impulse came over me about nine o’clock, so overwhelmingly strong, that it was all I could do not to rush out, as I was, and make my way to you, bareheaded, across the park. The effort to resist left me cold and faint.—I wondered if you were thinking of me, willing me to come! And once again, though never quite so violently, the impulse returned, but each time I resisted, and the end finds me here, tied in a sick room, doing my duty, and bidding you goodbye.“It’s hopeless, Dane; it’s hopeless! There is too much between. You must banish me from your life, and make the most of what is left. Isn’t it strange how in one of our first real talks we discussed makeshifts, and I asked you if you could manage to be happy, if you were denied the best. You answered so certainly; seemed to think it so poor-spirited to waste life in regrets. My poor Dane, now you will have to turn your words into deeds!“By the time we return home, you will probably have left Chumley. I can feel that it would be better so. The agony of knowing that you were near, not seeing you, or seeing you only in public, would be more than I could bear, and—there is your engagement! I can’t write of that, or of her—but surely for a time at least, you would be better apart! And we must school ourselves, Dane—we must get accustomed.“Oh, beloved, just once, before it is good-bye, I thank you for loving me,—I thank you for all you have given, I thank you for all you have received. It was only for a little time, but youdidopen the gates of Eden! wedidwalk in Paradise; we did taste and know the perfection of content! It was all beautiful, all clean, all white, and because it can’t live on and keep its beauty, we’ll bury it, Dane, deep in our hearts, and live on as bravely as we may!“Cassandra.”Dane’s reply came by return of post:“Beloved! Mrs Beverley sent for me and gave me your message. I have been to see her every day since you left. I don’t know how I should have existed without her. Every day has seemed a year. I made sure you would write; I knew youmustwrite, but it was a long waiting.“Yes! I willed you to come to me that night. I nearly succeeded, it appears. God forgive me, I wish it had been quite! Every hour of those long days I hoped against hope for a summons from you, and then at last Wednesday came, and I made sure of meeting.—I nearly went mad, sitting in that summer-house, realising that you were not coming, imagining all kinds of wild, impossible things. It was balm to know that at least you hadwantedto come.“God bless you, my beautiful, for your sweet, words! My love for you has been the glory of my life. From the first moment that we met, you have been my Queen, and I your servant, waiting to obey. I will obey you now. Since it will be easier for you if I am at a distance, I will arrange to leave Chumley at once. Things fit in easily. I dropped Paley a hint that I was unsettled, and he sends me the kindest invitation to join him in Italy. I shall go there, I think, for the next few months, and your wonderful Grizel is already planning for the future. There are a number of wealthy relations, so to speak, at her feet, having come into their wealth through her disinterestedness in marrying Beverley, and amongst them such a thing as a small land agency should be easily obtained.“We’ll see! I can’t think about the future at present, or anything but just—thee! There is much in your letter that I can’t answer; daren’t trust myself to answer. How could a man grow cold? But it is not for me to make things more difficult. When I realise how little I have to offer and how much you stand to lose, my lips are sealed. There could be no happiness for me, if I ruined your life.“Mrs Beverley has done me good. I was a madman when I went to her, but she has calmed me into my right mind. She understands. I retract all I have ever said in disparagement of ‘Grizel.’ But I was jealous of her happiness, seeing You sad.“One word I must add... My engagement will formally continue. I have explained everything. She knows that at any time a word from you would bring me to your side; but she still wishes me to take no public step, until a year has passed. If I were to remain in Chumley the thing would be impossible, but at a distance,—as it makes things easier for her, I can hardly refuse. She is very generous to me, Cassandra; very sweet. I wish I could love her as she deserves. For her sake, and yours, I am torn with regret; for my own, even now in the first smart of the wound, I have none. When I philosophised so lightly, I spoke without experience. I had never known the best. Now I do know, and the knowledge is worth its price. Our own door is barred, Cassandra, but we have a key in our hands which opens many doors!“Dane.”

The old Mater was not unconscious. The mysterious physical lightning had smitten the left side of the body, left a drawn, disfigured face, and a helpless arm and leg, but the spirit within was untouched. By the time that her son arrived, the old Mater had realised what had happened to her, and was seething with bitterness and rebellion. It was a terrible sight to see the blaze of the living eye in the dead face; a piteous thing to listen to the mumbled words which proceeded from the twisted lips.

The tears came into the Squire’s eyes as he stood by his mother’s bed, he knelt on the floor beside her, and stroked her brow with his big sunburnt hand; with extraordinary sharpness he divined the meaning of her muffled speech. Throughout that evening, and for hours at a time throughout the days which followed, he sat by her bedside, ministering to her wants with clumsy eagerness. Cassandra was for the time being too intensely absorbed with the tragedy of her own life to feel any active interest in what was passing before her eyes, but subconsciously the various pictures photographed themselves on her mind. Bernard smiling, indifferent to snubs, persuading his mother to eat, to swallow her medicine; Bernard, suppressing yawns, sitting up to the small hours to be “at hand”; Bernard holding the cold hand between his own warm palms, and by force of his strong electric current soothing the patient to sleep. He was nottryingto be patient; hewaspatient, out of pure loving kindness and compassion. Slowly, gradually, the knowledge penetrated into Cassandra’s brain, and she asked herself sadly wherein she had failed, that this quality of tenderness was so lacking towards herself! For some months after their marriage Bernard had been the most ardent of lovers, then passion waned, and with no appreciable second stage, neglect had taken its place. She had been bitterly surprised, bitterly wounded, but what had she done to recapture her husband’s love, and turn it into a more enduring form? Had she once realised, as Grizel Beverley had realised in the midst of her bridal joy, that love is a tender plant, which can only preserve its fragrance when tended with unremitting care? Cassandra looked back and saw herself retiring into a chilly reserve, meeting neglect with neglect, indifference with indifference, disdaining to invite a love which was not voluntarily bestowed. It had seemed, at the time, the only way of preserving her dignity, but as she watched her husband by his mother’s bedside, there came a sudden realisation that if she had thought less of pride, and more of love, the barrenness of their joint lives might have been averted. If she had used her woman’s wiles,—smiled, cajoled, even in those early days, wept a few,—just a few, pretty, becoming tears, to enforce her need, the barrier would never have grown so high: Cassandra had been accustomed to put all the blame on her husband’s shoulders, and to congratulate herself on being immaculately free from blame; never till this moment had she realised that to a man of the Squire’s temperament, her attitude of chill detachment, and smiling indifference, was of all things the most exasperating. If she had blazed in anger, even to the extent of facing an occasional battle royal, the corroding bitterness would have found a vent, and reconciliation opened the way to fresh tenderness.

“It’s my fault as much as his!” Cassandra acknowledged, and the admission softened her heart.

The old Mater did not die. The critical days dragged slowly past, and she grimly held her own. In all human probability she would live on for months, for years, until the lightning fell for the third time. To Cassandra such a recovery seemed a piteous thing, but the Squire’s rejoicings were whole-hearted, and the old Mater herself wore an air of triumph. Apparently life was dear to her still, and the prospect of lying in bed, with one half of her body already dead, held more attractions than the celestial choirs on which she pinned her faith. There was a grim irony in hearing the twisted lips murmur fragments of her favourite hymn—“Oh, Lamb of God, I come!” and Cassandra’s sense of humour could not resist the reflection that the old lady was exceedingly loath to go!

Grizel wrote that she had given Dane the necessary explanation, and after four days’ incessant consideration, Cassandra wrote and despatched the following letter:

“I was coming to you, as I promised; I had counted every moment of every day as it passed, longing for the time to arrive; in another minute I should have been on my way, and then,—what was it?—fate, chance, providence, God?—Somethingintervened, and it became impossible for me to meet you, then, or later. I don’t know how long we shall be here. My husband’s mother is recovering, but she cannot bear him out of her sight. He is an angel of goodness to her, and in some wonderful way seems to be able to lend her some of his own strength. We may be here for months; it will certainly be many weeks; so I can’t come, Dane, I can’t have the one joy I longed for... the one more hour together, before we said good-bye!

“It may be for the best. I may look back in years to come, and be thankful, but I’m not thankful now. It seems hard, and cruel, and unjust, that I could not have that little hour, and it made it harder, being so near. Oh, Dane, that journey! Can you for a moment imagine how desperately, achingly miserable I was, steaming farther and farther away with every moment; thinking of you sitting waiting! I wonder what you thought.—I wonder what you feared? But you must have been sure of one thing, at least,—that my heart was with you!

“Dane! I want you to burn this letter after you have read it. I must tell you all that is in my heart, but it is best for both of us that it should not be preserved. I was going to say, that you should forget it, but I know that will not be possible.

“I am going to stay at my post, Dane, and try to make more of it than I’ve done till now. I told you that in making my decision I had no consideration for Bernard, but that was a mistake. Imustconsider him, for he is the principal person in life. He does not love me, but since coming here, I have begun to see that that is partly my own fault. I was very young when we married, and I took it for granted that he would remain for ever an adoring lover. When he grew cool and careless—it was humiliatingly soon!—my miserable pride made me treat him as indifferently as he treated me, and so we have grown apart. I thought he was incapable of tenderness, but watching him with his mother, I wonder if it is simply that I have shown no need. Oh! I’ve made a failure of it all—with the boy too, it seems, though Ididlove him; I did pour out my love... What is wrong with me, that the people who should love medon’t, and when someone comes along who does, we must be parted?

“Did you think I should come to you that night? Now that it is past and over, I can tell you that I very nearly did! An impulse came over me about nine o’clock, so overwhelmingly strong, that it was all I could do not to rush out, as I was, and make my way to you, bareheaded, across the park. The effort to resist left me cold and faint.—I wondered if you were thinking of me, willing me to come! And once again, though never quite so violently, the impulse returned, but each time I resisted, and the end finds me here, tied in a sick room, doing my duty, and bidding you goodbye.

“It’s hopeless, Dane; it’s hopeless! There is too much between. You must banish me from your life, and make the most of what is left. Isn’t it strange how in one of our first real talks we discussed makeshifts, and I asked you if you could manage to be happy, if you were denied the best. You answered so certainly; seemed to think it so poor-spirited to waste life in regrets. My poor Dane, now you will have to turn your words into deeds!

“By the time we return home, you will probably have left Chumley. I can feel that it would be better so. The agony of knowing that you were near, not seeing you, or seeing you only in public, would be more than I could bear, and—there is your engagement! I can’t write of that, or of her—but surely for a time at least, you would be better apart! And we must school ourselves, Dane—we must get accustomed.

“Oh, beloved, just once, before it is good-bye, I thank you for loving me,—I thank you for all you have given, I thank you for all you have received. It was only for a little time, but youdidopen the gates of Eden! wedidwalk in Paradise; we did taste and know the perfection of content! It was all beautiful, all clean, all white, and because it can’t live on and keep its beauty, we’ll bury it, Dane, deep in our hearts, and live on as bravely as we may!

“Cassandra.”

Dane’s reply came by return of post:

“Beloved! Mrs Beverley sent for me and gave me your message. I have been to see her every day since you left. I don’t know how I should have existed without her. Every day has seemed a year. I made sure you would write; I knew youmustwrite, but it was a long waiting.

“Yes! I willed you to come to me that night. I nearly succeeded, it appears. God forgive me, I wish it had been quite! Every hour of those long days I hoped against hope for a summons from you, and then at last Wednesday came, and I made sure of meeting.—I nearly went mad, sitting in that summer-house, realising that you were not coming, imagining all kinds of wild, impossible things. It was balm to know that at least you hadwantedto come.

“God bless you, my beautiful, for your sweet, words! My love for you has been the glory of my life. From the first moment that we met, you have been my Queen, and I your servant, waiting to obey. I will obey you now. Since it will be easier for you if I am at a distance, I will arrange to leave Chumley at once. Things fit in easily. I dropped Paley a hint that I was unsettled, and he sends me the kindest invitation to join him in Italy. I shall go there, I think, for the next few months, and your wonderful Grizel is already planning for the future. There are a number of wealthy relations, so to speak, at her feet, having come into their wealth through her disinterestedness in marrying Beverley, and amongst them such a thing as a small land agency should be easily obtained.

“We’ll see! I can’t think about the future at present, or anything but just—thee! There is much in your letter that I can’t answer; daren’t trust myself to answer. How could a man grow cold? But it is not for me to make things more difficult. When I realise how little I have to offer and how much you stand to lose, my lips are sealed. There could be no happiness for me, if I ruined your life.

“Mrs Beverley has done me good. I was a madman when I went to her, but she has calmed me into my right mind. She understands. I retract all I have ever said in disparagement of ‘Grizel.’ But I was jealous of her happiness, seeing You sad.

“One word I must add... My engagement will formally continue. I have explained everything. She knows that at any time a word from you would bring me to your side; but she still wishes me to take no public step, until a year has passed. If I were to remain in Chumley the thing would be impossible, but at a distance,—as it makes things easier for her, I can hardly refuse. She is very generous to me, Cassandra; very sweet. I wish I could love her as she deserves. For her sake, and yours, I am torn with regret; for my own, even now in the first smart of the wound, I have none. When I philosophised so lightly, I spoke without experience. I had never known the best. Now I do know, and the knowledge is worth its price. Our own door is barred, Cassandra, but we have a key in our hands which opens many doors!

“Dane.”

Chapter Twenty Nine.Major Mallison, or The Dart of Death.It was a spring morning, a year from the day when Mary Mallison had left home, and the remaining three members of the family at the Cottage were seated round the breakfast table. The passage of a single year leaves little impression in the appearance of grown men and women, but this instance was the exception to the rule, for an observant eye would have noted in each countenance something that had been missing twelve months before.The Major had aged, in spirit as well as body. He ate little, but moved his lips continually in nerve-racked fashion, his faded eyes wandered here and there with a pitiful unrest. Mrs Mallison had noted the symptoms and ordered cod-liver oil, and the Major swallowed the doses with resignation, feeling the cure less obnoxious than continuous argument. A large bottle of the oil stood in readiness on a table near the door.Mrs Mallison was stout and bustling as ever, but had lost her erstwhile complacency. In truth, though the good lady kept up a valiant presence in public, she was little pleased with the way things were going with her two daughters. A year ago both had been on the wave of prosperity, but the wave had floated them into a backwater, rather than to the haven where she would have them be. Mary was still wandering about the Continent, and mentioning no date for her return.After several months in Switzerland she had crossed the frontier into Italy, had visited Rome and Florence and Venice, and was now domiciled in Paris. She wrote regularly once a fortnight, but her letters were extraordinarily unenlightening. Travellers’ letters are as a rule boring in their minutiae, but Mary never attempted a word of description. She simply gave a list of the things she had seen, with an occasional addition of “it was very beautiful,” which fact, as Mrs Mallison tartly remarked, her readers knew without being told. She sent home no presents as mementoes to the stay-at-homes. As a rich, independent daughter Mary could not be considered a success.Teresa’s marriage hung fire! Mrs Mallison was a talkative woman, and it was to her credit that even to her husband she had not allowed her growing distrust of Dane Peignton to find vent in words. But day after day she asked herself the same question. Since the man cared enough for Teresa to ask her to be his wife, why did he not show a natural desire to be married? It was no question of means, for the new agency was sufficiently good, and included the use of a delightful house. It could be no question of health, since he had not been laid up a day the whole winter, and if, as was represented, his responsibility was such that he could not spare even a week at Christmas to visit Chumley, all the more reason that he should have a wife to look after his home! Teresa herself appeared to accept the delay as a matter of course, but her mother’s eyes were sharp enough to see through the pretence. The girl was unhappy; the girl was fretting; her persistent cheerfulness was a cloak to cover a wound; when she thought herself unobserved her face fell into weary lines. Yes! Teresa was unhappy, but with a mother’s jealous pride in a daughter’s attractiveness, Mrs Mallison told herself that, thank goodness! it hadn’t spoiled the girl’s good looks. She looked thinner perhaps; a trifle older, but there was something which added to her charm. She did not acknowledge in so many words that a hard face had softened, but told herself reassuringly that Dane would notice the improvement,—when he returned!Anxiety about her daughters had made Mrs Mallison more than usually unobservant of her husband during the last few months. She cherished one or two axioms concerning him which lived on unchanged from year to year. One was that “Papa was always ailing,” another that “Papa was so tiresome,” a third that in dealing with Papa, it was wisdom to “take no notice.” The cod-liver oil was the only concession she had made to the increasing weakness which she could not ignore.Breakfast was finished, and half a dozen letters were distributed round the table. Teresa turned over her share with an eager hand, and paled into indifference. It was with an obvious effort that she tore open an envelope, and made a pretence of reading. This morning at least she had made sure of a letter from Dane. It was eight days since she had heard from him last, and up till now he had written regularly once a week. They were not lover-like letters, those chronicles of daily doings, and allusions to the leading events of the day, but such as they were, they made the sum of Teresa’s life. She read each letter many times, yearning to find in it some trace of returning love, and once or twice of late she had believed the search successful. On one occasion her own weekly letter had been delayed, and Dane wrote that he had been uneasy all day fearing that she was ill. Again, writing of the loneliness of a life among strangers, he had afterwards inserted a closely written phrase: “Less lonely after your sweet words!” Teresa read that sentence with a thrill of intensest relief. Throughout the months of separation, she had persistently written to Dane in the same outspoken loving manner as she had done before the fateful visit to Gled Bay. He knew that she loved him, she was trusting to that love as the magnet which should draw him back to her side, and would not allow pride to stand in its way. Nevertheless, receiving those formally written answers, it was inevitable that she should experience moments of smarting doubt. Was she humbling herself to reap only impatience and contempt? And then, after five long months, had come that blessed reassurement.“Less lonely, after your sweet words!”Teresa had gone proudly after the receipt of that message, but she was hungry for more. The waiting seemed longer than ever, now that hope revived.This morning at breakfast Teresa’s thoughts were so busily occupied with herfiancéthat she barely realised the meaning of the words on the sheet before her. She was automatically turning to read them once more when her attention was attracted by a movement at the end of the table where her father had his place.A moment before the Major had opened a long business-like letter which he still clasped in both hands, but he had fallen back in his chair, and his face was blanched and terrible to behold. As Teresa stared in amaze it seemed to her that with every second his body was changing, growing smaller, and more helpless. “Father!” she cried loudly. “Father!” but he had no eyes for her, he was staring across the table into his wife’s face.“Margaret!” he gasped. “Margaret. It is ruin! I am a murderer, Margaret, a thief—I’ve played with the money that belonged to you, and the children, and it’s gone. We are ruined, Margaret!—it is all gone. What have I done! What have I done!”Mrs Mallison rose from her seat and hurried round the table. She opened her arms as she went; they were wide open when she reached her husband’s side, and he shrank into them, his head sliding downward on her shoulder with a strange unnatural looseness. “As if he had no neck,” Teresa thought to herself as she looked on, “as if he had no neck!”“There, my dear, there!” cried the wife tenderly, “don’t get upset! Whatever you’ve done, you meant it for the best. We know you well enough to be sure of that. There, my dear, there! You’ve been good to us for thirty-five years—we’re not going to blame you if you’ve made a mistake now... Teresa! speak to your father... comfort him... Henry, look up!... My God... Henry,speak!”Her voice rose to a wail, for even as she spoke, even as she cradled him in her arms, the bolt fell,—so suddenly, so swiftly, that one second it was not, and the next it was there. One side of the face crumpled and fell, the eye closed, the mouth stretched in a ghastly grin. His wife seized his right arm, and shook it violently, but it fell to his side, heavy as lead. Within the loose tweed coat the shoulder seemed to disappear.“Mother, Mother!” cried Teresa wildly, “you were so kind to him. You were so kind... You didn’t blame him one bit.”They got him to bed and sent for the doctor, but he never regained consciousness. Before the afternoon was over he had breathed his last.“And now, I suppose,” Mrs Mallison said dully, “Mary will come home.”

It was a spring morning, a year from the day when Mary Mallison had left home, and the remaining three members of the family at the Cottage were seated round the breakfast table. The passage of a single year leaves little impression in the appearance of grown men and women, but this instance was the exception to the rule, for an observant eye would have noted in each countenance something that had been missing twelve months before.

The Major had aged, in spirit as well as body. He ate little, but moved his lips continually in nerve-racked fashion, his faded eyes wandered here and there with a pitiful unrest. Mrs Mallison had noted the symptoms and ordered cod-liver oil, and the Major swallowed the doses with resignation, feeling the cure less obnoxious than continuous argument. A large bottle of the oil stood in readiness on a table near the door.

Mrs Mallison was stout and bustling as ever, but had lost her erstwhile complacency. In truth, though the good lady kept up a valiant presence in public, she was little pleased with the way things were going with her two daughters. A year ago both had been on the wave of prosperity, but the wave had floated them into a backwater, rather than to the haven where she would have them be. Mary was still wandering about the Continent, and mentioning no date for her return.

After several months in Switzerland she had crossed the frontier into Italy, had visited Rome and Florence and Venice, and was now domiciled in Paris. She wrote regularly once a fortnight, but her letters were extraordinarily unenlightening. Travellers’ letters are as a rule boring in their minutiae, but Mary never attempted a word of description. She simply gave a list of the things she had seen, with an occasional addition of “it was very beautiful,” which fact, as Mrs Mallison tartly remarked, her readers knew without being told. She sent home no presents as mementoes to the stay-at-homes. As a rich, independent daughter Mary could not be considered a success.

Teresa’s marriage hung fire! Mrs Mallison was a talkative woman, and it was to her credit that even to her husband she had not allowed her growing distrust of Dane Peignton to find vent in words. But day after day she asked herself the same question. Since the man cared enough for Teresa to ask her to be his wife, why did he not show a natural desire to be married? It was no question of means, for the new agency was sufficiently good, and included the use of a delightful house. It could be no question of health, since he had not been laid up a day the whole winter, and if, as was represented, his responsibility was such that he could not spare even a week at Christmas to visit Chumley, all the more reason that he should have a wife to look after his home! Teresa herself appeared to accept the delay as a matter of course, but her mother’s eyes were sharp enough to see through the pretence. The girl was unhappy; the girl was fretting; her persistent cheerfulness was a cloak to cover a wound; when she thought herself unobserved her face fell into weary lines. Yes! Teresa was unhappy, but with a mother’s jealous pride in a daughter’s attractiveness, Mrs Mallison told herself that, thank goodness! it hadn’t spoiled the girl’s good looks. She looked thinner perhaps; a trifle older, but there was something which added to her charm. She did not acknowledge in so many words that a hard face had softened, but told herself reassuringly that Dane would notice the improvement,—when he returned!

Anxiety about her daughters had made Mrs Mallison more than usually unobservant of her husband during the last few months. She cherished one or two axioms concerning him which lived on unchanged from year to year. One was that “Papa was always ailing,” another that “Papa was so tiresome,” a third that in dealing with Papa, it was wisdom to “take no notice.” The cod-liver oil was the only concession she had made to the increasing weakness which she could not ignore.

Breakfast was finished, and half a dozen letters were distributed round the table. Teresa turned over her share with an eager hand, and paled into indifference. It was with an obvious effort that she tore open an envelope, and made a pretence of reading. This morning at least she had made sure of a letter from Dane. It was eight days since she had heard from him last, and up till now he had written regularly once a week. They were not lover-like letters, those chronicles of daily doings, and allusions to the leading events of the day, but such as they were, they made the sum of Teresa’s life. She read each letter many times, yearning to find in it some trace of returning love, and once or twice of late she had believed the search successful. On one occasion her own weekly letter had been delayed, and Dane wrote that he had been uneasy all day fearing that she was ill. Again, writing of the loneliness of a life among strangers, he had afterwards inserted a closely written phrase: “Less lonely after your sweet words!” Teresa read that sentence with a thrill of intensest relief. Throughout the months of separation, she had persistently written to Dane in the same outspoken loving manner as she had done before the fateful visit to Gled Bay. He knew that she loved him, she was trusting to that love as the magnet which should draw him back to her side, and would not allow pride to stand in its way. Nevertheless, receiving those formally written answers, it was inevitable that she should experience moments of smarting doubt. Was she humbling herself to reap only impatience and contempt? And then, after five long months, had come that blessed reassurement.

“Less lonely, after your sweet words!”

Teresa had gone proudly after the receipt of that message, but she was hungry for more. The waiting seemed longer than ever, now that hope revived.

This morning at breakfast Teresa’s thoughts were so busily occupied with herfiancéthat she barely realised the meaning of the words on the sheet before her. She was automatically turning to read them once more when her attention was attracted by a movement at the end of the table where her father had his place.

A moment before the Major had opened a long business-like letter which he still clasped in both hands, but he had fallen back in his chair, and his face was blanched and terrible to behold. As Teresa stared in amaze it seemed to her that with every second his body was changing, growing smaller, and more helpless. “Father!” she cried loudly. “Father!” but he had no eyes for her, he was staring across the table into his wife’s face.

“Margaret!” he gasped. “Margaret. It is ruin! I am a murderer, Margaret, a thief—I’ve played with the money that belonged to you, and the children, and it’s gone. We are ruined, Margaret!—it is all gone. What have I done! What have I done!”

Mrs Mallison rose from her seat and hurried round the table. She opened her arms as she went; they were wide open when she reached her husband’s side, and he shrank into them, his head sliding downward on her shoulder with a strange unnatural looseness. “As if he had no neck,” Teresa thought to herself as she looked on, “as if he had no neck!”

“There, my dear, there!” cried the wife tenderly, “don’t get upset! Whatever you’ve done, you meant it for the best. We know you well enough to be sure of that. There, my dear, there! You’ve been good to us for thirty-five years—we’re not going to blame you if you’ve made a mistake now... Teresa! speak to your father... comfort him... Henry, look up!... My God... Henry,speak!”

Her voice rose to a wail, for even as she spoke, even as she cradled him in her arms, the bolt fell,—so suddenly, so swiftly, that one second it was not, and the next it was there. One side of the face crumpled and fell, the eye closed, the mouth stretched in a ghastly grin. His wife seized his right arm, and shook it violently, but it fell to his side, heavy as lead. Within the loose tweed coat the shoulder seemed to disappear.

“Mother, Mother!” cried Teresa wildly, “you were so kind to him. You were so kind... You didn’t blame him one bit.”

They got him to bed and sent for the doctor, but he never regained consciousness. Before the afternoon was over he had breathed his last.

“And now, I suppose,” Mrs Mallison said dully, “Mary will come home.”

Chapter Thirty.A Meeting.Mary came speeding home by the first train after receipt of the telegraphic message, and arrived at the Cottage on the afternoon of the following day.A strange maid with a scared expression opened the door, and stared aghast as the new arrival pushed past her into the dining-room.The room was empty, and Mary stood upon the threshold looking round the familiar scene, which seemed so strangely altered by her year’s absence. The blinds were drawn, but even in the half-lights its proportions appeared shrunken, its furnishings shabby and poor. On the centre table stood a bowl of spring flowers, and two or three store catalogues, certain pages of which were marked with strips of writing paper. It seemed to Mary that those books had lain in identically the same positions on the morning on which she had left home, but then the marked pages had been those of Trousseaux, and now... Instinctively she opened the nearest volume, and shrank at the sight of monumental stones and crosses.The next moment the door opened, and Mrs Mallison entered the room. From an upper room she had heard the sounds of arrival, and for the moment the mother in her forgot everything but the fact that her child had returned. She held out her arms, and smiled with twitching lips, and Mary ran to her, and clung round her neck, with arms which seemed as if they would never let go. It was not the thought of her father that prompted that close embrace, it was the remembrance of a year of days spent in establishments, a year of aimless hours, a year of living among strangers, who cared nothing, noticed nothing! neither praised nor blamed. She had tasted liberty, and liberty had been sweet, but there was a great loneliness in her heart, and the clasp of mother arms were as balm to a wound.“Mother, Mother!” gasped Mary sobbing.“Mary, Mary!” quavered Mrs Mallison in reply, then at last they drew apart, regarding each other, with half-shy scrutiny. Mrs Mallison had rushed into the orthodox fitments with a haste which seemed to Teresa positively indecent, but it obviously soothed the widow to don her new cap, and stitch muslin cuffs and collar on a black silk dress. The result, taken in conjunction with a natural paleness of complexion, was undoubtedly softening, and made a further appeal to Mary’s heart.“You look pale, Mother. You are not ill? Oh, don’t be ill! We can’t spare you too!”“No, no, my dear. I am quite well. It was a great shock... but there was no nursing. It would have been worse if he’d been ill long. Sit down, my dear... You must have some milk... He came down to breakfast quite himself, but depressed. He had been depressed—” She saw Mary wince, and hurried into explanations.—“About business... Not you, my dear! He had got over that. So interested in your letters... Poor Papa! investments had been bad, and he was led into speculation. I never suspected.—He never confided in me. He knew that I should object. Papa could be very self-willed. It’s the way with these mild characters; all of a sudden they get the bit in their teeth, and there’s no stopping them.” She saw Mary wince again, and gave a peal to the bell. “You must have some milk! Or tea? Shall I hurry up tea? Tea, please, Mason, and don’t toast the muffin until you’ve brought in the tray. It was cold yesterday.—I was telling you, Mary, that he had had bad news... opened a letter after breakfast and there it was.—He read it through, and called out to me: ‘Margaret! Margaret!’...” The large, complacent face shivered suddenly into tears. “It was years—years—since he had called me that!”Mary took out her handkerchief, and wiped her own eyes. She was sorry for her mother, but the habit of thinking first of herself had grown too strong to be overcome.“Did he—did he speak of me?”“My dear, there was no time. It fell on him at that very moment—the stroke! He never spoke again. Those were his last words, ‘Margaret! Margaret!’—as he used to call to me when we were young, before you children were born.”There was evident solace in the remembrance, despite the tears which it evoked. Mary made a futile effort to conjure up a picture of youthful parents, loving each other, living in happy comradeship, and then reverted to her mother’s words of a few moments before.“Bad news! Speculations?... How much had he lost?”Mrs Mallison’s hands twitched, she clasped them tightly upon her knee.“He said—all! He said—ruin! It’s too early yet to be sure. Mr Maitland will make enquiries... I knew he had been selling out shares. I thought it was to reinvest in some better security. Papa was always close about business. If he speculated with the principal, and it has gone, it will be”—the hands jerked once more—“ruin!”“You will have five hundred a year, Mother,” Mary said quietly. “Teresa will marry, and you and I—we can be quite comfortable on five hundred a year.”Mrs Mallison’s eyes shot out a sideways glance, and beheld before her the Mary of old, seated with bowed back and bowed head in her old chair in the corner by the fire-place, and the year that had passed rolled from her memory like a worrying dream.“Of course,” she said briskly, “we must remove. There will be no necessity for so many rooms. If we put out the washing we can manage quite nicely with one maid, and you to assist in the mornings. After being idle for so long, you will enjoy making yourself of use.”“I think I shall,” said Mary. And she meant it.The maid brought in the tray at that moment, the subject was necessarily dropped. Probably a fortune of ten thousand pounds has never changed hands so swiftly and silently! From that hour to the day of her death, Mrs Mallison showed no sign of realising that she was living on her daughter’s money, not her own.The tea was poured out, the muffin was brought in, piping hot, under its silver cover, before Teresa made her appearance, and Mary, staring with blank eyes at a tall, thin girl, with pale cheeks and listless eyes, felt that this was not the Teresa of yore, but a stranger with whom she had no acquaintance.The sisters embraced, in silence, and with a listlessness as pronounced on one side as the other. There was no sign in Teresa’s manner of the remorseful affection which her letter had expressed. “She looks—like me!” said Mary to herself, and her eyes strayed to her sister’s left hand. The flash of diamonds showed that there was no avowed breach with Dane, though the mystery of the deferred marriage was still to be solved. Mary found no clue thereto in her mother’s continued monologue, though it was discursive enough to take in the whole countryside.“Teresa will be glad to have you back—so much to do... The bell has been ringing all day long. Lovely flowers! A wreath of lilies from the Court. And there will be the cards... We shall have to draw one out. Therewereno kind enquiries, so we can’t thank for them. It was so sudden; only a few minutes. He called out for me—I went to him, and held his poor head. Teresa said I was kind. Of course I was kind! He called me ‘Margaret,’ and then—in a minute... wasn’t it only a minute, Teresa? he was gone!... Poor Henry! Poor Papa! The shock was too much... ‘Mrs and the Misses Mallison return warm thanks for kind sympathy in their sad and sudden bereavement,’ something like that... They have a book at the stationer’s, with a selection drawn out. I’ve seen them at the end of the Christmas mottoes. We’ll telephone... The Vicar will be in again presently. Most attentive. He enquired for you, Mary. I said we had wired. He felt quite sure you would come. Mrs Evans sent a cross. Mrs Beverley’s were coloured. Pale pink roses, and a note with them. Very feeling, I must say. Being an orphan herself, she can understand. Only cards from the Court. We’ve seen nothing of them this last year. The Squire’s mother died, so they don’t entertain, and Lady Cassandra and Mrs Beverley are always together. Of course, as I tell Teresa, she’s so much younger. Teresa is looking thinner, Mary, isn’t she? Quite slim. You haven’t altered, my dear. I see no difference. I thought perhaps you’d have changed your hair.—No! Papa didn’t speak of you specially; he hadn’t time, but he spoke of his children,—something about ruining me and the children—he thought of us, not himself. I said to him, whatever he had done, he had done it for the best. Mr Hunter said the same thing this morning. He came in to offer to help. He is looking after the—er,... arranging for Thursday. Quite simple, I told him, butgood. I could not bear to skimp for Papa. The dressmaker’s coming at six...” Her face quivered and a stray tear rolled slowly down her cheek. “He looks so peaceful!... Afterwards—you must come up...”Mary shrank. She did not want to see the still, changed effigy of what had been; she wanted to remember her father as the quiet man who had kissed her on the doorstep, and said: “My dear, I hope you may have a pleasant time,” but she had not the courage to refuse. She looked appealingly at Teresa, and saw a sudden wave of feeling sweep over the pale face. From without came the sound of wheels, a heavy, lumbering sound which to Chumley ears announced the advent of one of the venerable station flies. The next moment the bell rang, and a man’s footstep was heard in the hall. “The Vicar!” murmured Mrs Mallison, but Mary knew it was not the Vicar; the look on her sister’s face announced too surely the name of the new-comer.There came a pause, while the new maid was escorting the visitor into the drawing-room, and came back to announce his name.“Captain Peignton.”Teresa took the words out of her mother’s mouth.“Ask him to come here.”She rose from her seat, and stood waiting, so calm, so dignified, so arresting in her slim young pallor, that Mrs Mallison’s reproaches died on her lips. She rose in her turn, and stood beside her daughter with an unconscious air of protection, and then Dane entered, and the long-dreaded, long-prayed-for meeting had taken place.He came forward, eager, sympathetic, his own embarrassment forgotten in affectionate concern. Looking at him as he entered, one divined that his impulse was to kiss and caress, as he had been accustomed to do in the early days of his engagement, but that impulse received a check at the sight of the two waiting figures,—Mrs Mallison in her widow’s trappings, and beside her, the white silent girl. Dane shared Mary’s dazed feeling of meeting a stranger, as he shook Teresa’s limp hand, which yet had strength enough to hold him at arm’s length. He heard her voice enquiring as to the comfort of his journey, offering him tea and cakes; there was in it a note of detachment which he had never before heard when she was addressing himself.As he drank his tea, and listened to the hum of Mrs Mallison’s reiterated reminiscences, Dane was conscious of a feeling of flatness and disappointment. The year’s absence from Chumley had wrought the inevitable result. He loved Cassandra none the less, but the eyes that had been blinded by passion could now discern that he had been saved from a great wrong, and if life still appeared grey and barren, he acknowledged that he had escaped the harder fate of attaining his desire at the cost of bitterness of soul. And throughout the months of struggle, this girl’s tenderness had enveloped him, an unfaltering tenderness, undaunted by neglect. It was only during the last few months that Dane had begun to realise the healing quality of that tenderness, to count the days until the arrival of the weekly letter, to find himself mentally repeating its phrases; slowly, but surely, his wounded heart had been opening to take comfort in Teresa’s love, and when suddenly she was plunged into trouble, he had hurried to her, with a genuine impulse of tenderness. In imagination he had seen her face lighten with joy, had felt her arms around his neck.—It was the most startling thing in the world to find Teresacold!When tea was over Mary lifted her gloves and veil murmuring some unintelligible words, whereupon Teresa rose so quickly as to give the idea that she was glad of the excuse.“I will come with you! Your room is not quite ready. You must come to mine.” She turned to Dane holding out her hand with a flickering smile. “You will excuse me, Dane. We are so busy... The Vicar is coming in later, and Mr Hunter, and the dressmaker... There’s so much to be done... We will see you again?”She turned away, without waiting for a reply, and Dane reseated himself in silence. To say that he was surprised, but feebly expresses his sentiments; he was stunned, he could hardly persuade himself that he had heard aright. He looked eagerly at Mrs Mallison, seeking a clue from her, and beheld a kindred surprise, mingled with an unmistakable complacence. Obviously the mother approved of her daughter’s reserve, and felt a natural satisfaction in his rebuff, but before the silence had continued long enough to become awkward, she remembered her duties as hostess, and vouchsafed an explanation:“Mary arrived just before tea... They have not seen each other for a year.—So much has happened...”“Of course. Just so... I quite understand,” Dane said vaguely. Then, after a moment’s pause, “Teresa looks thin!” he added anxiously. “This has been a great shock to her.”“M-yes!” Mrs Mallison said. Just the one word, yet Dane found himself flushing guiltily, and realising that he wasmeantto realise that no shock, however great, could alter a girl’s physique, as Teresa had altered since he had seen her last. He dropped the subject, and tried another.“I came as quickly as I could after getting the news. I hoped I might be in time to help. What arrangements,... can I help you to make arrangements?”“Thank you very much, but everything is settled. Mr Hunter is looking after everything. I expect him this evening to talk over details. The day after to-morrow, at twelve o’clock. Will it be possible for you to stay?”Again Dane was conscious of shock, followed by a pang of something curiously like irritation. Hunter? How did Hunter come to be on such intimate terms? Then he remembered that Hunter was a doctor, and felt a rising of spirits. Of course! Quite natural! Hunter had been in attendance.“Of course I shall stay. I hope I may be of some use to you later, on. I’m glad you had someone on the spot. Hunter is the young doctor, isn’t he? Extraordinarily kind, these doctor fellows on occasions like these!”“M-yes,” said Mrs Mallison once more, and there rose before Dane’s eyes a picture of Teresa, in a white dress, dispensing garden tea, with a tall young figure assiduously waiting upon her. Once more he realised that that “M-yes!” was meant to imply that more than mere professional interest was at stake.The sound of a bell jingled through the quiet house, and Dane rose from his chair. Of old he had been as a son in this house, treated with affection and familiarity, but at this moment he felt an intruder, whose presence was merely an inconvenience, taking up time which should have been bestowed elsewhere. He held out his hand, and said:“At what hour to-morrow will it be most convenient for me to call to see Teresa?”“I will ask her,” Mrs Mallison said, and left the room, to return with astonishing quickness. Evidently there had been no hesitation about the reply; evidently also the maternal judgment approved.“Teresa says she will be glad if you will excuse her to-morrow. There is so much to do. She would rather leave her own affairs until after the funeral. Perhaps you will come in to tea on Thursday.”“Thank you. I will come in after tea. About five o’clock. I am staying at the hotel. Please let me know if there is anything I can do.”He kept his voice resolutely controlled, but his anger showed in sparkling eye, and a rising of colour over cheek and brow. Mrs Mallison regarded these signs with a natural satisfaction. It was not in feminine human nature to resist one parting thrust.“One day,” she said suavely, “cannot matter, when you have waited so long!”

Mary came speeding home by the first train after receipt of the telegraphic message, and arrived at the Cottage on the afternoon of the following day.

A strange maid with a scared expression opened the door, and stared aghast as the new arrival pushed past her into the dining-room.

The room was empty, and Mary stood upon the threshold looking round the familiar scene, which seemed so strangely altered by her year’s absence. The blinds were drawn, but even in the half-lights its proportions appeared shrunken, its furnishings shabby and poor. On the centre table stood a bowl of spring flowers, and two or three store catalogues, certain pages of which were marked with strips of writing paper. It seemed to Mary that those books had lain in identically the same positions on the morning on which she had left home, but then the marked pages had been those of Trousseaux, and now... Instinctively she opened the nearest volume, and shrank at the sight of monumental stones and crosses.

The next moment the door opened, and Mrs Mallison entered the room. From an upper room she had heard the sounds of arrival, and for the moment the mother in her forgot everything but the fact that her child had returned. She held out her arms, and smiled with twitching lips, and Mary ran to her, and clung round her neck, with arms which seemed as if they would never let go. It was not the thought of her father that prompted that close embrace, it was the remembrance of a year of days spent in establishments, a year of aimless hours, a year of living among strangers, who cared nothing, noticed nothing! neither praised nor blamed. She had tasted liberty, and liberty had been sweet, but there was a great loneliness in her heart, and the clasp of mother arms were as balm to a wound.

“Mother, Mother!” gasped Mary sobbing.

“Mary, Mary!” quavered Mrs Mallison in reply, then at last they drew apart, regarding each other, with half-shy scrutiny. Mrs Mallison had rushed into the orthodox fitments with a haste which seemed to Teresa positively indecent, but it obviously soothed the widow to don her new cap, and stitch muslin cuffs and collar on a black silk dress. The result, taken in conjunction with a natural paleness of complexion, was undoubtedly softening, and made a further appeal to Mary’s heart.

“You look pale, Mother. You are not ill? Oh, don’t be ill! We can’t spare you too!”

“No, no, my dear. I am quite well. It was a great shock... but there was no nursing. It would have been worse if he’d been ill long. Sit down, my dear... You must have some milk... He came down to breakfast quite himself, but depressed. He had been depressed—” She saw Mary wince, and hurried into explanations.—“About business... Not you, my dear! He had got over that. So interested in your letters... Poor Papa! investments had been bad, and he was led into speculation. I never suspected.—He never confided in me. He knew that I should object. Papa could be very self-willed. It’s the way with these mild characters; all of a sudden they get the bit in their teeth, and there’s no stopping them.” She saw Mary wince again, and gave a peal to the bell. “You must have some milk! Or tea? Shall I hurry up tea? Tea, please, Mason, and don’t toast the muffin until you’ve brought in the tray. It was cold yesterday.—I was telling you, Mary, that he had had bad news... opened a letter after breakfast and there it was.—He read it through, and called out to me: ‘Margaret! Margaret!’...” The large, complacent face shivered suddenly into tears. “It was years—years—since he had called me that!”

Mary took out her handkerchief, and wiped her own eyes. She was sorry for her mother, but the habit of thinking first of herself had grown too strong to be overcome.

“Did he—did he speak of me?”

“My dear, there was no time. It fell on him at that very moment—the stroke! He never spoke again. Those were his last words, ‘Margaret! Margaret!’—as he used to call to me when we were young, before you children were born.”

There was evident solace in the remembrance, despite the tears which it evoked. Mary made a futile effort to conjure up a picture of youthful parents, loving each other, living in happy comradeship, and then reverted to her mother’s words of a few moments before.

“Bad news! Speculations?... How much had he lost?”

Mrs Mallison’s hands twitched, she clasped them tightly upon her knee.

“He said—all! He said—ruin! It’s too early yet to be sure. Mr Maitland will make enquiries... I knew he had been selling out shares. I thought it was to reinvest in some better security. Papa was always close about business. If he speculated with the principal, and it has gone, it will be”—the hands jerked once more—“ruin!”

“You will have five hundred a year, Mother,” Mary said quietly. “Teresa will marry, and you and I—we can be quite comfortable on five hundred a year.”

Mrs Mallison’s eyes shot out a sideways glance, and beheld before her the Mary of old, seated with bowed back and bowed head in her old chair in the corner by the fire-place, and the year that had passed rolled from her memory like a worrying dream.

“Of course,” she said briskly, “we must remove. There will be no necessity for so many rooms. If we put out the washing we can manage quite nicely with one maid, and you to assist in the mornings. After being idle for so long, you will enjoy making yourself of use.”

“I think I shall,” said Mary. And she meant it.

The maid brought in the tray at that moment, the subject was necessarily dropped. Probably a fortune of ten thousand pounds has never changed hands so swiftly and silently! From that hour to the day of her death, Mrs Mallison showed no sign of realising that she was living on her daughter’s money, not her own.

The tea was poured out, the muffin was brought in, piping hot, under its silver cover, before Teresa made her appearance, and Mary, staring with blank eyes at a tall, thin girl, with pale cheeks and listless eyes, felt that this was not the Teresa of yore, but a stranger with whom she had no acquaintance.

The sisters embraced, in silence, and with a listlessness as pronounced on one side as the other. There was no sign in Teresa’s manner of the remorseful affection which her letter had expressed. “She looks—like me!” said Mary to herself, and her eyes strayed to her sister’s left hand. The flash of diamonds showed that there was no avowed breach with Dane, though the mystery of the deferred marriage was still to be solved. Mary found no clue thereto in her mother’s continued monologue, though it was discursive enough to take in the whole countryside.

“Teresa will be glad to have you back—so much to do... The bell has been ringing all day long. Lovely flowers! A wreath of lilies from the Court. And there will be the cards... We shall have to draw one out. Therewereno kind enquiries, so we can’t thank for them. It was so sudden; only a few minutes. He called out for me—I went to him, and held his poor head. Teresa said I was kind. Of course I was kind! He called me ‘Margaret,’ and then—in a minute... wasn’t it only a minute, Teresa? he was gone!... Poor Henry! Poor Papa! The shock was too much... ‘Mrs and the Misses Mallison return warm thanks for kind sympathy in their sad and sudden bereavement,’ something like that... They have a book at the stationer’s, with a selection drawn out. I’ve seen them at the end of the Christmas mottoes. We’ll telephone... The Vicar will be in again presently. Most attentive. He enquired for you, Mary. I said we had wired. He felt quite sure you would come. Mrs Evans sent a cross. Mrs Beverley’s were coloured. Pale pink roses, and a note with them. Very feeling, I must say. Being an orphan herself, she can understand. Only cards from the Court. We’ve seen nothing of them this last year. The Squire’s mother died, so they don’t entertain, and Lady Cassandra and Mrs Beverley are always together. Of course, as I tell Teresa, she’s so much younger. Teresa is looking thinner, Mary, isn’t she? Quite slim. You haven’t altered, my dear. I see no difference. I thought perhaps you’d have changed your hair.—No! Papa didn’t speak of you specially; he hadn’t time, but he spoke of his children,—something about ruining me and the children—he thought of us, not himself. I said to him, whatever he had done, he had done it for the best. Mr Hunter said the same thing this morning. He came in to offer to help. He is looking after the—er,... arranging for Thursday. Quite simple, I told him, butgood. I could not bear to skimp for Papa. The dressmaker’s coming at six...” Her face quivered and a stray tear rolled slowly down her cheek. “He looks so peaceful!... Afterwards—you must come up...”

Mary shrank. She did not want to see the still, changed effigy of what had been; she wanted to remember her father as the quiet man who had kissed her on the doorstep, and said: “My dear, I hope you may have a pleasant time,” but she had not the courage to refuse. She looked appealingly at Teresa, and saw a sudden wave of feeling sweep over the pale face. From without came the sound of wheels, a heavy, lumbering sound which to Chumley ears announced the advent of one of the venerable station flies. The next moment the bell rang, and a man’s footstep was heard in the hall. “The Vicar!” murmured Mrs Mallison, but Mary knew it was not the Vicar; the look on her sister’s face announced too surely the name of the new-comer.

There came a pause, while the new maid was escorting the visitor into the drawing-room, and came back to announce his name.

“Captain Peignton.”

Teresa took the words out of her mother’s mouth.

“Ask him to come here.”

She rose from her seat, and stood waiting, so calm, so dignified, so arresting in her slim young pallor, that Mrs Mallison’s reproaches died on her lips. She rose in her turn, and stood beside her daughter with an unconscious air of protection, and then Dane entered, and the long-dreaded, long-prayed-for meeting had taken place.

He came forward, eager, sympathetic, his own embarrassment forgotten in affectionate concern. Looking at him as he entered, one divined that his impulse was to kiss and caress, as he had been accustomed to do in the early days of his engagement, but that impulse received a check at the sight of the two waiting figures,—Mrs Mallison in her widow’s trappings, and beside her, the white silent girl. Dane shared Mary’s dazed feeling of meeting a stranger, as he shook Teresa’s limp hand, which yet had strength enough to hold him at arm’s length. He heard her voice enquiring as to the comfort of his journey, offering him tea and cakes; there was in it a note of detachment which he had never before heard when she was addressing himself.

As he drank his tea, and listened to the hum of Mrs Mallison’s reiterated reminiscences, Dane was conscious of a feeling of flatness and disappointment. The year’s absence from Chumley had wrought the inevitable result. He loved Cassandra none the less, but the eyes that had been blinded by passion could now discern that he had been saved from a great wrong, and if life still appeared grey and barren, he acknowledged that he had escaped the harder fate of attaining his desire at the cost of bitterness of soul. And throughout the months of struggle, this girl’s tenderness had enveloped him, an unfaltering tenderness, undaunted by neglect. It was only during the last few months that Dane had begun to realise the healing quality of that tenderness, to count the days until the arrival of the weekly letter, to find himself mentally repeating its phrases; slowly, but surely, his wounded heart had been opening to take comfort in Teresa’s love, and when suddenly she was plunged into trouble, he had hurried to her, with a genuine impulse of tenderness. In imagination he had seen her face lighten with joy, had felt her arms around his neck.—It was the most startling thing in the world to find Teresacold!

When tea was over Mary lifted her gloves and veil murmuring some unintelligible words, whereupon Teresa rose so quickly as to give the idea that she was glad of the excuse.

“I will come with you! Your room is not quite ready. You must come to mine.” She turned to Dane holding out her hand with a flickering smile. “You will excuse me, Dane. We are so busy... The Vicar is coming in later, and Mr Hunter, and the dressmaker... There’s so much to be done... We will see you again?”

She turned away, without waiting for a reply, and Dane reseated himself in silence. To say that he was surprised, but feebly expresses his sentiments; he was stunned, he could hardly persuade himself that he had heard aright. He looked eagerly at Mrs Mallison, seeking a clue from her, and beheld a kindred surprise, mingled with an unmistakable complacence. Obviously the mother approved of her daughter’s reserve, and felt a natural satisfaction in his rebuff, but before the silence had continued long enough to become awkward, she remembered her duties as hostess, and vouchsafed an explanation:

“Mary arrived just before tea... They have not seen each other for a year.—So much has happened...”

“Of course. Just so... I quite understand,” Dane said vaguely. Then, after a moment’s pause, “Teresa looks thin!” he added anxiously. “This has been a great shock to her.”

“M-yes!” Mrs Mallison said. Just the one word, yet Dane found himself flushing guiltily, and realising that he wasmeantto realise that no shock, however great, could alter a girl’s physique, as Teresa had altered since he had seen her last. He dropped the subject, and tried another.

“I came as quickly as I could after getting the news. I hoped I might be in time to help. What arrangements,... can I help you to make arrangements?”

“Thank you very much, but everything is settled. Mr Hunter is looking after everything. I expect him this evening to talk over details. The day after to-morrow, at twelve o’clock. Will it be possible for you to stay?”

Again Dane was conscious of shock, followed by a pang of something curiously like irritation. Hunter? How did Hunter come to be on such intimate terms? Then he remembered that Hunter was a doctor, and felt a rising of spirits. Of course! Quite natural! Hunter had been in attendance.

“Of course I shall stay. I hope I may be of some use to you later, on. I’m glad you had someone on the spot. Hunter is the young doctor, isn’t he? Extraordinarily kind, these doctor fellows on occasions like these!”

“M-yes,” said Mrs Mallison once more, and there rose before Dane’s eyes a picture of Teresa, in a white dress, dispensing garden tea, with a tall young figure assiduously waiting upon her. Once more he realised that that “M-yes!” was meant to imply that more than mere professional interest was at stake.

The sound of a bell jingled through the quiet house, and Dane rose from his chair. Of old he had been as a son in this house, treated with affection and familiarity, but at this moment he felt an intruder, whose presence was merely an inconvenience, taking up time which should have been bestowed elsewhere. He held out his hand, and said:

“At what hour to-morrow will it be most convenient for me to call to see Teresa?”

“I will ask her,” Mrs Mallison said, and left the room, to return with astonishing quickness. Evidently there had been no hesitation about the reply; evidently also the maternal judgment approved.

“Teresa says she will be glad if you will excuse her to-morrow. There is so much to do. She would rather leave her own affairs until after the funeral. Perhaps you will come in to tea on Thursday.”

“Thank you. I will come in after tea. About five o’clock. I am staying at the hotel. Please let me know if there is anything I can do.”

He kept his voice resolutely controlled, but his anger showed in sparkling eye, and a rising of colour over cheek and brow. Mrs Mallison regarded these signs with a natural satisfaction. It was not in feminine human nature to resist one parting thrust.

“One day,” she said suavely, “cannot matter, when you have waited so long!”

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