[Illustration: "HER EYES TURNED TOWARDS IT MECHANICALLY BECAUSE ITCONTAINED . .. THE MAN OF WHOM SHE WAS THINKING"]

PRISONERS

FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON

By

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

_Author of_

"Red Pottage"

"But for failing of love on ourpart, therefore is all our travail. "

--JULIAN OF NORWICH. 

DODD, MEAD & COMPANYNEW YORK MCMVI

Copyright, 1905, 1906, by

COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1906, by

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

_Published, September, 1906_

ToMy BrotherReginald

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Her eyes turned towards it mechanicallybecause it contained . .. The man ofwhom she was thinking" _Frontispiece_

"A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_words" _Page_ 36

"'Is she worth it?' he said with suddenpassion" " 46

"'You are all blinder one than the other, thatit's Andrea I'm grieving for'" " 80

"If Fay had come in then he would have killedher, done her to death with the chains hehad worn so patiently for her sake" " 146

"Fay noticed for the first time how lightlyWentworth walked, how square his shoulderswere" " 184

CHAPTER I

 Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you, And fairies brought their offerings at your birth; You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due, Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth. 

 --ARTHUR C. LEGGE. 

Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa atFrascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the littlecompressed city which goes by the great name of Rome. 

How small it looked, what a huddled speck with a bubble dome, to berepresented by so stupendous a name!

She gazed at it without seeing it. Her eyes turned towards itmechanically because it contained somewhere within its narrow precinctsthe man of whom she was thinking, of whom she was always thinking. 

It was easy to see that Fay--the Duchess of Colle Alto--was anEnglishwoman, in spite of her historic Italian name. 

She had the look of perfect though not robust health, the reflectionover her whole being of a childhood spent much in the open air. She wastwenty-three, but her sweet fair face, with its delicate irregularfeatures, was immature, childish. It gave no impression of experience, or thought, or of having met life. She was obviously not of those whocriticise or judge themselves. In how many faces we see the conflict, orthe remains of conflict with a dual nature. Fay, as she was called byher family, seemed all of a piece with herself. Her unharassedcountenance showed it, especially when, as at this moment, she lookedharassed. Anxiety was evidently a foreign element. It sat ill upon hersmooth face, as if it might slide off at any moment. Fay's violet eyeswere her greatest charm. She looked at you with a deprecating, timid, limpid gaze, in which no guile existed, any more than steadfastness, anymore than unselfishness, any more than courage. 

Fay had come into the world anxious to please. She had never shown anyparticular wish to give pleasure. If she had been missed out of hersomewhat oppressed and struggling home when she married, it is probablethat the sense of her absence was tinged by relief. 

She had never intended to marry the Duke of Colle Alto. It is difficultto say why that sedate distinguished personage married her. 

Fay's face had a very sweet and endearing promise in it which drew men'seyes after her. I don't know what it meant, and they did not knoweither, but they instinctively lessened the distance between themselvesand it. A very thin string will tow a very heavy body if there is noresistance, and the pace is slow. The duke looked at Fay, who was atthat moment being taken out for her first season by her grandmother, Lady Bellairs. Fay tried to please him, as was her wont with all exceptmen with beards. She liked to have him in attendance. Her violet eyeslighted up with genuine pleasure when he came to see her. 

It is perhaps difficult for the legions of women who do not pleaseeasily, and for the handful whose interests lie outside themselves, andwho are not desirous of pleasing indiscriminately, it is difficult foreither to realise the passionate desire to please which possesses andsaps the life of some of their sisters. Admiration with them is not aluxury, any more than a hot-water bottle is a luxury to the aged, or afoot rest to a gouty foot. It is a necessity of life. After a becominginterval, the interstices of which had been filled with flowers, theduke proposed to Lady Bellairs for Fay's hand. Fay did not wish to marryhim. He was not in the least her ideal. Neither did she wish to remainunmarried, neither did she wish to part with her grave, distinguishedsuitor who was an ornament to herself. And she was distinctly averse toliving any longer in the paternal home, lost in a remote crease in aHampshire down. Poor women have only too frequently to deal with thesecomplicated situations, with which blundering, egotistic male minds areseldom in perfect sympathy. 

Fay had never willingly relinquished any of the men who had cared forher, and some had cared much. These last had as a rule torn themselvesaway from her, leaving hearts, or other fragments of themselves, behind, and were not to be cajoled back again, even by one of her littlegilt-edged notes. But the duke did not break away. He had selected her, she pleased him, he desired to marry an Englishwoman. He had theapproval of Lady Bellairs. 

The day came when Fay was suddenly and adroitly confronted with the factthat she must marry him, or lose him. 

Many confirmed bachelors who openly regret that they have never comeacross a woman to whom they cared to tie themselves for life might bein a position to descant on the inability of wives to enter into theirhusbands' inmost feelings, if only they--the bachelors--had known on apast occasion how to act with sudden promptitude on the top of patience. 

The duke played the waiting game, and then hit hard. He had coollyallowed himself to be trifled with, until the moment arrived when it didnot suit him to be trifled with any longer. 

The marriage had not proved a marked success, nor an entire failure. Theduke was an irreproachable husband, but, like many men who marry whenthey are no longer young, he aged suddenly after marriage. He quicklybecame bald and stout. His tact except in these two particulars remainedflawless. He never allowed his deep chagrin to appear when, three yearsafter his marriage, he still remained without a son to continue hishistoric name. 

He was polite to his wife at all times, mildly sarcastic as to herextravagance. Fay was not exorbitantly extravagant; but then the dukewas not exorbitantly rich. One of Fay's arts, as unconscious as that ofa kitten, was to imply past unhappiness, spoken of with a cheerfulresignation which greatly endeared her to others--and to herself. Theduke had understood that she had not had a very happy home, and he hadhonestly endeavoured to make her new home happy. In the early days ofhis marriage he made many small experiments in the hope of pleasing thepretty creature who had thrown in her lot with his. Possibly also theremay have been other subtle, patient attempts to win somewhat from her ofanother nature. Possibly there may have been veiled disappointments, and noiseless retreats under cover of night. 

However these things may have been, after the first year Fay made thediscovery that she was unhappily married. The duke was kind, in kindnesshe never failed; but he was easily jealous--at least she thought so; andhe appeared quite unable to see in their true light her amicable littleflirtations with his delightful compatriots. After one or two annoyingincidents, in which the compatriots had shown several distinctlyun-English characteristics, the duke became, in his wife's eyes, tiresome, strict, a burden. Perhaps, also, she felt the Englishwoman'ssurprise at the inadequate belief in a woman's power of guarding her ownvirtue, which remains in some nations an hereditary masculine instinct. She felt that she could take care of herself, which was, in reality, just what she could not do, as her imperturbable, watchful husband waswell aware. 

But was he aware of the subject of her thoughts at this moment? It wasmore than probable that he was. But Fay had not the faintest suspicionthat he had guessed anything. 

One of her many charms was a certain youthful innocence of mind, whichimputed no evil to others, which never suspected that others wouldimpute it to her. Her husband was wearisome. He looked coldly on her ifshe smiled on young men, and she had to smile at them when they smiledat her. But, she reasoned, of course all the time he really knew that hecould trust her entirely. There was no harm in Fay's nature, no venom, there were no dark places, no strong passions, with their awfulpossibilities for good and evil. She had already given much pain in hershort life, but inadvertently. She was of that large class of whom itmay truly be said when evil comes, that they are more sinned againstthan sinning. They always somehow gravitate into the places where people_are_ sinned against, just as some people never attend a cricket-matchwithout receiving a ball on their persons. 

And now trouble had come upon her. She had at last fallen in love. Iwould not venture to assert that she had fallen in very deep, that the"breakers of the boundless deep" had engulfed her. Some of us makeshipwreck in a teacup tempest, and when our serenity is restored--thereis nothing calmer than a teacup after its storm--our experience serves, after a decent interval, as an agreeable fringe to our confidentialconversation. 

Anyhow, Fay had fallen in love. I feel bound to add that for some timebefore that event happened life had become intolerably dull. The adventto Rome of her distant connection, Michael Carstairs, had been at thisjuncture a source of delight to her. She had, before her marriage, flirted with him a very little--not as much as she could have wished;but Lady Bellairs, who was fond of him, had promptly intervened, and theyoung man had disappeared into his examinations. That was four yearsago. 

In reality Fay had half-forgotten him; but when she saw him suddenly, pale, handsome, distinguished, across a ballroom in Rome, and, after amoment's uncertainty, realised who he was, she felt the same pleasurablesurprise, soft as the fall of dew, which pervades the feminine heartwhen, in looking into an unused drawer, it inadvertently haps upon alength of new ribbon, bought, carefully put away, and forgotten. 

Fay went gently up to Michael, conscious of her beauty and her wonderfuljewels, and held out her hand with a little deprecating smile. 

"And so we meet again at last, " she said. 

He turned red and white. 

"At last, " he said with difficulty. 

She looked more closely at him. The dreamy, poetic face had changedduring those four years. She became dimly aware that he had not onlygrown from a youth into a man, but that some other transformation hadbeen painfully wrought in him. 

Instinctively her beaming face became grave to match his. She was slowto see what others were feeling, but quick to reflect their mood. Shesighed gently, vaguely stirred, in spite of herself, by something--sheknew not what--in her companion's face. 

"It is four years since I saw you, " she said. 

And from her lowered voice it seemed as if her life were rooted inmemory alone. 

"Four years, " said Michael, who, promising young diplomat as he was, appeared only able to repeat parrot-wise her last words after her. 

A pause. 

"Do you know my husband?"

"I do not. "

"May I introduce him to you?"

Fay made a little sign, and the duke approached, superb, decorated, dignified, with the polished pallor as if the skin were a little tootight, which is the Charybdis of many who have avoided the Scylla ofwrinkles. 

The elder Italian and the grave, fair, young Englishman bowed to eachother, were made known to each other. 

That night as the duke drove home with his wife he said to her in hisadmirable English:

"Your young cousin is an enthusiast, a dreamer, a sensitive, what yourTennyson calls a Sir Galahad. In Italy we make of such men a priest, acardinal. He is not an _homme d'affaires_. It was not well to put himinto diplomacy. One may make a religion of art. One may even for a timemake a religion of a woman. But of the English diplomacy one does notmake a religion. "

Fay lay awake that night. From a disused pigeon-hole in her mind shedrew out and unfolded to its short length that attractive remnant, thathalf-forgotten episode of her teens. She remembered everything--I meaneverything she wished to remember. Michael's face had recalled it all, those exquisite days which he had taken so much more seriously than shehad, the sudden ruthless intervention of Lady Bellairs, the end of thedaydream. Fay, whose attention had been adroitly diverted to otherchannels, had never wondered how he took their separation at the time. Now that she saw him again she was aware that he had taken it--to heart. 

During that sleepless night Fay persuaded herself that Michael had notbeen alone in his suffering. She also had felt the parting with equalpoignancy. 

They met again a few days later by chance in an old cloistered, desertedgarden. How often she had walked in that garden as she was doing nowwith English friends! His presence gave the place its true significance. They met as those who have between them the bond of a common sorrow. 

"And what have you been doing all these four years?" she asked him, asthey wandered somewhat apart. 

"I have been working. "

"You never came to say good-bye before you went to that place in Germanyto study. "

"I was told I had better not come. "

"I suppose grandmamma told you that. "

"She did, most kindly and wisely. "

A pause. 

She was leaning in the still May sunshine against an old grey tomb ofcarved stone. Two angels with spread wings upheld the defacedinscription. Above it, over it, round it, like desire impotently defyingdeath, a flood of red roses clambered and clung. Were they trying towake some votary who slept below? A great twisted sentinel cypress keptits own dark counsel. Against its shadow Fay's figure in her whitegossamer gown showed more ethereal and exquisite even than in memory. She seemed at one with this wonderful, passionate southern spring, whichtrembled between rapture and anguish. The red roses and the white iriseswere everywhere. Even the unkept grass in which her light feet were setwas wild with white daisies. 

"Do you remember our last walk on the down that day in spring?" she saidsuddenly. 

She had forgotten it until last night. 

"I remember it. "

"It was May then. It is May again now. "

He did not answer. The roses left off calling to the dead, and suddenlyenfolded the two young grave creatures leaning against the tomb, in agust of hot perfume. 

"Do you remember, " Fay's voice was tremulous, "how you gave me a bit ofpink may?"

"I remember. "

"I was looking at it yesterday. It is not very pink now. "

It was true. In all shallow meanings, and when she had not had time toget her mind into a tangle, Fay was perfectly truthful. She hadyesterday been turning over the contents of a little cedar box in whichshe kept her childish possessions, and she had found in an envelope abrown unsightly ghost of what had once been a may-blossom on a Hampshiredown. She had remembered the vivid sunshine, the wheeling seagull, thesoft south wind blowing in from the sea. Michael had kissed her underthe thin dappled shade of the flowering tree, and she had kissed himback. 

Michael's eyes turned for a long moment to the yellow weather-stainedarches of the cloister, and then he looked full at Fay with a certainpeculiar detached glance which had first made her endeavour to attracthim. There is a look in a man's face which women like Fay cannot endure, because it means independence of them. 

"I thought, " he said, with the grave simplicity which apparently wasunchangeable in him whatever else might change, "that it was only I whoremembered. It has always been a comfort to me that any unhappinesswhich my want of forethought, my--my culpable selfishness may havecaused, was borne by myself alone. "

"I was unhappy too, " she said, speaking as simply as he. She looked upat him suddenly as she said it. There was a wet glint in her deep violeteyes. She believed absolutely at that moment that she had been asunhappy as he for four years. There was no suspicion in her mind thatshe was not genuine. Only the sincere ever doubt their sincerity. Faynever doubted hers. She felt what she said, and the sweet eyes turned onMichael had the transparent fixity of a child's. 

They walked unsteadily back to the others and spoke no more to eachother that day. Conscience pricked Fay that night. 

"Leave him alone, " it said. "You have both suffered. Let the dead pastbury its dead. "

Fay's conscience was a wonderfully adaptable one with a tendency topoetic quotation. It showed considerable tact in adopting her point ofview. Nevertheless from that generally fallacious standpoint it oftengave her quite respectable advice. "Leave him alone, " said thehoodwinked monitor. "You are married and Andrea is easily jealous. Michael is sensitive, and has been deeply in love with you. Don't stirhim up to fall in love with you again. _Leave him alone. _"

The young British matron waxed indignant. Was she, Fay, the kind ofwoman to forget her duty to her husband? Was Michael the kind of man tomake love to a married woman? Such an idea was preposterous, unjust toboth of them. And people would begin to talk at once if she and hercousin (Michael was only a distant connection) were studiously to avoideach other, if they could not exchange a few words simply like oldfriends. No one had suggested an attitude of rigid avoidance; butthroughout life Fay had always convinced herself of the advisability ofa certain wished-for course by conjuring up, only to discard it, theextreme and most obviously senseless opposite of that course--as theonly alternative. 

She imagined her husband saying: "Why won't you ask Mr. Carstairs todinner? He is your cousin and he is charming. What can the reason bethat you so earnestly refuse to meet him?" And then Andrea, who always"got ideas into his head, " would begin to suspect that there had been"something" between them. 

_No. No. _ It would be far wiser to meet naturally now and then, and totreat Michael like an old friend. Fay had a somewhat muffled conceptionof what an old friend might be. After deep thought she came to theconclusion that it was her duty to ask Michael frequently to the house. When Fay once recognised a duty she performed it without delay. 

She met with an unexpected obstacle in the way of its adequateperformance. The obstacle was Michael. 

The young man came once, and then again after an interval of severalmonths, but apparently nothing would induce him to frequent the house. 

Fay did not recognise her boyish eager lover in the grave sedate man, old of his age, who had replaced him. His dignified and quiteunobtrusive resistance, which had not indifference at its core, added anintense, a feverish, interest to Fay's life. She saw that he still caredfor her, and that he did not intend to wound himself a second time. Hehad had enough. She put out all her little transparent arts during themonths that followed. The duke watched. 

She had implied to her husband with a smile that she had not been veryhappy at home. She implied to Michael with a smile that it was not theduke's fault, but that she was not very happy in her married life, thathe did not care much about her, and that they had but few tastes incommon. Each lived their own life on amicable terms, but somewhat apartfrom each other. She owned that she had hoped for something ratherdifferent in marriage. She had, it seemed, started life with a veryexalted ideal of married life, which the duke's

 coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb. 

Michael remained outwardly obdurate, but inwardly he weakened. Histender adoration and respect for Fay, wounded and mutilated though theyhad been, had nevertheless survived what in many minds must have provedtheir death-blow. He still believed implicitly all she said. 

But to him her marriage was the impassable barrier, a barrier asenfranchisable as the brown earth on a coffin lid. 

After many months Fay at last vaguely realised his attitude towards her. She told herself that she respected it, that it was just what shewished, was in fact the result of her own tactfully expressed wishes. She seemed to remember things she had said which would have led him tobehave just as he had done. And then she turned heaven and earth toregain her personal ascendency over him. She never would have regainedit if an accident had not befallen her. She fell in love with him duringthe process. 

The day came, an evil day for Michael, when he could no longer doubt it, when he was not permitted to remain in doubt. Who shall say what wavesof boundless devotion, what passionate impulses of protection, ofcompassion, of intense longing to shield her from the fire which haddevastated his own youth, passed in succession over him as he looked atthe delicate little creature who was to him the only real woman in theworld--all the rest were counterfeits--and who now, as he believed, loved him as he had long loved her. 

Michael was one of the few men who bear through life the commonmasculine burden of a profound ignorance of women, coupled with anundeviating loyalty towards them. He supposed she was suffering as hehad suffered, that it was with her now beside the fountain, under theilexes of her Italian garden, as it had been with him during these fiveintolerable years. 

How Fay wept! What a passion of tears, till her small flower-like facewas bereft of all beauty, of everything except a hideous contraction ofgrief!

He stood near her, not touching her, in anguish far deeper than hers. Atlast he took her clenched hand in his. 

"Do not grieve so, " he said brokenly. "It is not our fault. It isgreater than either of us. It has come upon us against our wills. Wehave both struggled. You don't know how I have struggled, Fay, day andnight since I came to Rome. But I have been in fault. I ought never tohave come, for I knew you were living near Rome. But I did not know ithad touched you, and for myself I had hoped--I thought--that it waspast--in as far as it could pass--that I was accustomed to it. Listen, Fay, and do not cry so bitterly. I will leave Rome at once. I will notsee you again. My poor darling, we have come to a hard place in life, but we can do the only thing left to us--our duty. "

Fay's heart contracted, and she suddenly ceased sobbing. She had neverthought of this horrible possibility that he would leave her. 

She drew the hand that clasped hers to her lips and held it tightlyagainst her breast. 

"Don't leave me, " she stammered, trembling from head to foot, from sheerterror at the thought; "I will be good. I will do what is right. We arenot like other people. We can trust each other. But I can't live withoutseeing you sometimes, I could not bear it. "

He withdrew his hand. They looked wildly into each other's eyes. Hisconvulsed face paled and paled. Even as he stood before her she knew shewas losing him, that something was tearing him from her. It was ascertain that he was going from her as if she were standing by hisdeathbed. 

He kissed her suddenly. 

"I shall not come back, " he said. And the next moment he was gone. 

CHAPTER II

 Nous passons notre vie à nous forger des chaînes, et à nous plaindre de les porter. --VALTOUR. 

For a long time Fay had stood on her balcony looking out towards Rome, while the remembrance of the last few months pressed in upon her. 

It was a week since she had seen Michael, since he had said, "I shallnot come back. "

And in the meanwhile she had heard that he had resigned his appointment, and was leaving Rome at once. She had never imagined that he would actso quickly, with such determination. She had vaguely supposed that hewould send in his resignation, and then remain on. In novels in asituation like theirs the man never really went away, or if he did hecame back. Fay knew very little of Michael, but nevertheless sheinstinctively felt and quailed before the conviction that he really wasleaving her for ever, that he would reconstruct a life for himselfsomewhere in which she could not reach him, in which she would have nopart or lot. He might suffer during the process, but he would do it. Hisyea was yea, and his nay, nay. She should see him no more. Some day, notfor a long time perhaps, but some day, she should hear of his marriage. 

Suddenly, without a moment's warning, her own life rose up before her, distorted, horrible, unendurable. The ilexes, solemn in the sunset, showed like foul shapes of disgust and nausea. The quiet Campagna withits distant faintly outlined Sabine hills was rotten to the core. 

The duke passed across a glade at a little distance, and, looking up, smiled gravely at her, with a slight courteous gesture of his brownhand. 

She smiled mechanically in response and shrank back into her room. Herhusband had suddenly become a thing to shudder at, repulsive as areptile, intolerable. Her life with him, without Michael, stretchedbefore her like a loathsome disease, a leprosy, which in theinterminable years would gradually eat her away, a death by inches. 

The first throes of a frustrated passion at the stake have probablyseldom failed to engender a fierce rebellion against the laws whichlight the faggots round it. 

The fire had licked Fay. She fled blindfold from it, not knowingwhither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into any slough. 

"I cannot live without him, " she sobbed to herself. "This is not just acommon love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life!It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always havebeen! We have both done our best, but--I can't go on. What is reputationworth, the world's opinion of me?--_nothing_. "

It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been worthto any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed withlove. 

To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure and tothe worldly as the only real life, the only path. But if we disbelievein it, and framing our lives on other lines become voluntarilybedridden into selfishness and luxury, can we--when that in which wehave not believed comes to pass--can we suddenly rise and follow Love uphis mountain passes? We try to rise when he calls us from our sick beds. We even go feverishly a little way with him. But unless we have learntthe beginnings of courage and self-surrender before we set out, we seemto turn giddy, and lose our footing. Certain precipices there are whereonly the pure and strong in heart may pass, at the foot of which are thepiled bones of many passionate pilgrims. 

Were Fay's delicate little bones, so subtly covered in soft white flesh, to be added to that putrefying heap? But can we blame anyone, be theywho they may, placed howsoever they may be, who when first they undergoa real emotion try however feebly to rise to meet it?

Fay was not wholly wise, not wholly sincere, but she made an attempt tomeet it. It was not to be expected that the attempt would be quite wiseor quite sincere either. Still it was the best she could do. She wouldsacrifice herself for love. She would go away with Michael. No one wouldever speak to her again, but she did not care. 

Involuntarily she unclasped a diamond Saint-Esprit from her throat whichthe duke had given her, and laid it on her writing-table. She shouldnever wear it again. She no longer had the right to wear it. It was aunique jewel. But what did she care for jewels now! They had served topass the time in the sort of waking dream in which she had lived tillMichael came. But she was awake now. She looked at herself in the glasslong and fixedly. Yes, she was beautiful. How dreadful it must be forplain women when they loved! They must know that men could not reallycare for them. They might, of course, respect and esteem them, and wishin a lukewarm way to marry them, but they could never really love them. She, Fay, carried with her the talisman. 

A horrible doubt seized her, just when she was becoming calm. SupposingMichael would not! Oh! but he _would_ if he cared as she did. Thesacrifice was all on the woman's side. No one thought much the worse ofmen when they did these things. And Michael was so good, so honourablethat he would certainly never desert her. They would become legalhusband and wife directly Andrea divorced her. 

From underneath these matted commonplaces, Fay's muffled consciencestrove to reach her with its weak voice. 

"Stop, stop!" it said. "You will injure him. You will tie a noose roundhis neck. You will spoil his life. And Andrea! He has been kind in away. And your marriage vows! And your own people at home! And Magdalen, the sister who loves you. Remember her! Stop, stop! Let Michael go. Youwere obliged to relinquish him once. Let him go again now. "

Fay believed she went through a second conflict. Perhaps there lurked atthe back of her mind the image of Michael's set face--set away from her;and that image helped her at last to say to herself, "Yes. It is right. I will let him go. "

But did she really mean it? For while she said over and over again, "Yes, yes; we must part, " she decided that it was necessary to see himjust once again, to bid him a last farewell, to strengthen him to livewithout her. She could not reason it out, but she knew that it wasabsolutely essential to the welfare of both that they should see eachother just once more before they parted--_for ever_. The parting nolonger loomed so awful in her mind if there was to be a meeting beforeit took place. She almost forgot it directly her mind could find astaying point on the thought of that one last sacred interview, of allshe should say, of all they would both feel. 

But how to see him! He had said he would not come back. He left Rome ina few days. She should see him officially on Thursday, when he was inattendance on his chief. But what was the use of that? He would hardlyexchange a word with her. She might decide to see _him_ alone; but whatif he refused to see _her_? Instinctively Fay knew that he would sorefuse. 

"We must part. " Just so. But how to hold him? How to draw him to herjust once more? That was the crux. 

In novels if a woman needs the help of the chivalrous man ever kneelingin the background, she sends him a ring. Fay looked earnestly at herrings. But Michael might not understand if she sent him one, and if theduke intercepted it he would certainly entirely misconstrue thesituation. 

Fay sat down at her writing-table, and got out her note-paper. Truthcompels me to state that it was of blue linen, that it had a little giltcoronet on it, and that it was scented. 

She thought a long time. At least she bit the little silver owl at theend of her pen for a long time. She tore up several sheets. At last shewrote in her large, slanting, dashing handwriting:

 "_I know that we must part. You are right and I wish it too. It is all like a terrible dream, and what will the awakening be?_" (Fay did not quite know what she meant by this, but it impressed her deeply as she wrote it, and a tear dropped on "the awakening" and made it look like "reckoning. " She was not of those, however, who having once written one word ever think it can be mistaken for another; and really reckoning did quite as well as awakening. ) "_But I must see you once before you go. I have something of urgent importance to say to you. _" (It was not clear to Fay what the matter of importance was. But has not everyone in love laboured daily under a burden as big as Christian's, of subjects which demand instant discussion, or the bearer may fall into a state of melancholia? Fay was convinced as she wrote that there was something she ached to say to him: and also the point was to say something that would bring him. ) "_Don't fail me. You have never failed me yet. You left me before when it was right we should part. Did I try to keep you then? Did I say one word to hold you back?_" (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not faltered then. ) "_I did not falter then. I will not do so now, though this time is harder than the first. _" (It certainly was. ) "_You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others_ _have gone come back through the gardens. The door by the fountain will be unlocked, and come up the balcony steps to my sitting-room. The balcony window will be open. You know that I should not ask you to do this unless it was urgent. Will you fail me at the last? For we shall never meet again, Michael!_"

Fay closed the note, directed it, pinned it into the lace of her inmostvest--the wife of an Italian distrusts pockets and postalarrangements--and then wept her heart out, her vain, selfish littleheart, which for the first time in her life was not wholly vain, norwholly selfish. Perhaps it was not her fault if she was cruel. It takesmany steadfast years, many prayers, many acts of humble service beforewe may hope to reach the place where we are content to bear alone thebrunt of that pang, and to guard the one we love even from ourselves. 

CHAPTER III

 There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread. 

 --A. C. SWINBURNE. 

A witty bishop was once heard to remark that one of the difficulties ofhis social life lay in the fact that all women of forty were exactlyalike, and it was impossible to recall their individual label, to whicharchdeacon, or canon, or form of spinster good works, they belonged. Itwould be dangerous, irreverent, to pry further into the recesses of theepiscopal, or even of the suffragan, mind. There are snowy peaks wherewe lay helpers should fear to tread. But it may be stated, withoutlaying ourselves open to a suspicion of wishing to undermine the Church, that when the woman of forty in her turn acidly announces, as she notinfrequently does, that all young men seem to her exactly alike, she isin a parlous condition. 

Yet many women had said that Michael was exactly like every other youngman. And to all except the very few who knew him well he certainly didappear to be--not an individual at all--but only an indistinguished unitof a vast army. 

His obvious good looks were like the good looks of others. He lookedwell bred, but to look that is as common in a certain class as it israre in another. He had the spare, wiry figure, tall and lightly built, square in the shoulders, and thin in the flank; he had the clearweather-beaten complexion, the clean, nervous, capable hand, and theself-effacing manner, which we associate with myriads of well-born, machine-trained, perfectly groomed, expensively educated, uneducatedEnglishmen. Our public schools turn them out by the thousand. The "lostlegion" is made up of them. The unburied bones of the pioneers of newcolonies are mostly theirs. They die of thirst in "the never nevercountry, " under a tree, leaving their initials cut in its trunk; theyfall by hundreds in our wars. They are born leaders where acumen andcraft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it. They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life fromthem with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity whichthey never showed in the business of cricket and football. 

They are essentially not of the stuff of which those dull persons, thethinkers, the politicians, the educationalists, are made. No professionknows them except the army. They have no opinions worth hearing. Onlythe women who are to marry them listen to them. They are sometimessqueezed into Parliament and are borne with there like children. Aboutone in a hundred of them can earn his own living, and then it is as aland agent. 

They make adorable country squires, and picturesque, simple-minded, painstaking men of rank. They know by a sort of hereditary instinct howto deal with a labouring man, and a horse, and how to break in a dog. They give themselves no airs. We have _millions_ of men like this, andit is doubtful whether the nation finds much use for them, except atcoronations, where they look beautiful; or on county councils, wherethey can hold an opinion without the preliminary fatigue of forming it;and on the bloodstained fringes of our empire, where they serenely meettheir dreadful deaths. 

In the ranks of that vast army I descry Michael, and I wonder what it isin him that makes me able to descry him at all. He is like thousands ofother men. In what is he unlike?

I think it must be something in his expression. Of many ugly men it hasbeen said with truth that one never observes their ugliness. Somethingin the character redeems it. With Michael's undeniable good looks it wasthe same. One did not notice them. They were not admired, except, possibly, for the first moment, or across a room. His ratherinsignificant grey eyes were the only thing one remembered him by, theonly part of him which seemed to represent him. 

It was as if out of the narrow window of a fortress _our friend_ for amoment looked out; that "friend of our infinite dreams" who in dreams, but, alas! never by day, comes softly to us across the white fields ofyouth; who, later on, in dreams but never by day, overtakes us withunbearable happiness in his hand in which to steep our exhaustion on thehillside; who when our hair is grey comes to us still in dreams butnever by day, down the darkening valley, to tell us that our worn outromantic hopes are but the alphabet of his language. 

Such a look there was in Michael's eyes, and what it meant who shallsay? Once and again at long intervals we pass in the thoroughfare oflife young faces which have the same expression, as if they saw beyond, as if they looked past their own youth across to an immortal youth, fromtheir own life to an unquenchable, upwelling spring of life. WhenMichael spoke, which was little, his words verged on the commonplace. Heexplained the obvious with modest directness. He had thought out andmade his own a small selection of platitudes. It is at first a shock tosome of us when we discover that a beautiful spiritual nature is linkedwith a tranquil commonplace mind and narrow abilities. 

When Michael's eyes rested on anything his still glance seemed to passthrough it, into its essence. An inscrutable Fate had willed that hiseyes should not rest on any woman save Fay. 

Was her little hand to rend his illusions from him; or did he perhapssee her as she was, as her husband, her shrewd old grandmother, hersister even, had never seen her? Fay had revealed to Michael that ofwhich many men who write glibly of passion die in ignorance, the wonderand awe of love, clothed in a woman's form, walking the earth. And in areverent and grateful loyalty Michael would have laid down his life forher, as gladly as Dante would have done for "his lady. " But Michaelwould have laid down his in silence, as one casts off a glove. He hadnever read the "New Life. " It is improbable that it would have made anyimpression on him if he had read it. He never associated words or booksor poetry with feelings. What he felt he held sacred. He wasunconsciously by nature that which others of the artistic temperamentconsciously are in a lesser degree, and are doomed to try to express. Michael never wanted to express anything, had no impulse ofself-revelation, no interest in his own mental experiences. 

While Fay was turning over her little _bric-a-brac_ assortment offeelings, her toy renunciations, her imitation convictions, Michael wasslowly making the great renunciation without even taking himself intohis confidence. To go away. To see her no more. This was death byinches. As he sat hour after hour in his little room behind the Embassyit seemed to him as if, by some frightful exertion of his will, he werewading with incredible slowness out to sea, over endless flats ininch-deep water, which after an interminable journey would be deepenough to drown him at last. 

The nausea and horror of this slow death were upon him. Nevertheless, hemeant to move towards it. And where Michael's eye was fixed there hisfoot followed. He was not of those who rend themselves by violentconflict. If he had ever been asked to give his reason for any action ofhis life, from the greatest to the smallest, he would have looked at thequestioner in mild surprise, and would have said: "It was the only thingto do. "

To him vacillation and doubt were unknown. A certain wisdom could neverbe his, for he saw no alternatives. He never balanced two courses ofaction against each other. 

"There were no two ways about it, " he said to his godfather, the Bishopof Lostford, respecting a decision where there were severalalternatives, which he had endeavoured to set before Michael withimpartiality. But Michael saw only one course, and took it. 

And now again he only saw one course, and he meant to take it. Hesickened under it, but his mind was made up. Fay's letter which dulyreached him only made him suffer. It did not alter his determination togo. Certainly, he would see her again, if she desired it so intensely, and had something vitally important to tell him, though he disliked thesuggestion of a clandestine meeting. Still it was Fay's suggestion, andFay could do no wrong. But he knew that nothing she could do or say, nothing new that she could spring upon him would have power to shake hisdecision to leave Rome on Friday. _It was the only thing to do. _

CHAPTER IV

 L'on fait plus souvent des trahisons par faiblesse que par un dessein formé de trahir. --LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 

Fay's evening-party was a success. Her parties generally were. It was asmall gathering, for as it was May but few of the residents had comedown to the villas. Some of the guests had motored out from Rome. Myimpression is that Fay enjoyed the evening. She certainly enjoyed thebrilliancy which excitement had momentarily added to her beauty. 

All the time she was saying to herself, "If people only knew. What acontrast between what these people think and what I really am. Perhapsthis is the last time I shall have a party here. Perhaps I shall not behere to-morrow. Perhaps Michael will insist on taking me away with him, from this death in life, this hell on earth. "

What large imposing words! How well they sounded! Yes, in a way Fay wasenjoying herself. 

Often during the evening she saw the grave, kindly eyes of the duke uponher. Once he came up to her, and paid her a little exquisite compliment. Her disgust and hatred of him were immediately forgotten. She smiledback at him. She did not love him of course. A man like that did notknow what love was. But Fay had never yet felt harshly towards any manwho admired her. The husband who did not understand her watched her withsomething of the indulgent, protecting expression which we see on theface of the owner of an enchanting puppy, which is ready to gallop onindia rubber legs after any pair of boots which appears on its lowhorizon. 

 * * * * *

The guests had ebbed away by degrees. Lord John Alington, a tall, bald, boring Englishman, and one or two others, remained behind, arrangingsome expedition with the duke. 

Michael's chief had long since gone. Michael did not depart with him, but took his leave a few moments later. Michael's departure from Romethe following day on urgent affairs was generally known. The duke hadwatched him bid Fay a mechanical farewell, and had then expressed anurbane regret at his departure. The thin, pinched face of the young manappealed to the elder one. The duke had liked him from the first. 

"It is time he went, " he said to himself as he watched Michael leave theroom. As Michael left it Fay's excitement dropped from her, and shebecame conscious of an enormous fatigue. A few minutes later she draggedherself up the great pictured staircase to her little boudoiroverlooking the garden, and sank down exhausted on a couch. Her prettyItalian maid was waiting for her in the adjoining bedroom, and came toher, and began to unfasten her jewels. 

Fay dismissed her for the night, saying she was not going to bed yet. She often stayed up late reading. She was of those who say that theyhave no time for reading in the day, and who like to look up (or rather, to say afterwards they looked up) to find the solemn moon peering in atthem. 

To-night there was no solemn or otherwise disposed moon. 

Fay's heart suddenly began to beat so wildly that it seemed as if shewould suffocate. What violent emotion was this which was flooding her, sweeping away all landmarks, covering, as by one great inrolling tidalwave, all the familiar country of her heart? Whither was she being sweptin the midst of this overwhelming roaring torrent? Out to sea? To someswift destruction? Where? Where?

She clutched the arm of the sofa and trembled. She had known so manysmall emotions. What was this? And like a second wave on the top of thefirst a sea of recklessness broke over and engulfed her. _What next?_She did not know. She did not care. Michael, his face and hand. Thesewere the only realities. In another moment she should see him, feel him, hold him, never, never let him go again. 

In the intense stillness a whisper came up through the orange blossombelow her balcony:

"Fay. "

She was on the balcony in a moment. The scent of the orange blossom hadbecome alive and confused everything. 

"Come up, " she said almost inaudibly. 

"I cannot. "

"You must. I must speak to you. "

"Come down here then. I am not coming up. "

She ran down, and felt rather than saw Michael's presence at the foot ofthe little stair. 

He was breathing hard. He did not move towards her. 

"You sent for me, so I came, " he said. "Tell me quickly what I can dofor you, how I can serve you. I cannot remain here more than a moment. Iendanger your safety as it is. "

It was all so different from what she had expected, from what she hadpictured to herself. He was so determined and stern; and it had neverstruck her as possible that he would not come up to her room, that theinterview would be so short. 

"I can't speak here, " she said, angry tears smarting in her eyes. 

"You can and must. Tell me quickly, dearest, why you sent for me. Yousaid it was all-important. I am here, I will do your bidding, if youwill only say what it is. "

"Take me with you, " she gasped inaudibly. 

She had not meant to say that. She was merely the mouthpiece ofsomething vast, of some blind destructive force that was rending her. She swayed against the railings, clinging to them with both hands. 

Even as she spoke her voiceless whisper was drowned in a sound but verylittle louder. There was a distant stir, a movement as of waking bees inthe house. 

He had not heard her. He was listening intently. 

"Go back instantly and shut the window, " he said, and in a moment shefelt he was gone. 

She crept feebly up the stairs to her room and sank down again on thecouch, broken, half dead. 

"I shall see him no more. I shall see him no more, " she said to herself, twisting her hands. What a travesty, what a mockery that one hurriedmoment had been! What a parting that was no parting! He had no heart. He did not really love her. 

Through her stupor she felt rather than heard a movement in the house. She stole out of her room to the head of the grand staircase. Nearly allthe lights had been put out. Close to a lamp in the saloon below, theduke and Lord John were standing, looking at a map. "The Grotta Ferrataroad is the best, " the duke was saying. And as he spoke a servant camein quickly, and whispered to the duke, who left the saloon with him. 

Fay fled back to her own room. Something was happening. But what? Couldit have any connection with herself and Michael? No, that seemedimpossible. And Michael must by now have left the gardens, by theunlocked door by which he had come in. 

Fay drew the reading lamp nearer to her, and opened the book ofdevotions which Magdalen, her far off sister in England, had sent her. Her eyes wandered over the page, her mind taking no heed. 

"_For it is the most pain that the soul may have, to turn from God anytime by sin. _"

There certainly was a sort of subdued stir in the house. A nameless fearwas invading Fay's heart. The book shook in her hand. What _could_ behappening? And if it was, as it must be, something quite apart from herand Michael, what did it matter, why be afraid?

"_For sin is vile, and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened tono pain which is not sin. And to me was showed no harder hell thansin. _"

A low tap came at the window. Fay started violently, and the bookdropped on the floor. 

The tap was repeated. She went to the window, and saw Michael's facethrough the glass. 

She opened the glass door, and he came in. His clothes were smeared andtorn, and there was blood upon his hand. 

"Something has happened, " he said. "I don't know what it is, but thegarden is surrounded, and there is someone watching at the door I camein at. I have tried all the other ways. I have tried to climb the wall, but there was glass at the top. I can't get out. And they are searchingthe gardens with lanterns. "

Even as he spoke they saw lights moving among the ilexes. 

"They can't know, " she said faintly. 

"It does not seem possible. They are probably looking for someone else, but I can't be found here at this hour without raising suspicion. Isthere any way out through the house from here?"

"Only down the grand staircase. "

"I must risk it. Show me the way. "

They went together down the almost dark corridor. Fay's heart sickenedat the thought that a belated servant might see them. But all was quiet. At the head of the staircase they both peered over the balustrade. Atits foot in a narrow circle of light stood the duke and Lord John, and aman with a tri-coloured sash. Even as they looked, the three turned andbegan slowly to mount the staircase. 

Fay and Michael were back in her boudoir in a moment. 

"There is a way out here, " he said, indicating the door into herbedroom. 

"It leads into my bedroom, and then through to Andrea's rooms. There isno passage, and he has a dog in his room. It would bark. "

"I must go back to the garden again, " he said, and instantly moved tothe window. Both saw two _carabinieri_ standing with a lantern at thefoot of the balcony steps. 

"If you go down now, " said Fay hoarsely, "my reputation goes with you. "

He looked at her. 

It was as if his whole life were focussed on one burning point; how tosave her from suspicion. If he could have shrivelled into ashes at herfeet he would have done it. She saw her frightful predicament, andalmost hated him. 

The animal panic of being trapped caught them both simultaneously. Heovercame it instantly, while she shook helplessly as in a palsy. 

He went swiftly back to the door leading to the staircase, and glancedthrough it. 

"They are coming along the corridor, " he said. "They will certainly comein here. "

"Stand behind the screen, " she gasped. "I will say no one has been here, and they will pass through into the other room. As soon as they haveleft the room go quickly out by the staircase. "

He looked round him once, and then walked behind a tall screen ofItalian leather which stood at the head of a divan. 

Fay took up her book from the floor, but her numb fingers refused tohold it. She put it on the edge of the table near her, under the lamp, hid her shaking hands in the folds of her long white chiffon gown, andfixed her eyes upon the page. 

The words of the dead saint swam before her eyes:

"_Yea, He loveth us now as well while we are here, as He shall do whilewe are there afore His blessed face. But for failing of love on ourpart, therefore is all our travail. _"

There were subdued footsteps outside, a tap, the duke's voice. 

"May I come in?"

"Come in, " she said, but she heard no words. 

She made a superhuman effort. 

"Come in, " she said again, and this time to her relief she heard thewords distinctly. 

The duke entered and held the door half closed. 

"I feared to disturb you, my child, " he said, "but it is unavoidablethat I disturb you. It is a relief to find that you are not yet in bedand asleep. A very grave, a very sad event has happened whichnecessitates the presence of the police commissioner. Calm yourself, myFrancesca, and my good friend the _delegato_ will explain. "

The official in the sash came in. Lord John stood in the doorway. 

"Duchess, " said the official, "I grieve to say that one of your guestsof this evening, the Marchese di Maltagliala, has been assassinated inthe garden, or possibly in the road, and his dead body was dragged intothe garden afterwards. He was found just inside the east garden door, which by some mischance had been left unlocked. "

A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ words. 

[Illustration: "A DEATHLIKE SILENCE FOLLOWED THE DELEGATO'S WORDS"]

Fay turned her bloodless face towards him, and her eyes never lefthim. She felt Michael listening behind the screen. 

"There was hardly an instant, " continued the official, with a touch ofprofessional pride, "before the alarm was given. By a fortunate chance Imyself happened to be near. The garden was instantly surrounded. It isbeing searched now. It seems hardly possible that the assassin can haveescaped. I entreat your pardon for intruding this painful subject on thesensitive mind of a lady, and breaking in on your privacy. "

"I should think he has escaped by now, " said Fay hoarsely. 

"It is possible, but improbable, " said the official. Then he turned tothe duke. "This is, I understand from you, the only way into the housefrom the garden?"

"The only way that might possibly still be open, " said the duke. "Thedoors on the ground floor are both locked, as we have seen. "

"We greatly feared, " continued the duke, turning to his wife, "that themurderer if he were still in the garden, finding it was being searched, might terrify you by rushing in here. "

"No one has been in here, " said Fay automatically. 

"Have you been in this room ever since you left the saloon?" said herhusband. 

"Yes. I have been reading here ever since. "

"Then it is impossible that anyone should have escaped into the housethrough this room, " said the duke. "The duchess must have seen him. Itis no longer necessary to search the house. "

The _delegato_ hesitated. He opened the glass door and spoke to the menwith the lantern. 

"They are convinced that it is not possible he is concealed in thegarden, " he said. "Perhaps if the duchess were deeply engaged in studyhe might have serpentinely glided through into the next room without herperceiving him. It is, I understand, the duchess's private apartment. Itmight be as well--where does the duchess's apartment lead into?"

"Into my rooms, " said the duke, "and my dog is there. He would havegiven the alarm long ago if any stranger had passed through my room. Ifhe is silent no one has been near him. "

There was a pause. 

Fay learned what suspense means. 

The _delegato_ twirled his moustaches. 

He was evidently reluctant to give up the remotest chance, and yetreluctant to inconvenience the duke further. 

"It is just possible, " he said, "that the assassin may have taken refugein here before the duchess came back to her apartment. My duties aregrave, duchess. Have I your permission?"

Fay bowed. 

The duke, still urbane, but evidently finding the situation undulyprolonged, led the way into Fay's bedroom. 

This story would never have been written if Lord John had not remainedstanding in the doorway. 

Did Michael know he was there? He had not so far spoken, or given anysign of his presence. 

"Won't you go into my room, Lord John, and help in the capture, " shesaid distinctly; and as she spoke she was aware that she was only justin time. 

But Lord John would not go in, thanks. Lord John preferred to advanceheavily in her direction, and to sit down by her on the couch, tellingher not to look so terrified, that he would take care of her. 

She stared wildly at him, livid and helpless. 

A door was softly opened, and was instantly followed by the furiousbarking of a dog. 

"Go and help them, " said Fay to Lord John. 

But Lord John did not move. Like all bores he was conscious of his ownattractive personality. He only settled his eyeglass more firmly in hispale eye. 

"You never spoke to me all evening, " he said, with jocular emphasis. "What have I done to deserve such severity?"

In another moment the duke and the official returned, followed bySancho, a large Bridlington terrier, still bristling and snarling at theofficial. 

Fay called the dog to her, and held it forcibly, pretending to caressit. 

"No one has gone by that way, " said the _delegato_ to the duke. "The dogproves that. "

"Sancho proves it, " said the duke gravely. 

As he spoke he paused as if suddenly arrested. His eyes were fixed on asmall Florentine mirror which hung over Fay's writing-table in the angleof the wall. The duke's face changed, as a man's face might change, who, conscious of no enemy, feels himself stabbed from behind in the dark. Then he came forward, and said with a firm voice:

"We will now go once more into the gardens. Lord John, you willaccompany us. "

Lord John got heavily to his feet. 

"Take Sancho with you, " said Fay, holding the dog with difficulty, whowas obviously excited and suspicious, its mobile nostrils working, itseyes glued to the screen. 

The duke opened the glass door, and Sancho, his attention turned, rushedout into the night, barking furiously. 

"You need have no further fear, " said the duke to Fay, looking into hereyes. "The assassin has certainly escaped. "

"No doubt, " said Fay. 

"Unless he is hiding behind the screen all the time, " said Lord John, with his customary facetiousness. "It is about the only place in theroom he could hide in, except of course the wastepaper basket. "

The _delegato_, who was not apparently a man who quickly seized thehumorous side of a remark, at once stepped back from the window, andglanced at the wastepaper basket. 

"I may as well look behind the screen, " he said, and went towards it. 

But before he could reach it the screen moved, and Michael came out frombehind it. 

The four people in the room gazed at him spell-bound, speechless; LordJohn reeled against the wall. The duke alone retained hisself-possession. 

Michael advanced into the middle of the room, and for a moment his eyesmet Fay's. Who shall say what he read in their terror-stricken depths?

Then he turned to the duke and said:

"I ask pardon of you, duke, and of the duchess, my cousin, for theinconvenience I have caused you. I confess to the murder of the Marchesedi Maltagliala, and sought refuge in the garden. When the garden wassurrounded I sought refuge here. I did not tell the duchess what I haddone, but I implored her to let me take shelter here, and to promise notto give me up. She ought at once to have given me up. She yielded to thedictates of humanity and suffered me to hide in this room. Duchess, Ithank you for your noble, your self-sacrificing but unavailing desire toshield a guilty man. "

Michael went up to her, took her cold hand and kissed it. Then he turnedagain to the duke. 

"I offer you my apologies for this intrusion, " he said, and the two menbowed to each other. 

"And now, signor, " he said in Italian to the amazed official, "I am atyour service. "

CHAPTER V

 Qui sait tout souffrir peut tout oser. --VAUVENARGUES. 

Michael was imprisoned for the night in a cell attached to the Court ofMandamento, and the next day was sent to Rome to await his trial at the_assise_. 

Early on the second day after he reached Rome the duke came to him. Thetwo men looked fixedly at each other. They exchanged no form ofgreeting. 

The duke made a little sign with his hand, and the warder withdrewoutside the cell door, which he left ajar. 

Then the duke sat down by Michael. 

"I should have come yesterday, " he said in English, "but it took time togain permission, and also"--he nodded towards the door--"to arrange. "

"For God's sake give me details, " said Michael. 

The duke gave them in a low voice. He described in a careful sequencethe exact position of the dead body, the wound, caused by stabbing inthe back, the strong inference that the murdered man had been attackedin the road, and then dragged just inside the Colle Alto garden door. 

"I don't see any reason why he should have gone outside the garden, "said Michael. 

"Neither do I. But the garden door was unlocked. It had been locked asusual, my gardener swears, and the key left in the lock on the inside. Who then opened it, if for some reason the marchese did not open ithimself?"

Michael did not answer. 

"I saw the body before it was moved, " continued the duke. "It was stillwarm. I incline to think the marchese was murdered actually inside thegarden, and that he fell on his face where he stood, and was draggedbehind the hydrangeas. But the _delegato_ thought differently. You willremember, Carstairs, that the dead man had been dragged by the feet. "

"Did I put him on the right side or the left of the door as you go in?"

"On the left. "

"On his face?"

"Yes. "

There was a pause. 

"You had no quarrel with the marchese, I presume?" said the dukesignificantly. 

"On the contrary, " said Michael; "it is not known, but I had. "

"Just so. Just so. About a woman?"

Michael winced. 

"About a horse, " he said. 

"No, " said the duke, with decision. "Think again. Your memory does notserve you. It was about a woman. Was it not a dancing-girl?"

"I am not like that, " said Michael, colouring. 

"It is of no account what you are like, or what you are not like. Whatmatters is that which is quickly believed. A quarrel about a woman isalways believed, especially by women who think all turns on them. Wereyou not in Paris at Easter?"

"I was. "

"Was not the marchese in Paris at Easter?"

"He was. I saw him once at the Opera with the old Duke of Castelfranco. "

"Just so. A quarrel about a dancing-girl at Paris at Easter. That washow it was. "

"You are right, " said Michael, regaining his composure with an effort. "I owed him a grudge. You will be careful to mention this to no one?"

"I will mention it only to one or two women on whom I can rely, " saidthe duke; "and to them only in the strictest confidence. "

Michael nodded. 

Silence fell between them, and he wondered why the duke did not go. Thewarder shifted his feet in the passage. 

Presently the duke began to speak in a low, even voice. 

"I owe you an apology, " he said. "I saw you standing behind the screen, reflected in a little mirror, and for one moment I thought you had doneme a great injury. It was only for a moment. I regained myself quickly. I would have saved you if I could. But I owe you an apology for asuspicion unworthy of either of us. "

"It was natural, " said Michael. He was greatly drawn to this man. 

"I may in some matters be deceived, " continued the duke, "for in my timeI have deceived others, and have not been found out. I don't know whyyou were in my wife's rooms that night. Nevertheless, I clearly know twothings: one, that you did not murder the marchese, and the other, thatthere was nothing wrong between you and my wife. With you her honour wassafe. You and I are combining now to guard only her reputation beforethe world. "

Michael did not answer. He nodded again. 

"At the price, " continued the duke, "probably of your best years. "

"I am content to pay the price, " said Michael. "It was the only thing todo. " Then he coloured like a girl, and raised his eyes to the duke's. "Iwent to her that night to say good-bye, " he said. "That was why thegarden door was unlocked. I love her. I have loved her for years. "

It seemed as if everything between the two men had become transparent. 

"I know it, " said the duke. "She also, the duchess, is in love withyou. "

Michael drew back perceptibly. His manner changed. 

"A little--not much, " continued the duke. "I watched her, when you gaveup yourself. She could have saved you. She could save you still--by aword. But she will not speak it. She appeared to love me a little once. I was not deceived. I knew. She loves you a little now. Why do youdeceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for whom she has apermanent and deep affection--for her very charming self. "

The words fell into the silence of the bare room. Michael's thin hands, tightly clenched, shook a little. 

The duke bent towards him. 

"Is she worth it?" he said, with sudden passion. 

No answer. Michael hid his face in his hands. 

"Is she worth it?" said the duke again. 

Michael looked up suddenly at the duke, and the elder man winced at theexpression in his face. He looked through the duke, through his veileddespair and disillusion, beyond him. 

"Yes, she is worth it, " he said. "You do not understand her because youonly love her in part. I meant to serve her by leaving Rome, but now Ican't leave it. What I can do for her I will. It is no sacrifice--I amglad to do it--to have the chance. I have always wished--to serveher--to put my hands under her feet. "

The sudden radiance in Michael's face passed. He looked downembarrassed, annoyed with himself. 

"There remains then but one other person to be considered, " said theduke, looking closely at him. "The beautiful heroine, the young lover, these are now accommodated. All is _en régle_. But that dull elderlyperson who takes the _rôle_ of husband on these occasions! Is there nota husband somewhere? What of him? Will he indeed fold his arms as on thestage? Will he indeed stand by as serenely as you suppose and suffer aninnocent man to make this sacrifice for the sake of his--honour?"

"He will, only because he must, " said Michael, catching his breath. "Ihad thought of that. He can do nothing. Have I not accused myself? Andhis honour is also hers. They stand and fall together. "

[Illustration: "'IS SHE WORTH IT?' HE SAID WITH SUDDEN PASSION"]

"They stand and fall together, " said the duke slowly. "Yes, that istrue. And he is old. He is finished. He is the head of a great house. His honour is perhaps the only thing that still means anything tohim. Nevertheless, it is strange to me that you think he would consentto keep it at so great a cost, the cost perhaps of twenty years. Thatwere impossible. .. . He could not permit _that_. But--one little year--atmost. That perhaps his conscience might permit. One little year! You areyoung. Supposing he has within him, " he laid his hand on his heart, "that of which his wife does not know, which means that his release is_sure_. Do you understand? Supposing it must come soon--very soon--herrelease--and yours. Perhaps then----" There was a long pause. "Perhapsthen his conscience might suffer him to keep silence. "

Michael's hand made a slight movement. The duke took it in his, and heldit firmly. 

"Listen, " he said at last. "Once when I was young, twenty years ago, Iloved. I too would fain have served a woman, would have put my handsunder her feet. There is always one such a woman in life, but only one. She was to me the world. But I could only trouble her life. She wasmarried. She had children. I knew I ought to go. I meant to go. Sheprayed me to go. I promised her to go--nevertheless I stayed. And atlast--inasmuch as she loved me very much--I broke up her home, her life, her honour, she was separated from her children. She lost all, and thenwhen all was gone she died. The only thing which I could keep from herwas poverty, which would have been nothing to her. She never reproachedme. There is no reproach in love. But--she died in disgrace, and alone. From the first to the last it was her white hands under my feet. Thatwas how I served the one woman I have deeply loved, the one creaturewho deeply loved me. " The duke's voice had become almost inaudible. "Youhave done better than I, " he said. 

Then he kissed Michael on the forehead, and went out. 

They never met again. 

CHAPTER VI

 The year slid like a corpse afloat. --D. G. ROSSETTI. 

And how did it fare with Fay during the days that followed Michael'sarrest?

Much sympathy was felt for her. Lord John, wallowing in the deliciousnovelty of finding eager listeners, went about extolling her courage andunselfishness to the skies. Her conduct was considered perfectly naturaland womanly. No man condemned her for trying to shield her cousin fromthe consequences of his crime. Women said they would have done the same, and envied her her romantic situation. 

And Fay, shut up in her darkened room in her romantic situation--she whoadored romantic situations--what were Fay's thoughts?

There is a travail of soul which toils with hard crying up the darkvalley of decision, and brings forth in anguish the life entrusted toit. Perhaps it is the great renunciation. Perhaps it is only the loyalinevitable deed which is struggling to come forth, to be allowed to livefor our healing and comfort. 

But there is another travail of soul, barren, unavailing, which flingsitself down, and tosses in impotent misery from side to side, from moodto mood, as in a sickly trance. 

Such was Fay's. 

Her decision not to speak had been made in the moment when she had letMichael accuse himself, and she kept silence. But that she did not know. She thought it was still to make. 

"I must speak. I must speak, " she said to herself all through theendless day after Michael's arrest, all through the endless night, untilthe dawn came up behind the ilexes, the tranquil dawn that knew all, andfound her shuddering and wild-eyed. 

"I must speak. I cannot let Michael suffer for me, even to save myreputation. "

_Her reputation!_ How little she had cared for it twenty-four hours ago, when passion clutched the reins!

But now---- The public shame of it--the divorce which in her eyes mustensue--Andrea! Her courteous, sedate, inexorable husband, whose will shecould not bend, whom she could not cajole, whose mind was a closed bookto her; a book which had lain by her hand for three years, which she hadnever had the curiosity to open!--Fay feared her husband, as we all fearwhat we do not understand. He would divorce her--and then---- AndMagdalen at home--and----

A flood of suffocating emotion swept over her, full of ugly swimming andcrawling reptiles, and invertebrate horrors, the inevitable scavengersof the sea of selfish passion. 

Fay shrank back for very life. She could not pass through that flood andlive. Nevertheless she felt herself pushed towards it. 

"But I have no choice. I _must_ speak. He is innocent. He is doing thisto shield me because he loves me. But I also love him, far, far morethan he loves me, and I will prove it. "

Fay went in imagination through a fearful and melodramatic scene, inwhich she revealed everything before a public tribunal. She saw herhusband's face darken against her, her lover's lighten as she saved him. She saw her slender figure standing alone, bearing the whole shock, serene, unshaken. The vision moved her to tears. 

Was it a prophetic vision?

It was quite light now, and she crept to her husband's room. She had notseen him during the previous day. He had been out the whole of it. Shefelt drawn towards him by calamity, by the loneliness of her misery. 

The duke was not asleep. He was lying in bed with his hands claspedbehind his head. His sallow face, worn by a sleepless night, and perhapsby a wounding memory, was turned towards the light, and the new daydealt harshly with it. There were heavy lines under the eyes. The eyeslooked steadily in front of him, plunged deep in a past which hadsomething of the irrevocable tenderness of the dawn in it, the holyreflection of an inalienable love. 

He did not stir as his wife came in. His eyes only moved, resting uponher for a moment, focussing her with difficulty, as if withdrawn fromsomething at a great distance, and then they turned once more to thewindow. 

A pale primrose light had risen above the blue tangled mist of ilexesand olives. The cypresses stood half-veiled in mist, half-sharply clearagainst the stainless pallor of the upper sky. 

"I am so miserable, Andrea. "

He did not speak. 

"I cannot sleep. "

Still no answer. 

"I am convinced that Michael is innocent. "

"It goes without saying. "

"Then they can't convict him, can they?"

"They will convict him, " said the duke, and for a moment he bent hiseyes upon her. "Has he not accused himself?"

"They won't--hang him?"

The duke shrugged his shoulders. He did not think fit to enlighten hiswife's ignorance of the fact that in Italy there is no capitalpunishment. 

"But if he has not done it, and we know he has not, " faltered Fay. 

"He is perhaps shielding someone, " said the duke, "the real murderer. "

"I don't see how that could be. "

"He may have his reasons. The real murderer is perhaps a friend--ora--woman. Your cousin is a romantic. It is always better for a romanticif he had not been born. But generally a female millstone is inreadiness to tie itself round him, and cast him into the sea. The worldis not fitted to him. It is to egotistic persons like you and me, myFrancesca, to whom the world is most admirably adapted. "

"I don't see how the murderer could be a woman. Women don't murder menon the high road. "

"No, not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty isthe high road! But I have known, not once nor twice, women to murder menvery quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die. I am mucholder than you, but you will perhaps also live to see a woman do this, Francesca. And now retire to your room, and let me counsel you to takesome rest. Your beauty needs it. "

She burst into tears. 

"How little you care!" she said between her sobs, "how heartless youare! I will never believe they will convict him. He is innocent, and hisinnocence will come to light. "

"I think the light will not be suffered to fall upon it, " said the duke. 

Afterwards, years afterwards, Fay remembered that conversation withwonder that its significance had escaped her. But at the time she couldsee nothing, feel nothing except her own anguish. 

She left her husband's room. There was no help or sympathy in him. Shewent back to her own room and flung herself face downwards on her bed. Let no one think she did not suffer. 

A faint ray of comfort presently came to her at the thought thatMichael's innocence might after all come to light. It might be proved inspite of himself. 

She would pray incessantly that the real murderer might give himself up, or that suspicion should fall on him, and he should be dragged tojustice. And then, if--_after all_--Michael were convicted and his lifeendangered, then she _must_ speak. But--not till then. Not now when allmight yet go well without her confession. .. . And it was not as if shewere guilty of unfaithfulness. She had not done anything wrong beyondimprudence. Yes, she had certainly been imprudent; that she saw. But shehad done nothing _wrong_. It could not be right to confess to what inpublic opinion amounted to unfaithfulness on her part, and dishonourableconduct on his, when it was not so. They were both innocent. It would betelling a lie to let anyone think either of them could be guilty of sucha sordid crime. It looked sordid now. Why should she drag down his namewith hers into the mud--unless it were absolutely necessary. .. . And shemust remember how distressed Michael would be if she said a word, if sheflung her good name from her, which he had risked all to save. Somesemblance of calm returned to her, as she thus reached the onlyconclusion which the bias of her mind would permit. The stream randocilely in the little groove cut out for it. 

During the days and weeks that followed Fay shut herself up, and prayedincessantly for Michael. 

She prayed all through the interminable interval before the trial. 

"If it goes against him, I will speak, " she said. 

Yet all the time Michael who loved her knew that she would not speak. Her husband who could have loved her, and who watched her struggle withcompassion, knew that she would not speak. Only Fay who did not knowherself believed that she would speak. 

 * * * * *

The day came when the duke gravely informed her that Michael was foundguilty of murder. 

Fay's prayers it seemed had not availed. She prayed no more. There wasno help in God. Probably there was no God to pray to. Her sisterMagdalen seemed to think there was. But how could she tell? Besides, Magdalen had such a calm temperament, and nothing had ever happened tomake her unhappy, or to shake her faith. It was different for Magdalen. 

Evidently there was no justice anywhere, only a blind chance. "The truthwill out, " Fay had said to herself over and over again. She had tried tohave faith. But the truth had not come out. She was being pushed, pushedover the edge of the precipice. Oh, why had Michael fallen in love withher when they were boy and girl! She remembered with horror and disgustthose early days, that exquisite dawn of young passion in the time ofprimroses. It had brought her to _this_--to this horrible place of tearsand shame and shuddering--to these wretched days and hideous nights. Oh, why, why, had he loved her! Why had she let herself love him!

Suddenly she said to herself, "They may reprieve him yet. If hissentence is not commuted to imprisonment I will speak, so help me God Iwill. "

It could never be known whether she would have kept that oath, for thenext day she heard that Michael had been sentenced to fifteen years'imprisonment. Why had Andrea been so cruel as to let her imagine for awhole horrible night that Michael's would be a death sentence, when inItaly it seemed there was no capital punishment as in England? It wasjust like Andrea to torture her needlessly! When the sentence reachedher Fay drew breath. The horrible catastrophe had been averted. To a manof Michael's temperament the living grave to which he was consigned wasinfinitely worse than death. But what was Michael's temperament to Fay?She shut her eyes to the cell of an Italian prison. Michael would live, and in time the truth would come to light, and he would be released. 

She impressed this conviction with tears on his half-brother WentworthMaine, the kind, silent elder brother, Michael's greatest friend, whohad come out to Italy to be near him, and who heard sentence givenagainst him with a set face, and an unshaken belief in his innocence. Even to Wentworth Michael had said nothing, could be induced to say noword. He confessed to the murder. That was all. 

Wentworth, who had never seen Fay before, as she had married just beforehe came to live at his uncle's place in Hampshire near Fay's home, sawthe marks of grief in her lovely face, and was unconsciously drawntowards her. He was shy as only men can be; but he almost forgot it inher sympathetic presence. She came into his isolated, secluded life atthe moment when the barriers of his instinctive timidity and apathy werebroken down by his first real trouble. And he was grateful to her forhaving done her best to save Michael. 

"I shall never forget that, " he said, when he came to bid her good-bye. "There are very few women who would have had the courage andunselfishness to act as you did. "

Fay winced and paled, and he took his leave, bearing away with him agrave admiration for this delicate, sensitive creature, so full oftender compassion for him and Michael. 

He made no attempt to see her again when he returned to Italy somemonths later to visit Michael in prison. To visit Fay on that occasionwould have taken him somewhat out of his way, and Wentworth never wentout of his way, not out of principle, but because such a course neveroccurred to him. He would have liked to see her, in order to tell herabout Michael's condition, and also to deliver in person a message whichMichael had sent to Fay by him. But when he realised that a detour wouldbe necessary in order to accomplish this, he wrote to Fay to tell herwith deep regret that it was impossible for him to see her, gave herMichael's message, and returned to England by the way he came. Nevertheless, he often thought of her, for she was inextricablyassociated with the unspeakable trouble of his life, his brother'sliving death. 

When all was over, and the last sod had--so to speak--been cast uponthat living grave, Fay tried to take up her life again. But she couldnot. She had lost heart. She dared not be alone. She shunned society. Ather earnest request her sister Magdalen came out to her for a time, fromthe home in England, into which she was wedged so tightly. But evenMagdalen's calm presence brought no calm with it, and the deepeningfriendship between her sister and her husband only irritated Fay. Everything irritated Fay. She was ill at ease, restless, feeblysarcastic, impatient. 

There is a peace which passes understanding, and there is an unpeacewhich passes understanding also. Fay did not know, would not know, whyshe was so troubled, so weary of life, so destitute of comfort. 

Had she met the great opportunity of her life, the turning point, andmissed it? I do not think so. It was not for her. 

 * * * * *

A year later the duke died. 

He made a dignified exit. An attack of vertigo to which he was liablecame on when he was on horseback. He was thrown and dragged, and onlysurvived a few days as by a miracle. His wife, who had seen little ofhim during the last year, saw still less of him during the days of hisshort illness. But when the end was close at hand he sent for her, andasked her to remain in a distant recess of his room during the painfulhours. 

"It will be a happier memory for you, " he said gently to her between theparoxysms of suffering, "to think that you were there. "

And so propped high in a great carved bedstead in the octagonal roomwhere the Colle Altos were born, and where, when they could choose, theydied, the duke lay awaiting the end. 

He had received extreme unction. The chanting choir had gone. The priesthad closed his pale fingers upon the crucifix, when he desired to beleft alone with his wife. 

She drew near timidly and stood beside his bed. 

He bent his tranquil, kindly eyes upon her. 

"Good-bye, my Francesca, " he said. "May God and his angels protect you, and give you peace. "

A belated compunction seized her. 

"I wish I had been a better wife to you, Andrea, " she said brokenly, laying her hand on his. 

He made the ghost of a courteous, deprecating gesture, and raised herhand to his lips. The effort exhausted him. He closed his eyes and hishand fell out of hers. 

Through the open window came a sudden waft of hot carnations, a longdrawn breath of the rapturous Italian spring. 

It reached the duke. He stirred slightly, and opened his eyes once more. Once more they fell on Fay, and it seemed to her as if with the lasttouch of his cold lips upon her hand their relation of husband and wifehad ceased. Even at that moment she realised with a sinking sense ofimpotence how slight her hold on him from first to last had been. Clearly he had already forgotten it, passed beyond it, would neverremember it again. 

"It is spring, " he said, looking full at her with tender fixity, and fora moment she thought his mind was wandering. "Spring once more. The sunshines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a yearhe does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will you keep yourcousin Michael in prison?"

And thereupon the duke closed his eyes on this world, and went upon hisway. 

CHAPTER VII

 A bachelor's an unfinished thing . .. He wants somebody to listen to his talk. --EDEN PHILLPOTTS. 

Reader, do you know Barford, in Hampshire? If you don't, I can tell youhow to get to it. You take train from Victoria, and you get out atSaundersfoot. There is nothing at Saundersfoot, except a wilderness oflodgings and a tin station and a high wind. It need not detain an activemind beyond the necessary moment of enquiring by which road it may bemost quickly left. I cannot tell you who Saunders was, nor why thewatering-place was called after his foot. But if you walk steadily awayfrom it for five miles inland, along the white chalky road between thedowns, you will arrive at the little village of Barford. 

There is only one road, so you cannot miss your way. Little twisty lanesfretted with sheep-tracks drop down into it now and then from thebroad-shouldered downs on either side, but take no notice of them. Ifyou persevere, you will in due course see the village of Barford lyingin front of you, which, at a little distance, looks as if it had beencarelessly swept into a crease between the downs, while a few cottagesand houses on the hillside seem to have adhered to the ground, andremained stuck where they were when the sweeping took place. 

After you have passed the pond and the post office, and before you reachthe school, you will see a lodge, and an old Italian iron gateway, flanked by a set of white wooden knobs planted in the ground on eitherside, held together by chains. The white knobs are apparently there inorder to upset carriages as they drive in or out. But very few carriageshave driven in or out during the last two years, except those of theowner of Barford Manor, Wentworth Maine. Wentworth, since he inheritedthe place from his uncle five years ago, had always led a somewhatsecluded life. But during the last two years, ever since hishalf-brother, Michael, had been sentenced and imprisoned in Italy, Wentworth had withdrawn himself even more from the society of hisneighbours. He continued to shoot and hunt, and to do his duties as amagistrate and as a supporter of the Conservative party, but his thin, refined face had a certain worn, pinched look, which spoke of longtracts of solitary unhappiness. And the habit of solitude was growing onhim. 

The old Manor House, standing in its high-walled gardens, its sunny lowrooms looking out across the down, seemed wrapped in an atmosphere ofancient peace, which consorted as ill with the present impression of theplace as does old Gobelin tapestry with a careful modern patch upon itssurface. The patch, however, adroitly copied, is seen to be aninnovation. 

The old house, which had known so much, had sheltered so much, had keptcounsel so long, seemed to resent the artificial peace that its presentowner had somewhat laboriously constructed round himself, within itsmellow, ivied walls. 

There is a fictitious tranquillity which is always on the verge of beingbroken, which depends largely on uninterrupted hours, on confidential, velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence ofthe inharmonious or jarring elements which pervade daily life. 

Such an imitation peace, coy as a fickle mistress, Wentworth cherished. Was it worth all the trouble he took to preserve it, when the real thinglay at his very door?

On this February morning, as he sat looking out across the down, whitein the pale sunshine, the current of his life ran low. He had returnedthe night before from one of his periodical journeys to Italy to visitMichael in his cell. He was tired with the clang and hurry of the longjourney, depressed almost to despair by the renewed realisation of hisbrother's fate. Two years--close on two years, had Michael been inprison. 

In Wentworth's faithful heart that wound never healed. To-day it bledafresh. He bit his lip, and his face quivered. 

 * * * * *

Wentworth was not as handsome as Michael, but, nevertheless, he wasdistinctly good to look at, and the half-brothers, in spite of thefifteen years' difference between their ages, bore a certain superficialresemblance to each other. Wentworth was of middle height, lightly andleanly built, with a high bridge on a rather thin nose, and with narrow, clean grey eyes under light eyelashes. He looked as if he had been madeup of different shades of one colour. His light brown hair had a littlegrey in it, his delicately cut face and nervous hands were both tanned, by persistent exposure to all kinds of weather, to nearly the sameshade of indeterminate brown as his hair. 

You could not look at Wentworth without seeing that he was a man who hadnever even glanced at the ignoble side of life, for whose fastidious, sensitive nature sensual lures had no attraction, a man who could notlie, who could not stoop, whose mind was as clean as his hand, and, foran Englishman, that is saying a good deal. He was manly in a physicalsense. He rode straight, he shot well. He could endure bodily strainwith indifference, though he was not robustly built. He was sane, even-tempered, liable to petty resentments, mildly and resolutelyselfish, except where Michael was concerned, a conscientious and justmaster--at least, just in intention--a patient and respectful son wherepatience and respect had not been easy. 

The strain of scholar and student in him was about evenly mixed withthat of the country gentleman. The result was a certain innate sense ofsuperiority which he was not in the least aware that he showed. He hadno idea that he was considered "fine, " and "thinking a good deal ofhimself, " by the more bucolic of his country neighbours. No one couldsay that Wentworth was childlike, but perhaps he was a little childish. He certainly had a _naïf_ and unshakable belief that the impressions hehad formed as to his own character were shared by others. He supposed itwas recognised by his neighbours that they had a thinker in their midst, and always tacitly occupied the ground which he imagined had beenconceded to him on that account. 

His mother, a beautiful, foolish, whimsical, hard-riding heiress, thelast of a long line, had married the youngest son--the one brilliant, cultivated member--of a family as ancient, as uneducated, and as prosaicas her own. Wentworth was the result of that union. His father had diedbefore his talents were fully recognised: that is to say, just when itwas beginning to be perceived that he was a genius only in his ownclass, and that there were hordes of educated men in the middle classeswho could beat him at every point on his own ground, except in carriageand appearance, and whom no one regarded as specially gifted. Still, inhis own county, among his own friends, and in a society where educationand culture eke out a precarious, interloping existence, and areregarded with distrustful curiosity, Lord Wilfrid Maine lived and died, and was mourned as a genius. 

After many years of uneasy, imprudent widowhood, the widow of the greatman had made a disastrous second marriage, and had died at Michael'sbirth. 

No one had disputed with Wentworth over the possession of Michael. Wentworth, a sedate, self-centred young man of three-and-twenty, ofindependent means, mainly occupied in transcribing the nullity of hisdays in a voluminous diary, had taken charge of him virtually from hisfirst holidays, during which Michael's father had achieved the somewhattedious task of drinking himself to death. Michael's father hadappointed Wentworth as his son's guardian. If it had been a jealousaffection on Wentworth's part, it had also been a deep one. And it hadbeen returned with a single-hearted devotion on Michael's part which hadgradually knit together the hearts of the older and the younger man, asit seemed indissolubly. No one had come between them. Once or twiceWentworth had become uneasy, suspicious of Michael's affection for histutor at Eton, distrustful of the intimacies Michael formed with boys, and, later on, with men of his own age. Wentworth had nipped a few ofthese incipient friendships in the bud. He vaguely felt that each case, judged by its own merits, was undesirable. Some of these friendships hehad not been able to nip. These he ignored; among that number wasMichael's affection for his godfather, the Bishop of Lostford. Michael'sboyish passion for Fay, Wentworth had never divined. It had come aboutduring the last year of his great uncle's life at Barford, which waswithin a few miles of Priesthope, Fay's home. Michael had spent manyweeks at Barford with the old man, who was devoted to him. Everyone hadexpected that he would make Michael his heir, but when he died soonafterwards, it was found he had left the place, in a will dated manyyears back, to Wentworth. If Michael had never mentioned his firstpainful contact with life to Wentworth, it was perhaps partly because heinstinctively felt that the confidence would be coldly received, partlyalso because Michael was a man of few words, to whom speech had nevertaken the shape of relief. 

There had no doubt been wretched moments in Wentworth's devotion toMichael, but nevertheless it had been the best thing so far in hissomewhat colourless existence, with its hesitating essays in otherdirections, its half-hearted withdrawals, its pigeon-holed emotions. Hehad not been half-hearted about Michael. It is perhaps natural that weshould love very deeply those who have had the power to release usmomentarily from the airless prison of our own egotism. How often it isa child's hand which first opens that iron door, and draws us forth intothe sunshine! With Wentworth it had been so. The pure air of themoorland, the scent of the heather and the sea seem indissolubly mingledwith the remembrance of those whom we have loved. For did we not intheir company walk abroad into a new world, breathe a new air, whileSelf, the dingy turnkey, for once slept at his post?

One of the reasons of his devotion to Michael was that Michael'scharacter did not apparently or perceptibly alter. He was very much thesame person in his striped convict's blouse as he had been in his Etonjacket. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had ever realised of whatmaterials that character consisted. Wentworth was of those who never getthe best out of men and women, who never divine and meet, but only comeinto surprised uncomfortable contact with their deeper emotions. Michael's passion of service for Fay would have been a great shock toWentworth had he suspected it. It remained for the duke to perceive thelatent power in Michael, and to be taken instantly into his confidenceon the matter, while Wentworth, unwitting, had remained for life outsidehis brother's mind. 

Some men and women are half conscious that they are thus left out, arecompanions only of "the outer court" of the lives of others. ButWentworth never suspected this, partly because he regarded as friendshipa degree of intimacy which most men and all women regard asacquaintanceship. He did not know there was anything more. Those fromwhom others need much, learn perforce, whether they will or no, to whatheights, to what depths human nature can climb and--fall. But Wentworthwas not a person on whom others made large demands. But if his love forMichael had been his one tangible happiness, it had become now his onereal pain. 

Contrary to all his habits, he sat on, hour after hour, motionless, inert, watching the cloud shadows pass across the down. He tried torouse himself. He told himself that he must settle back into his oldoccupations. He must get forward with his history of Sussex, and writeup his diary. He must come to some decision about the allotment schemeon his property in Saundersfoot. He must go over and help ColonelBellairs not to make a fool of himself about the disputed right of wayacross his property where it joined Wentworth's own land. ColonelBellairs always bungled into business matters of the simplest nature asa bumble bee bungles into a spider's web. For Colonel Bellairs to touchbusiness of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly andinextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His merepresence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, withhimself struggling in the middle. 

Wentworth must save the old autocrat from putting himself in the wrong, when he was so plainly in the right. Wentworth must at any rate, if hecould do nothing else this morning, read his letters, which hadaccumulated during his short absence. 

Without moving from his chair he turned over, with a groan, the pile ofenvelopes waiting for him at his elbow. Invitations, bills, tenants'complaints, an unexpected dividend. It was all one to him. The Bishopof Lostford--so his secretary wrote--accepted Wentworth's invitation todine and sleep at Barford that night, after holding a confirmation atSaundersfoot. Wentworth had forgotten he had asked him. Very well, hemust remember to order a room to be got ready. That was all. Asubscription earnestly solicited by the daughter of a neighbouringclergyman for a parish library. Why could he not be left in peace? Oh!what was the use of anything--of life, health, money, intellect, ifexistence was always to be like this, if every day was to be like this, only like this? This weary, dry-as-dust grind, this making a handful ofbricks out of a cartload of straw, this distaste and fatigue, and senseof being duped by satisfaction, which was only another form ofdissatisfaction, after all. What was the use of living exactly as youliked, _if you did not like it?_ Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! Heforgot that he had often been nearly as miserable as this when Michaelhad been free and happy. Not quite, but nearly. Now he attributed thewhole of his recurrent wretchedness, which was largely temperamental, tohis distress about his brother's fate. 

That wound, never healed, bled afresh. Who felt for him in his trouble?Who, among all his friends, cared, or understood? No one. That was theway of the world. 

Fay's sweet, forlorn face, snowdrop pale under its long black veil, rosesuddenly before him, as he had seen it some weeks ago, when he had mether walking in the woods near her father's house. She had gone back toher old home after the duke's death. She, at least, had grieved for himand Michael with an intensity which he had never forgotten. Even in herwidowed desolation she had remembered Michael, and always asked afterhim when Wentworth went over to Priesthope. And Wentworth was oftenthere, for one reason or another. Michael, too, had asked after her, andhad sent her a message by his brother. Should he go over to-day anddeliver it in person? Among his letters was a scrawling, illegible note, already several days old, from Colonel Bellairs, Fay's father, about theright of way. The matter, it seemed, was more urgent than Wentworth hadrealised. Any matter pertaining to Colonel Bellairs was always, in theopinion of the latter, of momentous urgency. 

Colonel Bellairs asked Wentworth to come over to luncheon the first dayhe could, and to walk over the debatable ground with him. 

Wentworth looked at his watch, started up and rang the bell, and orderedhis cob Conrad to be brought round at once. 

CHAPTER VIII

 Le plus grand élément des mauvaises actions secrètes, des lâchetés inconnues, est peut-être un honheur incomplet. 

 --BALZAC. 

When Fay, in her panic-stricken widowhood, had fled back to her old homein Hampshire, she found all very much as she had left it, except thather father's hair was damply dyed, her sister Magdalen's frankly grey, and the pigtail of Bessie, the youngest daughter, was now an imposingbronze coil in the nape of her neck. 

But if little else was radically changed in the old home except the hairof the family, nevertheless, the whole place had somehow declined andshrunk in Fay's eyes during the three years of her marriage. The dearold gabled Tudor house, with its twisted chimneys, looked much the samefrom the outside, but within, in spite of its wealth of old pictures andcabinets and china, it had contracted the dim, melancholy aspect whichis the result of prolonged scarcity of money. Nothing had been spent onthe place for years. Magdalen seemed to have faded together with thecurtains, and the darned carpets, and the bleached chintzes. 

Colonel Bellairs alone, a handsome man of sixty, had remained remarkablyyoung for his age. The balance, however, was made even by the fact thatthose who lived with him grew old before their time. It had been sowith his wife. It was obviously so with his eldest daughter. Many men assuperficially affectionate as Colonel Bellairs, and at heart as callous, as exacting and as inconsiderate, have made endurable husbands. ButColonel Bellairs was not only irresolute and vacillating and incapableof even the most necessary decisions, but he was an inveterate enemy ofall decision on the part of others, inimical to all suggestedarrangements or plans for household convenience. The words "springcleaning" could never be mentioned in his presence. The thing itselfcould only be achieved by stealth. A month at the seaside for the sakeof the children was a subject that could not be approached. All smallfeminine social arrangements, dependent for their accomplishment on theuse of the horses, were mown down like grass. Colonel Bellairs hatedwhat he called "living by clockwork. "

You may read, if you care to do so, in the faces of many gentle-temperedand apparently prosperous married women, an enormous fatigue. Wicked, blood-curdling husbands do not bring this look into women's faces. It ismen like Colonel Bellairs who hold the recipe for calling it intoexistence. 

Mrs. Bellairs, a beautiful woman, with high spirits, but nothigh-spirited, became more and more silent and apathetic year by year, yielded more and more and more, yielded at last without expostulationequally at every point, when she should have yielded and when she shouldhave stood firm, yielded at last even where her children's health andwell-being were concerned. 

Apathy and health are seldom housemates for long together. Mrs. Bellairsgradually declined from her chair to her sofa. She made no effort tolive after her youngest daughter was born. She could have done so if shehad wished it, but she seemed to have no wish on the subject, or on anyother subject. There is an Arabian proverb which seems to embody in itall the melancholy of the desert, and Mrs. Bellairs exemplified it. "Itis better to sit than to stand. It is better to lie than to sit. It isbetter to sleep than to lie. It is better to die than to sleep. "

Fay had been glad enough, as we have seen, to escape from home bymarriage. No such way of escape had apparently presented itself for theelder sister. As Magdalen and Fay sat together on the terrace in frontof the house, the contrast between the sisters was more marked than theten years' difference of age seemed to warrant. 

Magdalen was a tall, thin woman of thirty-five, who looked older thanher age. She had evidently been extremely pretty once. Perhaps she mighteven have been young once. But it must have been a long time ago. Shewas a faded, distinguished-looking person, with a slight stoop, and aworn, delicately-featured face, and humorous, tranquil eyes. Her thickhair was grey. She looked as if she had borne for many years the bruntof continued ill health, or the ill health of others, as if she had beenobliged to lift heavy weights too young. Perhaps she had. Everythingabout her personality seemed fragile except her peace of mind. You couldnot look at Magdalen without seeing that she was a happy creature. 

But very few did look at her when Fay was beside her. Fay's beauty hadincreased in some ways and diminished in others during the year of herwidowhood. She had become slightly thinner and paler, but not to theextent when beauty suffers wrong. A very young face can bear a wornlook, and even have its charm enhanced thereby. The mark of suffering onFay's childlike face and in her deep violet eyes had brought with it anexpression which might easily be mistaken for spirituality, especiallyby those--and they are very many--to whom a pallid and attenuated aspectare the outward signs of spirituality. 

That she was miserable was obvious. _But why was she so restless?_Magdalen had often silently asked herself that question during the pastyear. Even Bessie, the youngest sister, had noticed Fay's continualrestlessness and had commented on it, had advised her sister to embarkon a course of reading, and to endeavour to interest herself in work forothers. 

She had also, with the untempered candour of eighteen, suggested to Faythat she should cease to make a slave of Magdalen. It is hardlynecessary to add that Fay and Bessie did not materially increase the sumof each other's happiness. 

As Magdalen and Fay were sitting together in the sun the door into thegarden opened, and Bessie stalked slowly towards them across the grass, in a short cycling skirt. 

"It surely is not necessary to be quite so badly dressed as Bessie, "said Fay with instant irritation. "If she must wear one of those hideousshort skirts, it might at any rate be well cut. I have told her so oftenenough. "

Since Bessie had been guilty of the enormity of suggesting a course ofreading, Fay had made many sarcastic comments on Bessie's direfulclothes. 

"I must advise her to take dress more seriously, " said Magdalenabsently. She was depressed by a faint misgiving about Bessie. Bessiewas to have lunched to-day with congenial archæological friends, intelligent owners of interesting fossils. Nevertheless, whenWentworth's cob Conrad was seen courteously allowing himself to beconducted to the stable she instantly decided to lunch at home, and tovisit her friends when they were not expecting her, in the afternoon. _It could make no difference to them_, she had told Magdalen, who shookher head over that well-known phrase, which Colonel Bellairs had longsince established as "a household word. " Bessie was not to be moved byMagdalen's disapproval, however. She retired to her chamber, donned acertain enamel brooch which she only wore on Sundays, and appeared atluncheon. 

It was not a particularly cheerful meal. Wentworth was silent anddepressed. Colonel Bellairs did not for an instant cease to speak aboutthe right of way during the whole of luncheon, even when his back wasturned while he was bending over a ham on the sideboard. And the momentluncheon was over he had marched Wentworth off to the scene of thedispute. 

Magdalen was vaguely uneasy at the tiny incident of Bessie's change ofplan, and was glad it had escaped Fay's notice. Most things about Bessiedid escape Fay's notice except her clothes. Bessie was not at eighteenan ingratiating person. No one had ever called her the sunbeam of thehome. She had preserved throughout her solemn childhood and flintyyouth a sort of resentful protest against the attitude of her family ather advent, namely, that she was not wanted. Her mother had died at herbirth, and for several years afterwards her father had studiouslyignored her presence in the house, not without a sense of melancholysatisfaction at this proof of his devotion to her mother. 

"No, no. It may be unreasonable. It may be foolish, " he was wont to sayto friends who had not accused him of unreasonableness, "but don't askme to be fond of that child. I can't look at her without rememberingwhat her birth cost me. "

Bessie was a fine, strong young woman, with a perfectly impassivehandsome face--no Bellairs could achieve plainness--and the manner ofone who moves among fellow creatures who do not come up to the standardof conduct which she has selected as the lowest permissible to herselfand others. Bessie had not so far evinced a preference for anyone in herown family circle, or outside it. Her affections consisted so far of adistinct dislike of and contempt for her father. She had accorded to Faya solemn compassion when first the latter returned to Priesthope. Indeed, the estrangement between the sisters, brought about by thesuggested course of reading, had been the unfortunate result of acogitating pity on Bessie's part for the lamentable want of regulationof Fay's mind. 

Bessie liked Magdalen, though she disapproved of her manner of life asweak and illogical. You could not love Bessie any more than you couldlove an ironclad. She bore the same resemblance to a woman that an ironbuilding does to a house. She was not in reality harder than tin orgranite or asphalt, or her father; but it would not be an over-statementto suggest that she lacked softness. 

She advanced with precision to the bench on which her sisters weresitting. 

"I am now going to cycle to the Carters', " she said to Magdalen. "Iforgot to mention till this moment that I met Aunt Mary this morning atthe Wind Farm, and that she gave me a letter for father, and said thatshe and Aunt Aggie were lunching with the Copes. "

"Poor Copes!" ejaculated Fay. 

"And would both come on here afterwards to an early tea, " continuedBessie, taking no notice of the interruption. "Aunt Mary desired thatyou would not have hot scones for tea, as Aunt Aggie is always depressedafter them. She said there was no objection to them cold, and buttered, but not hot. "

"I shall have tea in my own room then, " once more broke in Fay. "I can'tstand Aunt Mary. She is always preaching at me. "

"It is a pity that Fay is disinclined to share the undoubted burden ofentertaining our relatives, " said Bessie, addressing herself exclusivelyto Magdalen, "as I do not feel able to defer my visit to the Carters anylonger. "

Magdalen struggled hard against a smile, and kept it under. 

"Possibly the aunts are coming over to consult father about a privatematter, " she said. "The letter beforehand to prepare his mind looks likeit. So it would be best if you and Fay were not there. The aunts'affairs generally require the deepest secrecy. "

"And then father lets it all out at dinner before the servants, " saidBessie over her shoulder as she departed. 

When she was out of hearing Fay said with exasperation, "You are notwise to give way so much to Bessie, Magdalen. She is selfishness itself. Why did not you insist on her staying and helping with the aunts? Shenever considers you. "

Magdalen was silent. 

"I hate sitting here with the house staring at me, " said Fay. "I can'tthink why you are so fond of this bench. Let us go into the beechavenue. "

For a long time past Magdalen had noticed that Fay always wanted to besomewhere she was not. 

They went in silence through the little wood that bounded the gardens, and passed into the great, bare, grey aisle of the beech avenue. 

In a past generation a wide drive had led through this avenue to thehouse. It had been the south approach to Priesthope. But in theseimpoverished days, the road, with its sweep of turf on either side, hadbeen neglected, and was now little more than a mossy cart-rut, with afallen tree across it. 

The two sisters sat down on a crooked arm of the fallen tree. 

It was a soft, tranquil afternoon, flooded with meek February sunshine. Far away between the green-grey trunks of the trees, the sea glintedlike a silver ribbon. Everything was very still, with the stillness setdeep in peace of one who loves and awaits in awe love's next word. Theearth lay in the sunshine, and listened for the whisper of spring. Faintbirdnotes threaded the high windless spaces near the tree-tops. 

"Look!" said Magdalen, "the first crocus. "

What is there, what can there be in the first yellow crocus peeringagainst the brown earth, that can reach with instant healing, like achild's "soft absolving touch, " the inflamed, aching, unrest of thespirit? It does not seek to comfort us. Then how does comfort reachthrough with the crocus; as if the whole under-world were peace and joy, and were breaking through the thin sod to enfold us?

Fay looked at the flame-pure, upturned face of the little forerunner, absently at first, and then with growing absorption, until two largetears slowly welled up into her eyes and blotted it out. She shivered, and crept a little closer to her sister. She felt alienated from sheknew not what, dreadfully cold and alone in the sunshine, with her cheekagainst her sister's shoulder. Though she did not realise it, somethinglong frost-bound in her mind was yielding, shifting, breaking up. Thefirst miserable shudder of the thaw was upon her. 

She glanced up at Magdalen, who was looking into the heart of thecrocus, and a sudden anger seized her at the still rapture of hersister's face. The contrast between her own gnawing misery andMagdalen's serenity cut her like a knife. What right had Magdalen to beso happy? Why should she have been exempted from all trouble? What hadshe done that anguish could never reach her? Fay's love for Magdalen, and at this time Magdalen was the only person for whom she had anyaffection--had all the violent recoils, the mutinous anger, the suddendesire to wound on the one side, all the tender patience and grievedunderstanding on the other which are the outcome of a real attachmentbetween a bond woman and a free one. 

The one craved, the other relinquished; the one was consumed withunrest, the other had reached some inner stronghold of peace. The onewas imprisoned in self, the other was freed, released. The one madedemands, the other was willing to serve. It seems as if only the freecan serve. 

"I am very miserable, " said Fay suddenly. She was pushed once more bythe same blind impulse that had taken her to her husband's room thenight after Michael's arrest. 

She used almost the same words. And as the duke had made no answer then, so Magdalen made none now. She had not lived in the same house with Fayfor nearly a year for nothing. 

Magdalen's silence acted as a goad. 

"You think, and father thinks, " continued Fay, her voice shaking, "youare all blinder one than the other, that it's Andrea I'm grieving for. It's not. "

"I know that, " said Magdalen. "You never cared much about him. I haveoften wondered what it could be that was distressing you so deeply. "

Fay winced. Magdalen had noticed something, after all. 

"I have sometimes feared, "--continued Magdalen with the deliberation ofone who has long since made up her mind not to speak until the openingcomes, and not to be silent when it does come--"I have sometimes fearedthat your heart was locked up in an Italian prison. "

"My heart!" said Fay, and her visible astonishment at a not veryastonishing inference was not lost on Magdalen. "My heart!" she laughedbitterly. "Do you really suppose after all I've suffered, all I've gonethrough, that I'm so silly as to be in love with anyone in prison or outof it? I suppose you mean poor dear Michael. I hate men, and theirselfish, stupid, blundering ways. "

Fay had often alluded to the larger sex _en bloc_ as blunderers sincethe night she had told Michael to stand behind the screen. 

"There are two blunderers coming towards us now, " said Magdalen, as thedistant figures of Colonel Bellairs and Wentworth appeared in the beechavenue. 

Both women experienced a distinct sense of relief. 

Colonel Bellairs had many qualities as a parent which made him a kind offorcing-house for the development of virtue in those of his own family. He was as guano spread over the roots of the patience of others; as apruning hook to their selfishness. But he had one great compensatingquality as a father. He never for one moment thought that any man, however young, visited the house except for the refreshment and solaceof his own society. He never encouraged anyone to come with a view tobecoming acquainted with his daughters. His own problematic re-marriage, often discussed in all its pros and cons with Magdalen, was the onlypossible alliance that ever occupied his thoughts. In this respect hewas an ideal parent in his daughters' eyes, an inhumanly selfish oneaccording to his two sisters, Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs, at thismoment stepping out towards Priesthope from the north lodge. 

[Illustration: "'YOU ARE ALL BLINDER ONE THAN THE OTHER, THAT IT'SANDREA I'M GRIEVING FOR'"]

Wentworth had almost given up hope of a word with Fay until he saw hersitting with Magdalen in the avenue. The world would be a much harderplace than it already is for women to live in if men concealed theirfeelings. A reverent and assiduous study of the nobler sex leads thestudent to believe that they imagine they conceal them. But it is womenwho early in life are taught to acquire this art, at any rate when theyare bored. Half the happy married women of our acquaintance would be thewidows of determined suicides if women allowed it to appear when theywere bored as quickly as men do. 

Wentworth had no idea that he was not an impassable barrier of reserve. He often said of himself: "I am a very reserved man, I know. It is afault of character. I regret it, but I can't help it. I have not the artof chatting about my deepest feelings at five o'clock tea as a man mustdo who lays himself out to be popular with women. What I feel it is mynature to conceal. "

His reserve on this occasion was concentrated in his face, whichremained unmoved. But the lofty impassiveness on which he prided himselfdid not reach down to his legs. Those members, which had been draggingthemselves in a sort of feeble semi-paralysis in the wake of theruthless Colonel Bellairs, now straightened themselves, and gave signsof returning energy. Magdalen from a distance noted the change. Wentworth for the first time was interested in what Colonel Bellairswas saying. His own voice, which had become almost extinct, revived. There was also a hint of spring in the air. Not being a person of muchself-knowledge, he mentioned that fact to Colonel Bellairs. 

Colonel Bellairs looked at him with the suspicion which appears to bethe one light shadow that lies across the sunny life of the bore. 

"I said so half an hour ago, " he remarked severely, "when we wereinspecting my new manure tanks, and you said you did not notice it. "

"You were right all the same, " said the younger man. 

What an interest would be added to life if it were possible to ascertainhow many thousands of times people like Colonel Bellairs are limplyassured that they are in the right! The mistake of statistics is thatthey are always compiled on such dull subjects. Who cares to know howmany infants are born, and how many deaf mutes exist? But we shoulddevour statistics, we should read nothing else if only they dealt withmatters of real interest: if they recorded how often Mr. Simpson, thedecadent poet, had said he was "a child of nature, " how often, if ever, the Duchess of Inveraven and Mr. Brown, the junior curate atSalvage-on-Sea, had owned they had been in the wrong; whether it wastrue that an Archbishop had ever really said "I am sorry" without an"if" after it, and, if so, on what occasion; and whether any novelistexists who has not affirmed at least five hundred times that criticismis a lost art. 

"Is the right-of-way dispute progressing?" said Magdalen to her fatheras the two men came up and stopped in front of them. 

Colonel Bellairs implied that it would shortly be arranged, as hisintellect was being applied to the subject. 

Wentworth said emphatically, for about the thirtieth time, that theright of a footpath, or church path across the domain was wellestablished and could not be set aside; but that whether it was also abridle path was the moot point; and whether Colonel Bellairs wasjustified in his recent erection of a five-barred stile. 

(I may as well add here, for fear the subject should escape my mindlater on, that at the time of these pages going to press the dispute, often on the verge of a settlement, had reached a further and acuterstage, being complicated by Colonel Bellairs' sudden denial even of achurch path, to the legal existence of which he had previously agreed inwriting. )

Wentworth trod upon the crocus and said he must be going home. 

"We will walk back to the house with you, " said Magdalen, and she ledthe way with her father. 

"I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary, " he said to Magdalen as theywalked on, "that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood. Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, thataccursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't standit. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you. "

"I will tell her. "

Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean on Magdalen. Shewas fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. _On ne peuts'appuyer que contre ce qui résiste. _ Though Colonel Bellairs did notknow it, he was always wanting to _s'appuyer_. He had found in hisdaughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found inhis wife, who had not resisted him. 

"Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary thismorning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and iscoming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have amoment's peace?"

Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, upright hand, marked _Private_, at the top. 

"I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me managemine, " he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen. 

"I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private. '"

"Read it. Read it, " said Colonel Bellairs irritably. 

Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end asshe and her father walked slowly back to the house. 

It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt withColonel Bellairs' "obvious duty" with regard to the man to whom Magdalenhad been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to twodeaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom. 

"Well! well!" said Colonel Bellairs at intervals, more interested thanhe wished to appear. "What do you think of it? We noticed in the papersa week ago that he had succeeded his cousin. "

"Wait a minute, father. I have only come to my lacerated affections. "

"How slow you are! Your Aunt Mary does pound away. She has a touch aslight as a coal-sack. The wonder to me is how she ever captured poor oldBlore. "

"Perhaps she did it by letter. She writes uncommonly well. 'Magdalen'sjoyless homelife of incessant, unselfish service. ' That is very wellput, isn't it? And so is this: 'It is your duty now to inform him thatyou withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and toinvite him to Priesthope. ' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warnyou solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless youstand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next. Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and leavethe Almighty in charge. "

"Is that all you've got to say?" said Colonel Bellairs, somewhatsurprised. "Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? Idon't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had novisible means of subsistence. "

"And no intention of making any. "

"Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and--time slips by"--(ithad indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almostnone, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shallshortly marry again. " Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged inintrospection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous onmy part to ignore the past and ask him to the house. "

"After forbidding him to come to it?"

Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper. 

"I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in thishouse. If he does not care to come, he can stay away. "

"Ask him, in that case. "

"You agree that on the whole that would be best. "

"Not at all. I think it extremely undignified on your part, and that itis a pity that you should be so swayed by Aunt Mary as to go by herjudgment instead of your own. You never thought of asking him till shetried to coerce you into it. "

"I am not going to be coerced by any woman, much less by that man inpetticoats, " said Colonel Bellairs wrathfully. "But she will be heredirectly. H'm! What on earth am I to say to her if I _don't_ ask him?. .. She will be here directly. "

They had reached Colonel Bellairs' study by now, and he sat down heavilyin his old leather arm-chair. Magdalen was standing on the hearthrugnear him with the letter in her hand. She held it over the fire, henodded, and she dropped it in. 

"Perhaps, Magdalen, " said her father with dignity, "it would be just aswell if I kept clear of the whole affair. Women manage these littlethings best among themselves. I would rather not be dragged in. Anythingon that subject, any discussion, or interchange of opinion would comebest from _you_, eh?"

"I think so, father. "

Colonel Bellairs watched his sister's letter burn, with the fixed eye ofone about to drop off into an habitual nap. 

The asphyxiating atmosphere of a man's room, where a window is neveropened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and whereyears of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped itsoccupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usualsoporific charm. 

"Took Mary a long time to write, " he said, with a sleepy chuckle, as thelast vestige disappeared of the laboriously constructed missive whichLady Blore had sat up half the previous night, with gold-rimmedpince-nez on Roman nose to copy out by her bedroom candle, and had sentto pave the way before her strong destructive feet. 

The footman came in. 

"Lady Blore and Miss Bellairs are in the drawing-room. "

"Just pull the blinds half-way down before you go, " said ColonelBellairs to Magdalen, "and remember other people have got letters towrite as well as her, and I'm not to be disturbed on any account. "

CHAPTER IX

 On garde longtemps son premier amant quand on n'en prend point de second. --LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. 

The two aunts meanwhile were sitting waiting in the drawing-room. 

When Mrs. Bellairs died, which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had beenbrought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a smallsquare of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphoratedoil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of theBellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became whatthey called supports to their brother's motherless children. 

They were far from being broken reeds which pierce the hands of thosewho lean on them. 

No one had ever leaned on Aunt Mary or Aunt Aggie. Aunt Mary mightperhaps be likened to one of those stout beams which have a tendency topush ruthlessly through the tottering outer wall which they are supposedto prop, into the inner chamber of the tenement which has the misfortuneto be the object of their good offices. 

She had contracted, not in her first youth, a matrimonial alliance--itcould hardly be called a marriage--with a general, distinguished inIndia and obscure everywhere else, who had built a villa called "TheTowers" a few miles from Priesthope. The marriage had taken place afteryears of half-gratified reluctance on his part and indomitable crudepersistence on hers. In short it was what is generally called "a longattachment, " and proves beyond dispute, what is already proven to thehilt, that the sterner sex prefer to have their affairs of the heartarranged for them; that once lost sight of they are mislaid, once letloose on parole they never return, once captured they endeavour toescape; that even when finally married nothing short of the amputationof all external interests will detain them within the sacred precinctsof THE HOME. 

Aunt Mary had had trouble with her general, but though she was notactician, she was herself a general. His engagement to her had onlybeen the first of the crushing defeats which she had inflicted upon him. Now at last at The Towers a deathlike peace reigned. Sir John, severelytried by rheumatism and advancing years, had, so to speak, given up hissword. 

His wife's magnanimity had provided him with what she consideredsuitable amusements and occupations. He was told that he took aninterest in breeding pigs, and he, who had once ruled a province ratherlarger than England, might now be seen on fine mornings tottering out, tilted forward on his stick, making the tour of the farmyard, andhanging over the low wall of his model pigstyes. 

In Magdalen's recollections, Aunt Mary had always looked exactly thesame, the same strong, tall, robust, large-featured, handsome woman, with black hair, and round, black, unwinking eyes, who invariablydressed in black and wore a bonnet. Even under the cedar at The TowersAunt Mary wore a bonnet. When she employed herself in a majesticgardening the sun was shaded from her Roman nose by a black satinparasol. 

There are some men and women whom it is monstrous to suppose ever werechildren, ever young, ever different from what they are now. Whateverlaws of human nature may rule the birth of others, they, at any rate, like the phœnix, sprang full grown, middle aged, in a frock coat, or abugled silk gown, from some charred heap of unconsenting parental ashes. 

Aunt Mary was no doubt one of these. 

Near her, on the edge of her chair, perhaps not so entirely on the edgeof it as at first appeared, sat Aunt Aggie. Aunt Aggie looked as if shehad been coloured by some mistake from a palette prepared to depict aLondon fog. 

Her eyes were greyish yellow, like her eyelashes, like her hair, --atleast her front hair, --like her eyebrows, and her complexion. She wasshort and stout. She called slender people skeletons. Her gown, whichwas invariably of some greyish, drabbish, neutral-tinted material, always cocked up a little in front to show two large, flat, soft-lookingfeet. 

Aunt Aggie began quite narrow at the top. Her forehead was the thin edgeof the wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the firstindication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in hercheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gavethe impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made partof life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by areligious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of backseat, in the Divine consciousness. 

It would not be fair to Aunt Aggie to omit to mention, especially as shecontinually made veiled allusions to the subject herself, that she alsohad known the tender passion. There had been an entanglement in heryouth with a High Church archdeacon. But we all know how indefinite, howinconclusive, how meagre in practical results archidiaconal conferencesare apt to be! After one of them it was discovered that the entanglementwas all on Aunt Aggie's side. The archdeacon remained unenmeshed. Undersevere pressure from Lady Blore, then an indomitable bride of forty, flushed by recent victory, he even went so far as to say that his onlybride was the Church. It was after this disheartening statement thatAunt Aggie found herself drawn towards an evangelical and purer form ofreligion. The Archdeacon subsequently married, or rather became guiltyof ecclesiastical bigamy. But Aunt Aggie throughout life retainedpessimistic views respecting the celibacy of the clergy. 

 * * * * *

Aunt Mary bestowed a strong businesslike peck, emphasized by contactwith the point of a stone-cold nose, on Magdalen's cheek. Aunt Aggiegreeted her niece with small inarticulate cluckings of affection. Haveyou ever kissed a tepid poached egg? Then you know what it is to saluteAunt Aggie's cheek. 

"Where are Fay and Bessie?" enquired Aunt Mary instantly. When the auntsannounced their coming, which was invariably at an hour's notice, theyalways expected to find the whole family, including Colonel Bellairs, waiting indoors to receive them. This expectation was never realised, but the annoyance that invariably followed had retained through manyyears the dew of its youth. 

"Bessie and Fay are out. I am expecting them back every moment. "

"They will probably be later than usual to-day, " said Aunt Mary grimly, with the half-conscious intuition of those whom others avoid. Did sheknow that with the exception of Sir John, whose vanity had led him totake refuge in a _cul-de-sac_, her fellow creatures rushed out by backdoors, threw themselves out of windows, hid behind haystacks, hadletters to write, were ordered by their doctors to rest, whenever sheappeared? Did she know? One thing was certain. Magdalen was one of thevery few persons who had never avoided her, who at times openly soughther society. And Aunt Mary, though she would have been ashamed to ownit, loved Magdalen. She intended that Magdalen should live with her someday at the Towers, as an unpaid companion, when Sir John and Aunt Aggiehad entered into peace. 

"And your father, " continued Aunt Mary. "Did he get my letter? I intendto have a serious conversation with him after tea. "

"Father has this moment come in, and he asked me to tell you that he hadbusiness letters which he is obliged to write. "

"I know what _that_ means. "

"Oh! Mary!" interpolated Aunt Aggie eagerly. "You forget that Algernonalways, from the time he was a young man, left his letters to the lastmoment. All the Bellairs do. "

The Bellairs had other unique family characteristics, as peculiar tothemselves as their choice of time for grappling with theircorrespondence, which Aunt Aggie was never tired of quoting. "Bellairsare always late for breakfast. It is no kind of use finding fault withBessie about it. I was just the same at her age. "

Aunt Aggie went through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker, which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned mannersmall statements which seldom contained a new or healing view ofexisting difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" betweencontending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he couldnot fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was notappropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird. 

"I intend to see your father after tea, " repeated Aunt Mary, taking nonotice of her sister's remark. 

"Father is much worried about the right of way, " continued Magdalen. "Heshowed me your most kind letter about myself, and----"

"Showed it to _you_!" said Aunt Mary, becoming purple. "It was notintended for any eye except your father's. "

"Confidence between a father and his child, " began Aunt Aggie, claspingher stout little hands, and looking eagerly from her sister to herniece. 

Magdalen went on tranquilly. "It only told me what I knew before, AuntMary, that you have my welfare at heart. Father said that he thought itwould be best if you and I talked the matter over. I agreed with him. It would be easier for me to discuss it with you. It would not be forthe first time. "

It would not indeed!

"Aggie, " said Aunt Mary instantly, "you expressed a wish on your wayhere to see Bessie's fossils. You will go to the schoolroom andinvestigate them. "

"I think they are kept locked, " said Aunt Aggie faintly. She longed tostay. She had guessed the subject of the letter. She took in a loveaffair the fevered interest with which the unmarried approach thesubject. 

"They are unlocked, " said Aunt Mary with decision. 

Aunt Aggie swallowed the remains of her tea, and holding a little bittenbun in her hand slid out of the room. She never openly opposed hersister, with whom she lived part of the year when she let her cottage atSaundersfoot to relations in need of sea air. 

An unmistakable aspect of concentration deepened in Aunt Mary's finecountenance. 

"Magdalen, " she said at once, "in the presence of that weaksentimentalist my lips are closed. But now that we are alone, and as itis your wish to reopen the subject, it is my duty to inform myselfwhether anything has transpired about Everard Constable--LordLossiemouth, as I suppose he now is. "

"Nothing, " said Magdalen with a calmness that was almost cheerful. Ifshe was as sensitive as she looked she had a marvellous power ofconcealing it. She never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. Sheseldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed thatanimals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of theirenvironment. A sole's eye (or is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round itshead regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted therethan on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mentalfeatures of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen hadadapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, with which it was obviousthat she had almost nothing in common except her name. 

Aunt Mary loved Magdalen in a way, yet she never spared her thediscussion of that long-ago attachment of her youth, violentlymismanaged by Colonel Bellairs. The rose of Aunt Mary's real affectionhad a little scent, but it was set round with thorns. 

"He has behaved disgracefully, " she said, looking with anger anddisappointment at her niece's faded face. 

"We have discussed that before, " said Magdalen tranquilly. "I, as youknow, do not blame him. But it is all a hundred years ago, and betterforgotten. "

"He was poor then. No one ever thought he would succeed with two livesbetween. But it is different now that he is wealthy and in a position tomarry. "

"He has never been in a position to marry me, " said Magdalen, "becausehe never cared enough for me to make an effort on my behalf. That wasnot his fault. He mistook a romantic admiration for love, and naturallyfound it would not work. How could it? It was not necessary to turnheaven and earth to gain me. But it _was_ necessary to turn a few smallstones. He could not turn them. "

"Well, at any rate, he asked you, and you accepted him. "

"A hundred years ago. "

"And you have waited for him ever since. "

"Not at all. I am not waiting for him or for anyone. "

"You would have married Mr. Grenfell if it had not been for Everard. "

"Perhaps I should have married Everard if it had not been for Everard, "said Magdalen. 

It seemed as if nothing could shake her dispassionate view of thematter. 

"Your feelings were certainly engaged, Magdalen. There is no use indenying that. "

"Have I ever denied it?"

Aunt Mary was silent for a moment, but her under lip was ominouslythrust out. She was not thinking of what Magdalen had said. If she hadever listened to the remarks of others when they differed from her, shewould not have become Lady Blore. She was only silent because she wasrallying her forces. 

"A woman's hands become talons when they try to hold on to a man when hewants to get away, " said Magdalen gently. 

Aunt Mary turned on her niece an opaque eye that saw nothing beyond theowner's views. 

"Something ought to be done, " she said with emphasis. "After all, yourfather dismissed him. I shall advise your father to write to him, and ifhe does not--I shall write to him myself. "

"I hope you will not do that, " said Magdalen. "Do you remember what asubject for gossip it was at the time? When father became angry withEverard he told everyone, and it became a sort of loud turmoil. Theservants knew, the parish knew, the whole county knew that I had had adisappointment. I have remained ever since in the eyes of the neighboursa sort of blighted creature, a victim of the heartlessness of man. A newedition of that old story now that my hair is grey would be, I think, alittle out of place. I had hoped----"

The door was suddenly thrown open, and Bessie marched into the room withAunt Aggie hanging nervously at her heels. 

"I came back as quickly as I could from the Carters' in order not tomiss you, " said Bessie to Aunt Mary in her stentorian voice, and shepresented a glowing rose cheek to be kissed. 

Magdalen shot a grateful glance at her sister, and the conversationbecame general. 

After the aunts had departed, Bessie said to Magdalen on their wayupstairs to dress, "I found when I reached the Carters' that they hadgone out with Professor Ridgway to see the Roman camp. Only old Mrs. Carter was at home, and she was rather chilly, and said they hadexpected me to luncheon. They had had a little party to meet theProfessor. I saw that my conduct called for an apology. I made one. "

"I am glad of that. "

"I see now that it would have been wiser to have gone over for luncheonas arranged. I also thought how selfish it was of Fay not to help youwith the aunts. And then I perceived that there were not two pins tochoose between us, as I had been just as bad myself, so I hurried backas quickly as I could. "

"I was most grateful to you when I saw you come in. And Aunt Mary waspleased too. She never shows it much; but she was. "

"It is of secondary importance whether she was pleased or not. My objectin returning was twofold: to help you, and also for the sake of my owncharacter. I begin to see that unless I am careful I shall become asselfish as father. "

Magdalen did not answer. 

"The aunts never do things like other people, " continued Bessie. "Ifound Aunt Aggie standing, eating a bun, just outside the drawing-roomdoor. She was quite flurried when I came up, and said she wanted to seemy fossils, but would rather look at them another day. "

CHAPTER X

 La vie est un instrument dont on commence toujours par jouer faux. 

Wentworth and Fay did not follow Colonel Bellairs and Magdalen back tothe house. When they reached the end of the avenue they turned backsilently by mutual consent, and retraced their steps down it. 

Presently they reached the trunk of the tree where Fay had been sittingwith Magdalen. 

Fay sank down upon it once more, white and exhausted. He sat down at alittle distance from her. 

"How is Michael?" she said at last, twisting her ungloved handstogether. 

"I came to tell you about him; I only got back last night. I knew youwould wish to hear. "

"How is he?"

"He has been ill. He has had double pneumonia. It started withhæmorrhage, and some of the blood got into the lungs, and causedpneumonia. He is better now, nearly well, in fact. The prison doctorseemed a sensible man, and he spoke as if he were interested in Michael. From what he said I gathered that he did not think Michael would surviveanother winter there. The prison[1] stands in a sort of marsh. It is avery good place to prevent prisoners escaping, but not a good place forthem to keep alive in. The doctor is pressing to have Michael moved. Hethinks he might do better at the 'colonia agricola, ' where the labour ismore agricultural; or that even work in the iron mines of Portoferriaowould try his constitution less than the swamp where he now is. "

[Footnote 1: The prison described has no counterpart in real life. ]

"Was he still in chains?"

"No. And the doctor said there was some talk of abolishing themaltogether. If not, he will be obliged to go back to them now he isbetter. He is looking forward to the sea lavender coming out. He saysthe place is beautiful beyond words when it is in flower: whole tractsand tracts of grey lilac blossom in the shallows, and hordes of wildbirds. He asked me to tell you that you were to think of him as livingin fairyland. "

Fay winced as if struck. 

"You gave him my message?" she stammered. 

"Of course I did. And he said I was to tell you not to grieve for him, for he was well and happy. "

"Happy!" echoed Fay. 

"Yes, happy. He said he had committed a great sin, but that he hoped andbelieved that he was now expiating it, and that it would be forgiven. "

"I am absolutely certain, " said Fay in a suffocated voice, "that Michaeldid not murder the Marchese di Maltagliala. "

"That is impossible, " said Wentworth. 

"Then what great sin can he be expiating?"

Even as Fay asked the question she knew the answer. Michael believed hewas expiating the sin of loving another man's wife. In his mind that wasprobably on a par with the murder he had not committed. 

"I asked him that, " said Wentworth, "but he would not say. He would onlyrepeat that his punishment was just. "

Two large tears ran down Fay's cheeks. 

"It is unjust, unjust, unjust!" she gasped. "Why does God allow thesedreadful things?"

There was a long silence. 

For a time Wentworth had forgotten Fay. He saw again the great yellowbuilding standing in a waste of waters. He saw again the thin, prematurely aged face of his brother, the shaved head, the coarse, striped convict dress, the arid light from the narrow barred window. Hesaw again Michael's grave smile, and heard the tranquil voice, "Thisplace is beautiful in autumn. Mind you come next when the sea lavenderis out. "

The remembrance of that meeting cut sharper than the actual pain of itat the moment. He had gone through with it with a sort of stolidendurance, letting Michael see but a tithe of what he felt. But theremembrance was anguish unalloyed. For a time he could neither speak norsee. 

A yellow butterfly that had waked too soon floated towards them on awavering trial trip. Close at hand a snowdrop drooped "its serioushead. " The butterfly knew its own, and lit on the meek, nunlike flower, opening and shutting its new wings in the pallid sunshine. It hadperhaps dreamed, as it lay in its chrysalis, "that life had been moresweet. " Was this chill sunshine that could not quicken his wings, wasthis grim desert that held no goal for butterfly feet, was this onesnowdrop--_all_? Was this indeed the summer of his dreams, in the sureand certain hope of which he had spun his cocoon, and laid him down infaith?

Fay looked at it in anguish not less than Wentworth's, whose dimmed eyessaw it not at all. She never watched a poised butterfly open and shutits wings without thinking of Michael. The flight of a seagull acrossthe down cut her like a lash. He had been free once. He who so loved thedown, the sea, the floating cloud, had been free once. 

When Wentworth had winked his steady grey eyes back to their normalstate, he looked furtively at Fay. She was weeping silently. He had seenFay in tears before, but never without emotion. With a somewhat haltingutterance he told her of certain small alleviations of Michael's lot. The permission, urgently asked, had at last been granted that Englishbooks might be sent him from time to time. The lonely, aching smart ofWentworth's morning hours was vaguely soothed and comforted by Fay'sgentle presence. 

She appeared to listen to him, but in reality she heard nothing. She satlooking straight in front of her, a tear slipping from time to time downher white cheek. Except on one or two occasions Fay had that rarestcharm of looking beautiful in tears. She became paler than ever, neverred and disfigured and convulsed, with the prosaic cold in the head thataccompanies the emotions of less fortunate women. 

"How old is Michael?" she asked suddenly in the midst of a painstakingaccount of certain leniencies as to diet, certain macaronis and soupswhich the doctor had insisted on for Michael. 

"He is twenty-seven. "

"And how long has he been in prison?"

"Nearly two years. "

"And he has thirteen more, " said Fay, looking at Wentworth with wideeyes blank with horror. 

"No, " said Wentworth, his voice shaking a little. "No, Michael will notlive long in that swamp, not many years, I think. "

"But they will move him to a better climate. "

"He does not want to be moved. I should not, either, in his case. "

Fay's hands fell to her sides. 

"When my mother died, " said Wentworth, "I promised her to be good toMichael. There was no need for me to promise to be good to him. I alwaysliked him better than anyone else. I taught him to ride and to shoot. Hegot his gun up sharp from the first. It's easy to do things for anyoneyou like. But what is hard is when the time comes"--Wentworth stopped, and then went on--"when the time comes that you can't do anything morefor the person you care for most. "

Silence. 

The yellow butterfly was still feebly trying to open and shut his wings. The low sun had abandoned him to the encroaching frost, and was touchingthe bare overarching branches to palest gold, "so subtly fair, sogorgeous dim"; so far beyond the reach of tiny wings. 

"I don't think, " said Wentworth, "I would stick at anything. I don'tknow of anything I would not do, anything I would not give up, to gethim back his freedom. But it's no use, I can do nothing for him. "

"Oh! Why does not the real murderer confess?" said Fay with a sob, wringing her hands. "How can he go on, year after year, letting aninnocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of hishorrible crime?"

That mysterious murderer occupied a large place in Fay's thoughts. Shehated him with a deadly hatred. He was responsible for everything. Thatone crooked channel of thought that persistently turned aside all blameonto an unknown offender, had at last given a certain crookedness, asort of twist, to the whole subject in Fay's mind. 

"I begged Michael again for the twentieth time to tell me anything thatcould act as a clue to discovering the real criminal, " said Wentworth. "I told him I would spend my last shilling in bringing him to justice, but he only shook his head. I told him that some of his friends feltcertain that he knew who the murderer was, and was shielding him. Heshook his head again. He would not tell me anything the first day I wentto him after he was arrested. And still, after two years in prison, hewill not speak. Michael will never say anything. "

The despair in Wentworth's voice met the advancing chill of the waningafternoon. The sun had gone. The gold had faded into grey. A frostybreath was stirring the dead leaves. The butterfly had closed his wingsfor the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop. Atiny trembling had laid hold upon him. He was tasting death. 

Fay shivered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her. 

"I must go in, " she said. 

They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woodsfrom the gardens. A thin, white moon was already up, peering at themabove the gathering sea mist. 

They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of theconsolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief whichhad drawn them together. 

"I will come again soon, if I may, " he said diffidently, "unless seeingme reminds you of painful things. " His voice had lowered itselfinvoluntarily. 

"I like to see you, " said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away fromhim like a shadow among the shadows. 

The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words anypossible reassurance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them, which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them. 

He pondered over them as he rode home. 

How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not beena happily assorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his losswas still overwhelming. And what courageous affection she had showntowards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying toshield him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in hersorrowing compassion for his fate. And what a steadfast belief she hadshown from first to last in his innocence, against overwhelming odds!

Wentworth did not know till he met Fay that such women existed. Women hewas aware were an enigma. Men could not fathom them. They were fickle, mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisestowned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion andtreachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved bysudden, amazing impulses that men could not follow. 

But could a woman like Fay, who towered head and shoulders above theordinary run of women, removed to a height apart from their low level ofpettiness and vanity, by her simplicity and nobility and capacity fordevotion--_could such a woman love a second time?_

The thirst to be loved, to be the object of an exquisite tenderness, what man has not, consciously or unconsciously longed for that? Whatwoman has not had her dream of giving that and more, full measure, running over?

To find favour in a woman's eyes a man need only do his stupid bunglingbest. But it is doubtful whether Wentworth had a best of any kind in himto do. 

At twenty-five he would not have risked as much for love as evencautious men of robuster fibre will still ruefully but determinedly riskin the forties. And now at forty he would risk almost nothing. 

Where Michael was concerned Wentworth's love had reached the strengthwhere it could act, indefatigably, if need be. Michael had been so farthe only creature who could move his brother's egotism beyond therefinements of bedridden sentiment. 

It was as well for Fay that she did not realise, and absolutelyessential for Wentworth that he did not realise either, that in spite ofan undoubted natural attraction towards her he would have seen no moreof her unless she had come within easy reach. 

A common trouble had drawn them towards each other. A common interest, acommon joy or sorrow, a house within easy distance--these are some ofthe match makers between the invalids of life, who are not strong enoughto want anything very much, or to work for what they want. For themfavourable circumstance is everything. 

Wentworth could ride four and a half miles down a picturesque lane tosee Fay. But he could not have taken a journey by rail. 

A few years before Wentworth met Fay he had been tepidly interested inthe youthful sister of one of his college friends and contemporaries, anOxford Don at whose house he stayed every year. The sister kept housefor her brother. It was the usual easy commonplace combination ofcircumstances that has towed lazy men into marriage since theinstitution was first formed. He saw her without any effort on his part. He arrived at a kind of knowledge of her. He found her to be what heliked. She was sympathetic, refined, shy, cultivated, unselfish, and ofa wild rose prettiness. After a time he kept up, mainly on her account, a regular intercourse with the brother, who was becoming rather prosy, as was Wentworth himself. Presently the brother married, and the sisterceased to live with him. 

Wentworth's visits to Oxford gradually ceased to give him pleasure. Hefound his friend's wife middle-class, self-absorbed, and artificial, thefriend himself donnish, cut and dried, and liable to anecdotic seizuresof increasing frequency. The intimacy dwindled and was now moribund. Butit never entered his mind to enquire into the whereabouts of the sister, and to continue his acquaintance with her independently. If he hadcontinued to meet her regularly he would almost certainly have marriedher. She on her side seemed well disposed towards him. As it was henever saw her again. He gradually ceased to think of her, except onsummer evenings, as a charming possibility which Fate had sternlyremoved, as one lost to him for ever. He wrote a little poem about her, beginning, "Where are you now?" (She was at Kensington all the time. )Wentworth never published his verses. He said there was no room for anew poet who did not advertise himself. There had been room for one ofhis college friends, but that had been a case of log rolling. 

I do not know whether it was a fortunate or an unfortunate fate that hadprevented the gay little lady of the pink cheeks from being at thatmoment installed at Barford as the wife of a poet who scorned publicity. 

If Wentworth had been riding home to his wife on that February eveninghe would not have taken unconsciously another of the many steps whichentailed so many more, by saying to himself, thinking of Fay:

"Could a woman like that love a second time?"

Then he hastened his speed as he remembered that his old friend theBishop of Lostford had by this time arrived at Barford. 

CHAPTER XI

 If you feel no love, sit still; occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. 

 --TOLSTOY. 

In Wentworth's youth he had been attracted towards many, besides theBishop, among the bolder and less conventional of his contemporaries. Their fire, their energies, their enthusiasm, warmed his somewhatunder-vitalized nature. He regarded himself as one of them, and hisrefinement and distinction drew the robuster spirits towards himself. But gradually, as time went on, these energies and enthusiasm took form, and, alas! took forms which he had not expected--he never expectedanything--and from which his mind instinctively recoiled. He hadsupposed that energy was energy. He had not realised that it was life inembryo, that might develop, not always on lines of beauty, into a newpolicy, or a great discovery, or a passion, or a vocation. He hatedtransformations, new births, all change. His friends at first ralliedhim unmercifully, then lost patience, and finally fell from him, one byone. Some openly left him, the more good-natured among them forgot him, and if by chance they found themselves in his society, hurried back withaffectionate cordiality to reminiscences of school and college life, long-passed milestones before the parting of the ways. 

The Bishop when he plunged into his work also for a time lost sight ofWentworth, but when he was appointed to the See of Lostford, withinfive miles of Barford, the two men resumed, at first with alacrity, something of the old intercourse. 

Wentworth had an element of faithfulness in him which enabled him totake up a friendship after a long interval, but it was on one condition, namely that the friend had remained _planté là_ where he had been left. If in the meanwhile the friend had moved, the friendship flagged. 

It was soon apparent that the Bishop had not by any means remained_planté là_, and the friendship quickly drooped. It would long sincehave died a natural death if it had not been kept alive by the Bishophimself, a man of robust affections and strong compassions, without amoment to spend on small resentments. After Michael's imprisonment hehad redoubled his efforts to keep in touch with Wentworth, and the greatgrief of the latter, silently and nobly endured, had been a bond betweenthe two men which even a miserable incident which must have severed mostfriendships had served to loosen, not to break. 

The Bishop had in truth arrived at Barford, and was now sittingapparently unoccupied by the library fire. To be unoccupied even for aninstant except during recuperative sleep was so unusual with the Bishop, so unprecedented, that his daughter would have been terrified could shehave seen him at that moment. He had only parted from her and herhusband at mid-day, yet it was a sudden thought suggested by his visitto them which was now holding him motionless by the fire, his leanperson bulging with unanswered letters. 

The Bishop was a small ugly man of fifty, unconventional to the core, the younger son of a duke, and a clergyman by personal conviction. Hehad been born in a hurry, and had remained in a hurry ever since. He hadneither great administrative capacities, nor profound scholarship, butwhat powers he had were eked out by a stupendous energy. His Archbishopsaid that he believed that the Bishop's chaplains died like flies, andthat he merely threw their dead bodies into the Loss, which flowedbeneath his palace windows, without even a burial service. His chaplainsand secretaries certainly worked themselves to the bone for him. Theycould have told tales against him, but they never did. For it was astrain to serve the Bishop, to get his robes thrown over him at theright--I mean the last--second, to thrust him ruthlessly into hiscarriage just in time to catch the tail ends of departing trains--hegenerally travelled with the guard. His admirable life had been spent ina ceaseless whirl. He had never had time to marry. He had hurried to thealtar when he was an eager curate with a pretty young bride who was astranger to him, whom his mother had chosen for him. During the yearsthat followed what little he saw of her at odd moments he liked. Afterten years of what he believed to be married life she died, leaving onechild; tactful to the last, pretty to the last, having made no claimfrom first to last, kissing his hand, and thanking him for his love, andfor the beautiful years they had spent together. 

His friends said that he bore her loss with heroism, but in reality hemissed her but little. Her death occurred just after he had become anardent suffragan. His daughter grew up in a few minutes, and quicklytook her mother's place. She was her mother over again in character andappearance. His wife had lived in his house for ten years, his daughterfor twenty. By dint of time he learned to know her as he had never knownher mother. At twenty she married his chaplain. 

The chaplain was a tall, stooping, fleckless, flawless, mannerless, joyless personage, middle-aged at twenty-eight, with a voice like agong, with a metallic mind constructed of thought-tight compartments, devoted body and soul to the Church, an able and indefatigable worker, smelted from the choice ore of that great middle class from which, as weknow, all good things come. That he was a future ornament, or at anyrate an iron girder of the Church was sufficiently obvious. 

The Bishop saw his worth, and ruefully endured him until the chaplain, in the most suitable language, desired to become his son-in-law, andthat at the most inconceivably awkward moment, namely, just when theBishop had presented him with a living. The marriage had to be. Thedaughter wished it with an intensity that amazed her father. Andgradually the Bishop discovered that he detested his paragon of ason-in-law. But why? It was not jealousy. He really was a paragon, not asham. To the Bishop it seemed, and with truth, that any other womanwould have done as well as his daughter, that her husband neitherunderstood her nor wished to understand her, that he accepted ruthlesslywithout knowing that he accepted it, her selfless devotion, that he usedher as a cushion to make his rare moments of leisure more restful, thather love was not even a source of happiness to him, only a solace. Andshe, extraordinary to behold, was radiantly content. 

"_Just like her mother over again_, " the Bishop had wrathfully said tohimself as he drove away from his daughter's door. And at that moment aslide was drawn back from his mind, and he saw that the marriage was areplica of his own, except in so far that his son-in-law, greatlyassisted by circumstances, had actually taken a little trouble toarrange his marriage for himself, while the Bishop's--what there was ofit--had been done for him by his mother. 

Till this morning he had believed his marriage to have been an ideallyhappy one, that he had felt all that man can feel; and he had beeninclined to treat as womanish the desperate desolation of men who hadafter all only suffered the same bereavement as he had himself, andwhich he had quickly overcome. He saw now that he had missed happinessexactly as his son-in-law was missing it. The same thing had befallenthem both. Love could do there no mighty works because of theirunbelief. When he remembered his wife's face he realised that her joyhad been something beyond his ken. He had not shared it. He had notknown love, even when it had drawn very nigh unto him. 

As he waited motionless for Wentworth to come in, his strong, intrepidmind worked. The Bishop at fifty went to school to a new thought. It wasthat power of going to school at fifty to a new thought which had madehis Archbishop, who loved him, give him the See of Lostford, to theamazement of the demurer clergy who were scandalised by hisunconventionality, and his fearful baldness of speech. They could onlyaccount for the appointment by the fact that he was the son of a duke. It was that power which made the Bishop seem a much younger man thanWentworth, who was in reality ten years his junior. The Bishop was stilla learner. He still moved with vigour mentally. Wentworth, on thecontrary, had arrived--not at any place in particular, but at the spotwhere he intended to remain. His ideas, and some of them had been rathergood ones at twenty-five, had suffered from their sedentary existence. They had become rather stout. He called them progressive because in thecourse of years he had perceived in them a slight glacier-like movement. To others they appeared fixed. 

Wentworth's attitude towards life, of which he was so fond of speaking, was perhaps rather like that of a shrimper who, in ankle-deep water, watches the heavily freighted whale boats come towering in. He does notquite know why he, of all men, with his special equipment for thepurpose, and his expert handling of the net, does not also catch whales. That they seldom swim in two-inch water does not occur to him. At lasthe does not think there are any whales. He has exploded that fallacy. For, in a moment of adventurous enthusiasm, counting not the cost, didhe not once wade recklessly up to his very shoulders in deep water: _andthere were no whales_, --only pinching crabs. Crabs were the one realdanger, the largest denizens of the boundless main, whatever his formerplaymates the whalers might affirm. 

When the shrimper and the whaler had dined together, and the Bishop hadheard with affectionate sympathy the little there was to hearrespecting Michael, and the conversation tended towards more generaltopics, the radical antagonism between the two friends' minds threatenedevery moment to make itself felt. 

The Bishop tried politics somewhat tentatively, on which they hadsympathised in college days, but it seemed they had widely divergedsince. Wentworth, though he frequently asserted that no one enjoyed morethan he "the clashing of opposite opinions, " seemed nevertheless onlyable to welcome with cordiality a mild disagreement, just sufficientlydefined to prove stimulating to the expression of his own views. A widedivergence from them he met with a chilly silence. He did so now. TheBishop looked at his neat ankle, and changed the subject. 

"Have you seen or heard anything of Everard Constable since he came intohis kingdom, such a very unexpected kingdom, too?"

"No. I fancy he is still abroad. But I can't say that for some time pastI have found Constable's aims in life very sympathetic. His unceasingstruggle after literary fame appears to me somewhat undignified. "

"Oh! come. Give the devil his due. Constable can write. "

"Of course, of course. That is just what I am saying. But he and Idiffer too widely in our outlook on life to remain really intimate. Hecares for the big things, ambition, popularity, a prominent position, luxury. He will enjoy being a personage, and having wealth at hiscommand. For my part, I am afraid I care infinitely more for the smallthings of life, love, friendship, sympathy. "

"The _small_ things! Good Lord!" said the Bishop, and his jaw dropped. He also dropped the subject. 

"I ran up against Grenfell last week, " he continued immediately. "Do yousee _him_ now? You and he used to be inseparable at Cambridge. "

Wentworth became frigid. 

Grenfell had accused him at their last meeting of being an old maid, anaccusation which had wounded Wentworth to the quick, and which he hadnever forgotten or forgiven. He had not in the least realised thatGrenfell was not alluding to the fact that he happened to be unmarried. 

"I can't say I care to see him now, " he said. "He has become entirelyengrossed in his career. A simple life like mine, the life of thought, no longer interests him. He is naturally drawn to people who are playingbig parts. "

"What nonsense! He is just the same as ever. A little vehement andfiery, but not as much as he was. They say he will be the nextChancellor of the Exchequer to a certainty. "

"I daresay he will. He has the art of keeping himself before the publiceye. Being myself so constituted--it is not any virtue in me, only aconstitutional defect--that I cannot elbow for a place, it is difficultfor me to understand how another, especially a man like Grenfell, canbring himself to do so. I had always thought he was miles above thatkind of thing. "

"So he is. So he is. A blind man can see Grenfell's unworldliness. Itsticks a yard out of him. My dear Wentworth, if energetic elbows were, as you imply, the key to success, how do you account for the fact thathundreds of painful persons have triumphantly passed that preliminaryexamination who never achieve anything beyond a diploma in the art ofpushing?"

Wentworth did not answer. 

He firmly believed that in order to attain the things he had notattained, had never striven for, of which he invariably spokedisparagingly, but which he secretly and impotently desired, theco-operation of certain ignoble qualities was essential, sordid allieswhom he would have disdained to use. 

"I don't blame Grenfell, " he said at last. "He had his way to make. Iknow how blinding the glamour of ambition is, how insidious andinsistent the claims of the world may become. I don't pretend to besuperior to certain temptations if they came in my way. But I happen tohave kept out of their way. That is all. "

"You have certainly kept out of the way of--nearly everything. "

"For my part, I daresay I am hopelessly out of date, but I value beautyand peace and simplicity higher than a noisy success. But a noisysuccess is the one thing that counts nowadays. "

"Does it?"

"And Grenfell has taken the right steps to gain it. If a man craves forpopularity, if he really thinks the bubble worth striving for, he mustlay himself out for it. If he wants a place he must jostle for it. If hewants power he must discard scruples. If he wants social success it canbe got--we see it every day--by pandering to the susceptibilities andseeking the favour of influential persons. Everything has its price. Idon't say that everyone obtains these things who is ready to bid forthem. But some do. Grenfell is among those who have. I don't blame him. I am not sure that I don't rather envy him. "

The Bishop could respect a conviction. 

"Are you not forgetting Grenfell's character?" he said gently, as onespeaks to a sick man. "Think of him, his nobility, his integrity, hisenthusiasm, his transparent unworldliness which so often in the old daysput us all to shame!"

"That is just what makes it all so painful to me, " said Wentworth, andthere was no possibility of doubting his sincerity. "That contact withthe world can taint even beautiful natures like his. He was my ideal atone time. I almost worshipped him at Cambridge. "

"I love him still, " said the Bishop. "A cat may look at a king, so Isuppose a poor crawler of a bishop may look at a man like Grenfell. Don't you think, Wentworth, that sometimes a man who succeeds may haveworked as nobly as a man who fails--you always speak so feelingly offailure, it is one of the many things I like about you. Don't you thinkthat perhaps sometimes success may be--I don't say it always is--ashigh-minded as failure, that a hard-won victory may be as honourable asdefeat, that achievement may _sometimes_ be the result not of chance orinterest, but of unremitting toil? Don't you think you may beunconsciously cutting yourself adrift from Grenfell's friendship byattributing his success to unworthy means which a man like him couldnever have stooped to?"

"It is he who has cut himself adrift from me, " said Wentworth icily. "Ihave not changed. "

"That is just it. A slight change, shall we say expansion on your part, might have enabled you to"--the Bishop chose his words as carefully as adoctor counts drops into a medicine glass--"to keep pace with him?"

"I do not regard friendship as a race or a combat of wits, " saidWentworth. "Friendship is to my mind something sacred. I hope I canremain Grenfell's friend without believing him to be absolutelyfaultless. If he is so unreasonable as to expect that of me, which Ishould not for a moment expect of him, why then----" Wentworth shruggedhis shoulders. 

One of the few friends who had not drifted from him looked at him withsomewhat pained affection. 

Why does a life dwelt apart from others tend to destroy first generosityand then tenderness in man and woman? Why does one so often find acertain hardness and inhumanity encrusting those who have withdrawnthemselves behind the shutters of their own convenience, or is it, afterall, their own impotence?

"Has he always been hard and cold by nature?" said the Bishop tohimself, "and is the real man showing himself in middle age, or is hismeagre life starving him?"

He tried again. 

"You nearly lost my friendship a year ago by attributing a sordid motiveto me, Wentworth. "

Wentworth understood instantly. 

"That is all past and forgotten, " he said quickly. "I never think of it. Have I ever allowed it to make the slightest difference?"

"No, " said the Bishop, looking hard at him, "and for that matter neitherhave I. We have never talked the matter out. Let us do so now. I don'tsuppose you have forgotten the odium I incurred over the living ofRambury. It had been held for generations by old men. It had become akind of clerical almshouse. When it fell vacant there was of course yetanother elderly cleric----"

"My uncle, " said Wentworth, "a most excellent man. "

"Just so, but in failing health. Rightly or wrongly I was convinced thatit was my duty to give the place a chance by putting there a youngerman, of energy and capacity for hard work. I gave it to my futureson-in-law as you know. "

Wentworth nodded. "Everyone said at the time he was an excellent man, "he said with evident desire to be fair. 

"I daresay, but that is not the point. The point is that I had no ideathat iron traction engine wanted to marry my daughter or anybody'sdaughter. The tactless beast got up steam and proposed for her the dayafter I had offered him the living. He had never given so much as apreliminary screech on the subject, never blown a horn to show what hishorrid intentions were--I only hope that if I had known I should stillhave had the moral courage to appoint him. The Archbishop assures me Ishould--but I doubt it. I was loudly accused of nepotism, of course. Your uncle, who died soon afterwards, forgave me in the worst of tasteon his deathbed. I had no means of justifying myself. The Archbishop andGrenfell and a few other old friends believed. _Why were you not amongthose old friends, Wentworth?_"

"I _was_ among them, " said Wentworth, meeting the Bishop's sombre eyes. "You never answered it, so I suppose you never received it, but at thetime I wrote you a long letter assuring you that I for one had notjoined in the cry against you, even though my uncle did. I frankly ownedthat, while I regarded the appointment as an ill-considered one, I tookfor granted that Mr. Rawlings was suited for the place. I said that Iknew you far too well to suppose even for a moment that you would havegiven the post to a man, even if he were your son-in-law, unless he hadbeen competent to fill it. You never answered the letter, so I supposeit failed to reach you. "

"I received it, " said the Bishop slowly. "I felt it to be anilluminating document, but it did not seem to call for an answer. It wasin itself a response to a tacit appeal. "

There was a pause, and then he continued cheerfully. "Rawlings hasproved himself dreadfully competent as you prophesied, and Lucy is veryhappy in her new home. I came on from there this morning. My son-in-law, with the admirable promptitude and economy of time which endeared him tome as my chaplain, had arranged that every moment of my visit should beutilised; that I should christen their first child, dedicate athank-offering in the shape of a lectern, consecrate the new portion ofthe churchyard, open a reading-room, and say a few cordial words at adrawing-room meeting before I left at mid-day. I told him if he went onlike this he would certainly come to grief and be made a bishop someday. But he only remarked that he was not solicitous of highpreferment. I think you would like Rawlings if you knew him better. Youand he have a certain amount in common. I must own that I am glad thatit is Lucy who has to put up with him and not I. I should think even GodAlmighty must find him rather difficult to live with at times. And now, Wentworth, if I am to be up and away at cock-crow, I must go to bed. "

But the Bishop did not go to bed at once when Wentworth had escorted himto his room. 

"It was no use, " he said to himself. "It was worth trying, but it was nouse. He never saw that he had misjudged me. He met my eye. He has astraight, clean eye. He is sincere as far as he goes, but how far _does_he go? He has never made that first step towards sincerity of doubtinghis own sincerity. He mistakes his moods for convictions. He has neversuspected his own motives, or turned them inside out. He suspects thoseof others instead. He is like a crab. He moves sideways by nature, andhe thinks that everyone else who moves otherwise is not straightforward, and that he must make allowances for them. According to his lights hehas behaved generously by me. Has he! Damn him! God forgive me. Well, Imust stick to him, for I believe I am almost the only friend he has leftin the world. "

CHAPTER XII

 Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?--D. G. ROSSETTI. 

Fay did not sleep that night. 

For a long time past, she seemed to have been gradually, inevitablyapproaching, dragging reluctant feet towards something horrible, unendurable. She could not look this veiled horror in the face. Shenever attempted to define it to herself. Her one object was to get awayfrom it. 

It had not sprung into life full grown. It had gradually taken formafter Michael's imprisonment. At first it had been only an uneasy ghostthat could be laid, a spectre across her path that could be avoided; butsince she had come home it had slowly attained gigantic and terrifyingproportions. It loomed before her now as a vague but insistent menace, from which she could no longer turn away. 

A great change was coming over Fay, but she tacitly resisted it. She didnot understand it, nor realise that the menace came from within hergates, was of the nature of an insurrection in the citadel of self. Wedo not always recognise the voice of the rebel soul when first it beginsto speak hoarsely, unintelligibly, urgently from the dark cell to whichwe have relegated it. 

Some of us are so constituted that we can look back at our past and seeit as a gradation of steps, a sort of sequence, and can thus gain akind of inkling of the nature of the next step against which we are evennow striking our feet. 

But poor Fay saw her life only as shattered, meaningless fragments, confused, mutilated masses without coherence. The masses and the gapsbetween them were of the same substance in her eyes. She wandered intoher past as a child might wander among the rubbish heaps of its old homein ruins. She was vaguely conscious that there had been a design once inthose unsightly mounds, that she had once lived in them. On that remnantof crazy wall clung a strip of wall-paper which she recognised as thepaper in her own nursery; here a vestige of a staircase that had led toher mother's room. And as a child will gather up a little frockful ofsticks and fallen remnants, and then drop them when they prove heavy, soFay picked up out of her past tiny disjointed odds and ends of ideas anddisquieting recollections, only to cast them aside again as burdensomeand useless. 

The point to which she wandered back most frequently--to stare blanklyat it without comprehension--was her husband's appeal to her on hisdeathbed. To-night she had gone back to it again as to a tottering wall. She had worn a little pathway over heaps of miserable conjectures andtwisted memories towards that particular place. 

She saw again the duke's dying face, and the tender fixity of his eyes. She could almost hear his difficult waning voice saying:

"The sun shines. He does not see them, the spring and the sunshine. Since a year he does not see them. Francesca, how much longer will youkeep your Cousin Michael in prison?"

_Since a year he does not see them. _

It was two years now. 

The shock to Fay at the moment those words were spoken had been that herhusband had known all the time. That revelation blotted out all otherthoughts for the time being. It even blotted out all considerations ofher own conduct towards Michael, which it might conceivably haverendered acute. It made her mind incapable of receiving the impressionthat the duke had perhaps hoped his deliberate last words might make onit; that surely she would not, after his death, still keep Michael inhis cell. Throughout the early weeks of her widowhood Fay remained asone stunned. Even Magdalen, who hurried out to her, supposed at firstthat she was stunned by grief. 

"Then Andrea knew all the time. " That was the constant refrain of herbewildered, half-paralysed mind. 

Gradually in the quiet monotonous life at Priesthope the question madeitself felt. "_How did he know?_"

That question was never answered by Fay, deeply though she pondered overit. It remained a mystery to her all of her life. She recalled littlescraps of his conversation, tiny incidents which might have shown herthat he knew. But she had noticed nothing at the time. Her cheek burnedwhen she recalled his tranquil, sarcastic voice. 

"Not on the high road. You are in the right. How dusty, how dirty, isthe high road! But I have known, not once, nor twice, women to murdermen very quietly. Oh! so gently and cleanly--to let them die. "

When first she remembered those words of her dead husband, a horriblerevulsion of feeling against him seized her. She had been vaguelymiserable and remorseful at his death until those words, so tranquillyspoken in a primrose dawn, came back to her. 

Then she was suddenly glad he was dead, gone for ever. She almost hatedhim once more. It was dreadful to live with people whom she did notunderstand, who knew things they kept secret, whose minds and thoughtsand motives were incomprehensible to her, who believed horrible untruethings of her. It had been a fixed idea with Fay during her husband'slifetime that he believed horrible untrue things about her. But whatthey were she would have found it difficult to say. 

Fay's was not a suspicious nature in its normal state, but most personsof feeble judgment become suspicious when life becomes difficult. Theycannot judge, and consequently cannot trust. Fay had never learnt evenso much of her husband as that she might have trusted him entirely. Nowthat he was gone without betraying her, the knowledge that he had knownher secret and had guarded it faithfully did not make her feel, with aflood of humble contrition, how deeply she had misjudged him, how loyalhe had been from first to last; it only aroused in her a sense of fearand anger. How secretive Andrea had been, how underhand! Perhaps part ofthe doom of a petty, self-centred nature is that it does not know whenit has been generously and humanely dealt with. 

When Fay had somewhat recovered from the shock of her husband's dyingspeech she had turned with all her might to Magdalen, had cast herselfupon her, clung to her in a sort of desperation. Magdalen at any ratebelieved in her. 

For many months after she came to Priesthope, her mind remained in akind of stupor, and it seemed at first as if she were regaining a sortof calm, caught as it were from Magdalen's presence. 

But gradually miserable brooding memories returned, and it seemed atlast as if something in Magdalen's gentle serenity irritated instead ofsoothing Fay as heretofore. Was Magdalen a sort of unconscious ally ofthat fainting soul within Fay's fortress? Were chance words ofMagdalen's beginning to make the rebel stir in his cell? At any ratesomething stirred. Something was making trouble. Fay began to shrinkfrom Magdalen, involuntarily at first, then purposely for long moodyintervals. Then she would be sarcastic and bitter with her, jibe at thehousekeeping, and criticise the household arrangements. A day later shewould be humbly and hysterically affectionate once more, asking to beforgiven for her waywardness. She could not live without the comfort ofMagdalen's tenderness. And at times she could not live with it. Magdalenpreserved an unmoved front. She ignored her sister's petulance andspasmodic fault-finding. She knew they were symptoms of some secret ill, but what that ill was she did not know. She kept the way open for Fay'ssudden remorseful return to affectionate relations, and waited. 

Those who, like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slowto take offence. It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or arebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked upthe offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that ledher to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt shouldtouch a dead mole. No one could know Magdalen long without seeing thatshe lived by a kind of spiritual instinct, as real to her as the naturalinstincts of animals. 

Fay became more and more haggard and irritable as the months atPriesthope drew into a year. A new element of misery was added to herlife by the sight of Wentworth, and his visits were becoming frequent. His mere presence made acute once more that other memory, partiallyblurred, persistently pushed aside--the memory of Michael in prison. Thefigure of the duke had temporarily displaced that other figure in itscell. 

But now the remembrance of Michael, continually stirred up by poorWentworth, with his set, bereaved face, was never suffered to sleep. With every week of her life it seemed to Fay some new pain came. 

Magdalen could not comfort her. Magdalen, who was so fond of Michael. 

_If Magdalen knew!_

_Magdalen must never, never know. _ She could not live without Magdalen. Magdalen was not like Andrea in that. She at any rate was concealingnothing, could know nothing. Now that Andrea was dead, only one livingperson beside herself _knew_--Michael. Fay was unconsciously growing tohate the thought of that one other person, to turn with horror from theremembrance of Michael: his sufferings, his patient life in deathfilled her with nausea, disgust. Her vehement selfish passion for himhad been smothered by the hideous débris which had been cast upon it. 

She had never loved him, as the duke well knew, and now the shiveringremembrance of him, constantly renewed by Wentworth, had become like apoignard in a wound that would not heal. Wentworth had to-day yet againunconsciously turned the dagger in the wound, and her whole beingsickened and shuddered. Oh! if she could only tear out that sharp-bladedremembrance and cast it from her, then in time the aching wound in herlife might heal, and she might become happy and well and at peace oncemore;--at peace like Magdalen. An envious anger flared up in her mindagainst Magdalen's calm and happy face. 

Oh, if poor Michael could only die! He wanted to die. If only he coulddie and release her. _Release her from what?_

From her duty to speak and set him free? Those were the words which shenever permitted the rebel voice within to say. Still, they were there, silenced for the time, but always waiting to be said. Their gaggedwhisper reached her in spite of herself. 

Oh! if only Michael were dead and out of his suffering, then she wouldnever be tortured by them any more. Then, too, her husband's words wouldlose their poisoned point, and she could thrust them forth from her mindfor ever. 

"Francesca, how much longer will you keep your cousin Michael inprison?"

Oh! Cruel, cruel Andrea, vindictive to the very gates of death. 

Down the empty, whispering gallery of ghostly fears in which her lifecrouched, Michael's voice spoke to her also. She could hear his grave, low tones. "Think of me as in fairy-land. "

That tender, compassionate message had a barbed point which pierceddeeper even than the duke's words. 

Her lover and her husband seemed to have conspired together to revengethemselves upon her. 

Fay leaned her pretty head against the window-sill and sobbedconvulsively. 

Poor little soul in prison, weeping behind the bars of her cell, thatonly her own hands could open!

Were not Fay and Michael both prisoners, fast bound: she in misery, heonly in iron. 

The door opened gently and Magdalen came in in a long white wrapper, with a candle in her hand. 

She put down the candle and came towards Fay. She did not speak. Herface quivered a little. She bent over the huddled figure in the windowseat, and with a great tenderness drew it into her arms. For a momentFay yielded to the comfort of the close encircling arms, and leaned herhead against Magdalen's breast. 

Then she wrenched herself free, and pushed her sister violently fromher. 

"Why do you come creeping in like that?" she said fiercely. "You onlycome to spy upon me. "

Magdalen did not speak. She had withdrawn a pace, and stood looking ather sister, her face as white as her night-gown. 

Fay turned her tear-drenched face to the window and looked fixedly out. There was a faint movement in the room. When she looked round Magdalenwas gone. 

Fay, worn with two years of partially eluded suffering, restless withpain, often sick at heart, was at last nearing the last ditch:--but shehad not reached it yet. 

Many more useless tears, many more nights of anguish, many more days ofsullen despair still lay between her and that last refuge. 

CHAPTER XIII

 Il n'y a point de passé vide ou pauvre, il n'y a point d'événements misérables, il n'y a que des événements misérablement accueillis. --MAETERLINCK. 

Magdalen went back to her own room, and set down her candle on thedressing-table with a hand that trembled a little. 

"I ought not to have gone, " she said half aloud, "and yet--I knew shewas awake and in trouble. And she nearly spoke to me to-day. Ithought--perhaps at last--the time had come like it did with Mother. ButI was wrong. I ought not to have gone. "

The large room which had been her mother's, the elder Fay's, seemedto-night crowded with ghostly memories: awakened by the thought of theyounger Fay sobbing in the room at the end of the passage. 

In this room, in that bed, the elder Fay had died eighteen years ago. 

How like the mother the child had become who had been named after her. 

Magdalen saw again in memory the poor pretty apathetic mother who hadtaken so long to die; a grey-haired Fay, timid as the present Fay, unwise, inconsequent, blind as Fay, feebly unselfish, as alas! Fay wasnot. 

There is in human nature a forlorn impulse, to which Mrs. Bellairs hadyielded, to speak at last when the great silence draws near, of thethings that have long cankered the heart, to lay upon others part ofthe unbearable burden of life just when death is about to remove moveit. Mrs. Bellairs had always groped feebly in heavy manacles throughlife, in a sort of twilight, but her approaching freedom seemed towardsthe last to throw a light, faint and intermittent but still a light, onmuch that had lain confused and inexplicable in her mind. Many whisperedconfidences were poured into Magdalen's ears during those last weeks, faltered disjointed revelations, which cut deep into the sensitivestricken heart of the young girl, cutting possibly also new channels forall her after life to flow through. 

Did the mother realise the needless anguish she inflicted on the spiritof the grave, silent girl of seventeen. Perhaps she was too near thegreat change to judge any longer--not that she had ever judged--what waswise or unwise, what was large or small. Trivial poisoned incidents andthe deep wounds of life, petty unreasonable annoyances and acutememories were all jumbled together. She had never sorted them, and nowshe had ceased to know which was which. The feeble departing spiritwandered aimlessly among them. 

"You must stand up to your father, Magdalen, when I'm gone. I nevercould. I was too much in love with him at first, and later on when Itried he had got the habit of my yielding to him, and it made acontinual wretchedness if I opposed him. He always thought I did notlove him if I did not consent to everything he wished, or if I did notthink him right whatever he did. I did try to stand up about thechildren, but at last I gave up that too. I was not fit to havechildren, if I sacrificed their wellbeing to his caprice and his whim, but that was what I did. I have been a poor mother, and an unfaithfulfriend, and an unjust mistress. Women like me have no business tomarry. .. . 

"You don't remember Annie, do you? She was second housemaid, the bestservant I ever had. She was engaged to William, the footman with thecurly hair. He is butler now at Barford. She cared for him dreadfully, poor soul. But your father could not bear her because she had a squint, and he never gave me any peace till I parted with her. I did part withher--and I got her a good place--but--I spoilt her marriage. It did nottake much spoiling perhaps, for after she was gone he soon began to walkwith the kitchen maid, but--she had been kind to me. So good once when Iwas ill, and my maid was ill. She did everything for me. I have oftencried about that at night since. "

 * * * * *

"Mother always used to tell me and I never believed it, but it istrue--men are children and it is no good thinking them different. Theynever grow up. I don't know if there are any grown up men anywhere. Isuppose there must be--but I have never met one. I don't know any PrimeMinisters or Archbishops, but I expect they are just the same as yourfather in home life. "

 * * * * *

"I daresay your father will be sorry when I'm gone. People like yourfather are always very fond of someone who is dead, who has no longerany claim upon them: a mother or a sister, whom they did not take muchtrouble about when they were alive. 

"Of course I am going to die first, but I sometimes used to think ifyour father died before me and if he were allowed to come back afterdeath--such things do happen--I had a friend who saw a ghostonce--whether he would be as vexed then at any little change as he isnow. You know, Magdalen, it has always been a cross to me that thewriting-table in my sitting-room is away from the light. My eyes werenever strong. I moved it near the window when I first came here, butyour father was annoyed and had it put back where it is now, because hismother always had it there. But I really could not see to write there. And I have often thought if he came back after he was dead whether hewould mind if he found I had moved it nearer the window. "

 * * * * *

"The Bishop of Elvaston married us. I daresay you don't remember him, mydear. He died a few years later. He had a wart on his chin and he onceshook hands with baby's feet. But he was good. He told me I mustsacrifice all to love. But what has been the use of all my sacrifices, first of myself and then of others? Your father has not been the happieror the better for it, but the worse. I have let him do so many cruellittle things for which others have suffered. It was not exactly that hedid not see what he was doing. He would not see. Some people are likethat. They won't look, and they become dreadfully angry if they areasked to look. I gave it up at last. Oh, my poor husband! I knew I hadfailed everybody else, but at any rate not him. But I see now, "--theweak voice broke--"I see now that I have failed him, too. We oughtnever to have married. Love is not any guide to happiness. Rememberthat, Magdalen. We were both weak. He was weak and domineering. I wasweak and yielding. I don't know which is the worst. "

As the shadows deepened all the tacit unforgiveness of a weak, down-trodden nature which has been vanquished by life whispered from thebrink of the grave. 

"I have never been loved. I have given everything, and I have hadnothing back. Nothing. Nothing. Don't marry, Magdalen. Men are all likethat. Lots of women say the same. They take everything and they givenothing. It is our own fault. We rear them to it from their cradles. From their schooldays we teach them that everything is to give way tothem, beginning with the sisters. With men it is Take, Take, Take, untilwe have nothing left to give. I went bankrupt years ago. There isnothing left in me. I _have_ nothing and I _am_ nothing. I'm not dyingnow. I have been dead for years. "

 * * * * *

"You say I am going to be at peace, Magdalen, but how do you know? Idaresay I'm not. I daresay I am going to hell, but if I do I don't care. I don't care where I go so long as it is somewhere where there aren'tany more husbands, and housekeeping, and home, weary, weary home, andcomplaints about food. I don't want ever to see anything again that Ihave known here. I am so tired of everything. I am tired to death. "

 * * * * *

Poor mother and poor daughter. 

Who shall say what Magdalen's thoughts were as she supported hermother's feeble steps down to the grave. Perhaps she learned atseventeen what most of us only learn late, so late, when life is halfover. 

Bitterness, humiliation, the passionate despair of the heart which hasgiven all and has received nothing, --these belong not to the armed bandof Love's pilgrims, though they dog his caravan across the desert. 

These are only the vultures and jackal prowlers in Love's wake, ready topounce on the faint hearted pilgrim who through weakness falls into therear, where fang and talon lie in wait to swoop down and rend him. 

If we adventure to be one of Love's pilgrims we must needs be longsuffering and meek, if we are to win safe with him across the desert, and see at last his holy city. 

 * * * * *

Tears welled up into Magdalen's eyes as one piteous scene after anothercame back to her, enacted in this very room. 

Poor little mother, who had seemed to Magdalen then so old and forlorn, who, when she died, had only been a year or two older than Magdalenherself was now. 

And poor little wavering life sobbing in the room at the end of thepassage over some mysterious trouble. 

The elder Fay lived on in the younger Fay. Was she also to be vanquishedby life, to become gradually embittered and resentful? There seemed tobe nothing in her lot to make her so. What was it, what could it be thatwas casting a blight over Fay's life?

How to help her, how to release her from the self-imposed fetters inwhich her mother had lived and--died. 

Just as some persons have the power of making something new out ofrefuse--paper out of rags--so Magdalen seemed to have the power ofcherishing and transforming the weaker, meaner elements of thecharacters with which she came in contact. Certain qualities in those weare inclined to love daunt us. Insincerity, callousness, selfishness, treachery in its more refined aspects, these are apt to arouse at firstincredulity and at last scorn in us. But they aroused neither inMagdalen. She saw them with clearness, and dealt tenderly with them. 

What others discarded as worthless, she valued. To push aside the feebleand intermittent affection of a closed and self-centred nature, believing it is giving its best, what is that but to push aside a poorman's little offering. Many years ago Magdalen had accepted not withouttears, one such offering from a very poor man indeed. 

Loving-kindness, tenderness, have their warped, stunted shoots as wellas their free-growing, stately blossoms. It is the same marvellous, fragrant life struggling to come forth through generous or barren soil. There are some thin, dwarfed, almost scentless flowers of love andfriendship, of which we can discern the faint fragrance only when we areon our knees. But some of us have conscientious scruples about kneelingdown except at shrines. Magdalen had not. 

She knew that Fay cared but little for her in reality. But she also knewthat she did care a little. Fay had turned to her many times, and hadrepulsed and forgotten her not a few times. 

Magdalen had a good memory. 

"When she really wants me she will turn to me again, " she saidtranquilly to herself. 

CHAPTER XIV

 Toute passion a son chemin de croix. 

And Michael?

What of him during these two endless years?

What did he think about during his first year in prison: what was thefirst waking in his cell like, the second, the third, the gradualdiscovery of what it means to be in prison? Was there a bird outside hiswindow to wound him? The oncome of summer, the first thrill of autumn, how did he bear them?

His was not a mind that had ever dwelt for long upon itself. Theegoist's torturing gift of introspection and self-analysis was not his. He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had notthought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Didhe brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did heaccept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him throughthe hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up againsthim? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one, minister to him in his great need?

Perhaps at first he was supported by the thought that he was sufferingvoluntarily for Fay's sake. Perhaps during the first year he kept holdof the remembrance of her love for him. Perhaps in time he forgot whathe had read in the depths of her terror-stricken eyes as he had emergedfrom behind the screen. There had been no thought of him at that momentin those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love. 

Or perhaps he had _not_ forgotten, and had realised that her love forhim was very slenderly built. Perhaps it was the foreshadow of thatrealisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, beforethe trial, that she would not speak. 

Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain hislove for Fay. He did it again during that first year in prison. He sawthat she was not capable of love as he understood it. He saw that shewas not capable of a great sacrifice for his sake. The sacrifice whichwould have exonerated him had been altogether too great. Yes, he sawthat. It had been cruel of him to think even for a moment that she mightmake it. What woman would! His opinions respecting the whole sex had tobe gently lowered to meet the occasion. Nevertheless she _did_ love himin her own flower-like way. She would certainly have made a _small_sacrifice for his sake. His love was tenderly moved and re-niched into asmaller demand on hers, one that she could have met without too muchdistress. His bruised mind comforted itself with the conviction that ifa slight sacrifice on her part could have saved him she wouldindubitably have made it. 

After a year in prison the news tardily reached Michael through hisfriend, the doctor, that the duke was dead. 

The news, so long expected, gave him a pang when it did at last arrive. He had liked the duke. For a moment they had been very near to eachother. 

But now, _now_, Fay would release him. It would still be painful to herto do so, but in a much lesser degree than heretofore. She would have toendure certain obvious, though groundless, inferences from which herdelicacy would shrink. But she was free to marry him now, and that madeall the difference as to the explanation she would have to give. Alittle courage was all that was needed, just enough to make a smallsacrifice for him. She would certainly have that amount. The other hadbeen too much to expect. _But this_----

Michael leaned his forehead against the stone wall of his cell, andsobbed for joy. 

Oh! God was good. God was merciful. He knew how much he could bear. Heknew that he was but dust. He had not tried him beyond his strength. 

Michael was suffused with momentary shame at the joy that the death ofhis friend had brought him. 

Nevertheless, like a mountain spring that will not be denied, joy everrose and rose afresh within him. 

Fay and he could marry now. The thought of her, the hungered craving forher was no longer a sin. 

It was Sunday evening. The myriad bells of Venice were borne in afloating gossamer tangle of sound across the water. 

Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him. 

He stumbled to his feet, and clung convulsively to the bars of hisnarrow window. 

How often he had heard the bells, but never with this voice!

He looked out across the wide water with its floating islands, each withits little campanile. His eyes followed the sails of the fishing boatsfrom Chioggia, floating like scarlet and orange butterflies in thepearl haze of the lagoon. 

How often he had watched them in pain. How often he had turned his eyesfrom them lest that mad rage for freedom which entered at times into theman in the next cell, when the boats passed, should enter also into him, and break him upon its wheel. 

He looked at the boats now with tears in his eyes. They gleamed at himlike a promise straight from God. How freely they moved. Free as air;free as the sea-mew with its harsh cry wheeling close at hand under aluminous sky. 

He also should be free soon, should float away past the gleamingislands, over a sea of pearl in a boat with an orange sail. 

For Fay would come to him. The one woman in the world of counterfeitswould come to him, and set him free. She would take him in her arms atlast, and lay her cool healing touch upon his aching life. And he wouldlean his forehead against her breast, and his long apprenticeship tolove would be over. It seemed to Michael that she was here already, hersoft cheek against his. 

He pressed his face to the stone wall, and whispered as to her:

"Fay, have I served you?"

He almost heard her tremulous whisper, "Yes. "

"Do you still love me?"

"Yes. "

"We may love each other now. "

Again Fay's voice very low. "Yes. "

It had to be like that. This moment was only a faint foreshadowing ofthat unendurable joy, which inevitably had to come. 

A great trembling laid hold on Michael. He could not stand. He fell onhis knees, but he could not kneel. He stretched himself face downwardson his pallet. But it was not low enough. He flung himself on the floorof his cell, but it was not low enough. A grave would hardly have beenlow enough. The resisting stone floor had to do instead. 

And through the waves of awe and rapture that swept over him camefaintly down to him, as from some dim world left behind, the bells ofVenice, and the thin cry of the sea-mew rejoicing with him. 

Can we call a life sad which has had in it one such blessed hour?

Luminous day followed luminous day, and the nights also were full oflight. His work was nothing to him. The increasing heat was nothing tohim. His chains were nothing to him. 

But at last when the weeks drew into a month, two months, a chill doubttook up its abode with him. It was resolutely cast out. But it returned. It was fought against with desperation. It was scorned as want of faith. Michael's strength waned with each conflict. But it always returned. Atlast it became to him like a mysterious figure, always present with him. 

"Fay, " he whispered over and over again through the endless burningnights of summer. "Dear one, come soon. "

There was neither speech nor language, only the lying bells in the dawn. 

The shadow deepened. 

A frightful suspense laid its cold, creeping hold on Michael. 

What could have happened?

Was she ill?

Was she dead?

He waited, and waited, and waited. Time stood still. 

Let no one say that he has found life difficult till he has known whatit is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turninto weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through theunmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turnsinto a forest tree, --for a word which does not come. 

 * * * * *

Late in the autumn, six months and five days after the death of theduke--Michael marked each day with a scratch on the wall--he received aletter from Wentworth. He was allowed to receive two letters a year. 

He dreaded to open it. He should hear she was dead. He had known all thetime that she was dead. That flowerlike face was dust. 

With half blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into eachother, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, theretriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter hadmarried his chaplain--a dull marriage, and the Bishop had not been ableto resist appointing his son-in-law to a large living. The partridgeshad done well. He had got more the second time over than last year. Buthe did not care to shoot without Michael. 

He found her name at last on the third sheet, just a casual sentence. 

"Your cousin, the Duchess of Colle Alto, has come to live at Priesthopefor good. She has been there nearly six months. I see her occasionally. At first she appeared quite stunned by grief, but she is becoming rathermore cheerful as time passes on. "

The letter fell out of Michael's hand. 

"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on. _"

Someone close at hand laughed, a loud, fierce laugh. 

Michael looked up startled. He was alone. He never knew that it was hewho had laughed. 

"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on. _"

He looked back and saw the months of waiting that lay behindhim, --during which the time had passed on. He saw them pieced togetherinto a kind of map; an endless desert of stones and thorns, and in themidst a little figure in the far distance, coming toiling towards him, under a blinding sun. 

That figure was himself. And this was what he had reached at last. Hehad touched the goal. 

She had left Italy for good. She had gone back to her own people; notlately, but long ago, months ago. When he had first heard of the duke'sdeath, even while he was counting daily, hourly, on her coming as thesick man counts on the dawn; even then she was arranging to leave Italyfor good. Even then, when he was expecting her day by day, she must havemade up her mind not to speak. She would not face anything for his sake. She had decided to leave him to his fate. 

She who looked so gentle, was hard; she who wept at a bird's grief overits rifled nest, was callous of suffering. She, who had seemed to lovehim--he felt still her hands holding his hands against her breast--hadnever loved him. She did not know what love was. 

She was inhuman, a monster. He saw it at last. 

There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion atits worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannotlove may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or laterthat shudder has to come. 

Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate. We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone canteach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets usand grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsakingand faithful God?

Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us?

The duke's words came back to Michael. 

"Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person forwhom she has a permanent and deep affection--for her very charmingself. "

He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days. 

Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. Hebroke his teeth against his chains. 

If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death withthe chains he had worn so patiently for her sake. 

[Illustration: "IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONEHER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"]

And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wildoutbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awakea low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn. 

CHAPTER XV

 Qui sait ce qui peut advenir de la fragilité des femmes? Qui sait jusq'où peut aller l'inconstance de ce sable mouvant?--ALFRED DE MUSSET. 

The Italian winter was closing in. The nights were bitter cold. 

Had Michael reached at last the death of love? Was its strait gate toonarrow for him?

After that one night he held his peace, even with himself, even with thewalls of his cell. He did not sleep nor eat. He had no time to sleep oreat. He was absorbed in one idea. 

Michael was not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctivefeeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never byreflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What helearned had to reach him some other way. His mind only bungled upagainst ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage. 

He sat idly in his cell when his work was done. There was a kind ofpressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him. Sometimes hegot up, and pushed them back with his hands. 

The sun had shifted his setting as the winter drew in, and for a fewminutes every afternoon laid a thong of red light upon his wall. Helooked at it sternly while it burned. It looked back sternly at him. 

He had no wish to be free now, no wish for anything. 

The doctor came to see him, and looked closely at him, and spoke kindlyto him. He was interested in the young Englishman, and, like several ofthe warders, was convinced of his innocence. 

Michael took no notice of him, barely answered his questions. He wasimpatient of any interruption. 

He was absorbed in one thought. 

He had loved Fay for a long time. How long was it? Five years? Tenyears? Owing to his peculiar fate love had usurped in Michael's life toolarge a place, the place which it holds in a woman's life, but which isunnatural in a man's. He did not know it, but he had travelled a longway on the road towards an entire oblivion of Fay when he came to Rome. But the one great precaution against her he had not taken. He had notreplaced her, and "Only that which is replaced is destroyed. " He hadgrown accustomed to loving her. 

In these days he went over, slowly, minutely, every step of his longacquaintanceship with her, from the first day, when he was nineteen andshe was seventeen, to the last evening six years later, when he hadkissed the cold hand that could have saved him, and did not. 

Old people, wise old learned people, smoke-dried Dons and genial bishopssitting in their dignified studies, had spoken with guarded frankness tohim in his youth on the temptations of life. They had told him thatlove, save when it was sanctified by marriage, was only a physicalpassion, a temporary madness, a fever which all men who were menunderwent, but to which a man of principle did not succumb, and which ifvigorously suppressed soon passed away. 

Why had it not been so with him? He had never had to contend with thecoarse forms of temptation of which his elders had spoken, as if theywere an integral part of his youth. 

Why, then, had he loved this pretty, false, selfish woman so long? Whyhad he allowed himself to be drawn back into her toils after he hadknown she was false? Why was he more weak, more credulous, moreinfatuated than other men?

The duke had actually been her husband, had actually possessed thatwonderful creature, and yet he, under the glamour of her personalpresence, which it made Michael gasp to think of, he, the duke, had notbeen deceived. 

Why had he, Michael, been deceived?

He remembered the exhortations of his tepid-minded, painlessly marriedtutor at Oxford, who read the vilest French novels as a duty, and took awalk with his wife on fine afternoons; and whose cryptic warnings on theempire of the passions would have made a baboon blush. 

Michael laughed suddenly as he recalled the mild old-maidish face. Whatwas the old prig talking about? What did he know, dried up andshrivelled like a bit of seaweed between the leaves of a folio. 

Everyone had told him wrong. 

Why had they decried this awful power, why had they so confused it withsensual indulgence that he had had to disentangle it for himself? Whyhad they not warned him, on the contrary, that the love of woman was aliving death, a pitfall from which there was no escape, from the depthsof which you might stare at the sky till you starved to death, as he wasdoing now. 

With all their warnings they had not warned him, these grave men, theseinstructors of youth, who had never known any world except their littleworld of books, who ranged women into two camps, one in which they helda docile Tennysonian place, as chaste adorners of the sacred home, mothers of children, man's property, insipid angel housekeepers of hisdemure middle age; the other where they were depicted as cheap, vulgartemptresses, on a level with the wine cup and the gambling table. 

Why had he allowed himself to be duped and hoodwinked by his elders andby his own shyness, into chastity? They had entreated him to believe itwas the only happy life. _It was not. _ To be faithful to his futurewife. Ha! Ha! That was the beginning of the trap, the white sand neatlyraked over the hidden gin. 

If he had only lived like other men! If he had only listened to theworst among them, if he had only torn the veil early from every limb ofthat draped female figure, that iron maiden, if he had only seen it inits horror of nudity, with its sharp nails for eyes, and its jaggedknives where the bosom should be, he should not be pressed to death inits embrace now. 

He had been deceived, betrayed, fooled. That was why he was shut up. Hehad believed in a woman, had believed that the cobra's bite was only awasp's sting. Good Lord, what an imbecile! He was insane of course, raving mad. And he had been here eighteen months and only saw the jokenow. 

Michael laughed again, shouted with laughter. 

The sun was setting again. It was always setting now. It set in themornings as well. The red thong of light was on the wall again. Bloodred! He rocked to and fro shaking with laughter. 

The doctor and a warder came in. It was just like them. They were alwayscoming in when they were not wanted. 

He pointed at the bar of light, stumbled to it, and tried to tear itfrom the wall. It had been there long enough. Too long. And as he toreat it with hands dyed crimson, something that was pressing upon himlightened suddenly, and the blood gushed forth from his mouth, floodingthe sun-stained wall. 

"I have put out that damned sunset at last, " he said to himself as hefell. 

CHAPTER XVI

 So we must keep apart, You there, I here, With just the door ajar That oceans are, And prayer, And that pale sustenance Despair!

 --EMILY DICKENSON. 

It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take noticeof his surroundings once more. There was no love or tenderness thatWentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor didnot lavish on him. 

Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, andclosed in on him again. But the times when it cleared became nearertogether. He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shiftwhen the mist shifted. Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he wasaware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it. Dayspassed. Blank days and blank nights. He had forgotten everything. 

 * * * * *

He had been lying awake a long time, years and years. The doctor hadbeen in to see him just before sunrise, had raised him, and made himdrink, and laid him back upon his pillow. And now he felt full of rest. How clear everything was becoming. He raised his hand to his head. Hehad not taken the trouble to do that before. He looked long at hiswasted hands laid on the coarse cotton sheeting. What were these markson the wrists? They seemed like an answer to a riddle of which he hadforgotten the question. If he only knew what those marks were he shouldknow numbers of other things as well. He raised his long right hand, andheld it close to his eyes. 

These marks were bruises. A line of bruises went round the wrist. Andhere over the bone was a scar. It was healed now, but it had been a deepsore once. 

_When?_

If only he could remember!

The mist in his mind cleared a little. 

_Those bruises were made by chains. _

A deadly faintness came over him. 

 * * * * *

Michael knew at last that he was in prison. The past filtered back intohis feeble mind drop by drop. He knew why he was there. He knew what hehad done to bring him there; he realised that he had been ill a longtime, many weeks. But there was still something sinister, mysterious, crouching in the back of his mind. 

The doctor sought to distract him, to rouse him. He was a botanist, andhe shewed Michael his collection of grasses. Michael did not want tohave the fatigue of looking at them, but he feigned an interest toplease the doctor. He gazed languidly at a spray, now dry and old. Thedoctor explained to him that it was the sea lavender, which, in theearly autumn, had flushed the shallows of the lagoon with a delicategrey lilac. 

"I remember, " said Michael, whitening. 

It rushed back upon him, that time of waiting, marked by the floweringand the fading of the sea lavender. The colour was seared upon hisbrain. 

"A hundred years it is lilac, " he said, "and a hundred thousand years itis a purple brown. "

The doctor, bending lovingly over a specimen of a rare water plant, looked up to see Michael's quivering face. He withdrew the book gentlyand took it away. 

Michael trembled exceedingly. He was on the verge of some abyss which heshould see clearly in another moment. The sea lavender grew on the veryedge of it. It yawned suddenly at his feet. The abyss was Fay's lastdesertion. He looked down into it. It was quite dark. 

 * * * * *

A few days later the doctor brought another book. It was butterfliesthis time. He saw that an increasing pressure was upon Michael's mind, and he feared for his brain. He was too weak to read. He might perhapslike to look at pictures. 

The doctor opened the book at an attractive illustration of an immensebutterfly, with wings of iridescent blue and green. He could not stay, but he left the cherished volume open on Michael's knee. 

Michael turned his maimed mind slowly from the abyss into which it hadbeen looking ever since he had seen that sprig of sea lavender. 

Yes. He knew that particular butterfly. He had seen them by thousandsonce in a field in Corfu, long ago on an Easter holiday, when he hadbeen abroad with Wentworth. They had all glinted together in thesunshine, wheeling together, sinking together, rising together like anarmy of fairies. 

How heavy the book was on his knee. 

He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctorwould be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place whenhe came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf. 

Were there English butterflies here as well?

Yes. Here was a sheet of them. 

He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was commonenough in the south of England. 

He looked idly at it. 

And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystalscreen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop. 

He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a butterfly likethat; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, openingand shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticedhow beautiful a butterfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towardsit. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it, and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closedover it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off itswings, one by one, because they were so pretty. 

He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust andalmost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated uglything with struggling legs. 

The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain. 

"It was not I who did it, " he said to himself "I did not understand. "

And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we lookinto still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She hadput out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She hadcast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. Butnevertheless she had not done it on purpose, any more than he had doneit on purpose to that other poor creature of God. _She did notunderstand. _

Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, cameback to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child'sface. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why hehad so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him withher pretty hand. 

Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day shewould come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt nowat the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times moredeeply. He hoped to God he might be near her when that time of griefcame, to comfort her, to assure her that the pain she had inflicted hadbeen nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt. 

An overwhelming, healing compassion, such as he had never known in allthe years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his aridheart. 

Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light!

Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to thedeath, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had alwaysenfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place. 

A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. Itshrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened childagainst its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Lovethat dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles, and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has hadstrength from her to wander away from her--back into her arms. 

CHAPTER XVII

 And no more turn aside and brood Upon Love's bitter mystery. 

 --W. B. YEATS. 

It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in theembryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other facultieshave begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child iscallous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cellin the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell thatwas slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep inthe old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than theruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand. Old age ceases to understand. 

But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyondyouth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps andgives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at theirzenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour. Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behindthem, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into theworld to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell mightwake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when theyare looking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can onlybe loved and served. They cannot love--as yet. They exact love and missit. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening, frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, analyseit, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there isnothing to be got out of it after all. 

They seem inhuman because they are not human--as yet. They seemvariable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man'sbody and brain must so seem. They are not sane--as yet. 

And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truthand beauty and tenderness may not come forth--as yet. 

We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to themnow may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew likehalf-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes. 

Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrivedunconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the daysthat followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he wassupported by the illusion--was it an illusion--that it was Fay reallywho was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take herplace in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing, unless he helped her through. 

He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was wellenough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him oncemore. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his, thatthey were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh?

When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, itwas because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go--atlast. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's. 

His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of itsexhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself. 

CHAPTER XVIII

 What she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest. --EDITH WHARTON. 

On a stormy night, towards the end of March, Magdalen was lying awakelistening to the wind. Her tranquil mind travelled to a great distanceaway from that active, monotonous, daily life which seemed to absorbher, which had monopolised her energies but never her thoughts for somany years past. 

Suddenly she started slightly and sat up. A storm was coming. A tearingwind drowned all other sounds, but nevertheless she seemed to listenintently. 

Then she slowly got out of bed, lit her candle, stole down the passageto Fay's door, and listened again. No sound within. At least none thatcould be distinguished through the trampling of the wind over thegroaning old house. 

She opened the door and went in. A little figure was crouching over thedim fire, swaying itself to and fro. It was Fay. 

Magdalen put down her candle, and went softly to her, holding out herarms. 

Fay raised a wild, wan face out of her hands and said harshly:

"Aren't you afraid I shall push you away again like I did last time?"

Then with a cry she threw herself into the outstretched arms. 

Magdalen held the little creature closely to her, trembling almost asmuch as Fay. 

Outside the storm broke, and beat in wild tears against the pane. Within, another storm had broken in a passion of tears. 

Fay gasped a few words between the paroxysms of sobbing. 

"I was coming to you, Magdalen, --I was trying to come--and I couldn't--Ihad pushed you away when you came before--and I thought perhaps youwould push _me_ away--no--no--I didn't, but I said to myself you would. I hardened myself against you. But I was just coming, all the samebecause--because, "--Fay's voice went thinner and thinner into astrangled whimper, "because I can't bear it alone any more. "

"Tell me about it. "

But Fay tore herself out of her sister's arms and threw herself facedownwards on the bed. 

"I can't, " she gasped. "I must and I can't. I must and I can't. "

Magdalen remained standing in the middle of the room. She knew that thebreaking moment had come and she waited. 

She waited a long time. 

The storm without spent itself before the storm within had spent itself. 

At last Fay sat up. 

Then Magdalen moved quietly to the dying fire. She put on some coal, sheblew the dim embers to a glow. 

Fay watched her. 

Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyesfixed upon it. 

"I have done something very wicked, " said Fay in a hollow voice from thebed. "If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to methat you will never tell anybody?"

"I promise, " said Magdalen after a moment. 

"Swear it. "

"I swear. "

Fay made several false starts and then said:

"I was very unhappy with Andrea. "

Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red. 

"He never cared for me, " continued Fay, slipping off the bed, andkneeling down before the fire. "It's a dreadful thing to marry a man whodoes not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are tooselfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not knowanything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me. "

Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the passageshe had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakefulweakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed tolove deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened insilence then so she listened in silence now. 

"He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfullydisappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no realconfidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife, those whom God has joined together. Andrea never seemed to rememberthat. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not tocare for him, and--he brought it on himself--I'm not excusing myself, Magdalen--I see now that I was to blame too--I ended by caring forsomeone else--someone who _did_ love me, who always had since we wereboy and girl together. "

"Not Michael!"

"Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. Itnever would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best. I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I caredat last. And he was madly in love with me. He worshipped me. "

Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was sofar withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making herconfession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speakingthe whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

"Of course he found it out at last and--and we agreed to part. Wedecided that he must leave Rome. He wished to see me once to saygood-bye. Was it _very_ wrong of me to let him come once, --just once?"

"It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did nothe leave Rome?"

"He was arrested the same night, " faltered Fay. "I said good-bye to himin the garden, and then the garden was surrounded because they werelooking for the murderer of the Marchese, and Michael could not get out. And he was afraid of being seen for fear of compromising me. So he hidbehind the screen in my room. And then--you know the rest--the policecame in and searched my rooms, and Michael came out and confessed to themurder, and said I had let him hide in my room. It was the only thing todo to save my reputation, and he did it. "

"And what did you say?"

"Nothing. What could I say? Besides, I was too faint to speak. "

"And later on when you were not too faint?"

"I never said anything later on either. " Fay's voice had become almostinaudible. "I hoped the real murderer would confess. "

"But when he did not confess?"

"I have always clung to the hope. I have prayed day and night that hemight still confess. Sinners do repent sometimes, Magdalen. "

There was a terrible silence, during which several fixtures inMagdalen's mind had to be painfully and swiftly moved, and carefullysafeguarded into new positions. Magdalen became very white in theprocess. 

At last she said, "Did Andrea _know_ that Michael was innocent of themurder?"

"I never thought so at the time, but just before he died he saidsomething cruel to me which shewed he knew Michael's innocence forcertain, had known it from the first. "

"Then if he knew Michael had not murdered the Marchese, how do yousuppose he accounted for his being hidden in your rooms at midnight, after he had ostensibly left the house?"

Fay stared at her sister aghast. 

"I never thought of that, " she said. 

"What _can_ Andrea have thought of that?"

"Andrea was very secretive, " faltered Fay. "You never could tell what hewas thinking. And I was the last person he ever told things to. RomanCatholics are like that. The priest knows everything instead of thewife. "

There was another silence. 

Magdalen's question vaguely alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if giventime will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidentsthat traverse and render untenable the position in which they have takenrefuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memories, butthey don't know what has weight and what has not, and they refuse toweigh them because they cannot weigh anything. Their minds, quicklyconfused at the best of times, instinctively select and retain all theyremember that upholds their own view of the situation and--discard therest. 

Fay could not answer Magdalen's trenchant question. She could onlyrestate her own view of her husband's character. 

Magdalen did not make large demands on the truthfulness of others ifthey had very little of it. She did not repeat her question. She waiteda moment, and then said:

"You seem to think that Andrea never guessed the attachment betweenyourself and Michael. But he must have done so. And if he had notguessed it till Michael was found in your rooms, at any rate he knew it_then_--for certain. _For certain_, Fay. Remember that is settled. Therewas no other possible explanation of Michael's presence there, if youbar the murder explanation, which is barred as far as Andrea isconcerned. Now from first to last Andrea retained his respect forMichael and his belief in your innocence in circumstances which wouldhave ruined you in the eyes of most husbands. You say Andrea did notunderstand you or do you justice. On the contrary, it seems to me heacted towards you with great nobility and delicacy. "

Fay was vaguely troubled. Her deep, long-fostered dislike of her husbandmust not be shaken in this way. She could not endure to have anyfixtures in her mind displaced. So much depended on keeping the wholetightly wedged fabric in position. 

"You don't know what cruel words he said to me on his deathbed, " shesaid. "I don't call it nobility and delicacy never to give me the leasthint till the day he died that he knew why Michael was in prison. "

"Perhaps he hoped--hoped against hope--that----" Magdalen did not finishher sentence. She fixed her eyes on Fay's. A great love shone in them, and a great longing. Then, with a kind of withdrawal into herself, shewent on. "Andrea was loyal to you to the last. He went away without aword to anyone except, it seems, to you. I always liked him, but I seenow that I never did him justice. I did not know with his Italianhereditary distrust of woman's honour that he could have risen to such aheight as that. Think of it, Fay. What grovelling and sordid suspicionshe might have had of you, must inevitably have had of you and Michael ifhe had not followed a very noble instinct, that of entire trust in youboth in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. Dear Fay, theproof was overwhelming. "

Fay was silent. 

"Just as we all believed in Michael's innocence of the murder, so Andreabelieved in your innocence of a crime even greater, never faltered inhis belief, and went to his grave without a word of doubt. Oh! Fay, Fay, do you suppose there are many men like that?"

And Magdalen, who so seldom wept, suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps thethought forced itself through her mind, "If only once long ago I had metwith one little shred of such tender faith!"

"Andrea was better than I thought, " Fay faltered. The admission made heruneasy. She wished he had not been better, that her previous view of himhad not been disturbed. 

Magdalen's tears passed quickly. She glanced again at Fay through a veilof them, looking earnestly for something she did not find. 

"And Michael, " she went on gently. "Dear, dear Michael. He gave himselffor you, spent in one moment, not counting the cost, his life, hisfuture, his good name--for your sake. And he goes on day by day, monthby month, year in year out, enduring a living death without a word--foryour sake. How long has Michael been in prison?"

"Two years. " Fay's voice was almost inaudible. 

"Two years! Is it only two? To him it must seem like a hundred. But ifhis strength remains he will go on for thirteen more. Oh! Fay, was anyman since the world began so loyal to any woman as your husband and yourlover have been to you? You said just now that men were selfish andcould not love. I have heard many women say the same. But _you_! How can_you_ say such a thing! To have met one man who was ready to love andserve them is not the lot of many women. Very few of us ever findanything more than a craving to be loved in the stubborn material ofmen's hearts. And we are thankful enough when we find that. But to havestood between two such men who must have crushed you between them ifeither of them had had one dishonouring thought of you. A momentaryselfishness, a momentary jealousy in either of them, and--where would_you_ have been?"

"No one knows how good Michael is better than I do, " said Fay, "but whatyou don't seem to realise is how awful these years have been for _me_. He has suffered, but sometimes I think I have suffered more than he has. No, I don't _think_ it, I _know_ it. He can't have suffered as much as Ihave. "

Magdalen put out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with atenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been alwaystender. 

"You have suffered more than Michael, " she said. "I have endured certainthings in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done theloss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years?What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!"

Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister'sknee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someoneto confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom sheloved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, buthad always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to amore prominent red, with a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now ableto tell her sister everything. 

The recital took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject ofthe duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if therush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word aboutourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceiveanyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the linesof our self-revelations. We alone seem unable to perceive that sinisterghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured upfrom our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of onewhom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderlyfor years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or ourmeanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to theworld what only Love may safely know concerning us?

Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endlessbolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. Sheheard all about the real murderer not confessing. She heard much thatFay would have died rather than admit. Gradually she realised that itwas misery that had driven Fay to a partial confession, not as yetrepentance, not the desire to save Michael. Misery starves us out of ourprisons sometimes, tortures us into opening the doors of our cellsbolted from within, but as a rule we make a long weary business ofleaving our cells when only misery urges us forth. I think thatMagdalen's heart must have sunk many times, but whenever Fay looked upshe met the same tender, benignant look bent down upon her. 

"Oh! why didn't I tell you before?" she said at last. "I always wantedto, but I thought--at least I felt--I see I did you an injustice--Ithought you might press me to--to----"

"_To confess_, " said Magdalen, her low voice piercing to Fay's verysoul. 

"Y-yes, at least to say something to a policeman or someone, so thatMichael might be let out. I was afraid if I told you you would nevergive me any peace till Michael was released. "

"Have you _had_ any peace since he was put into prison?"

Fay shook her head. 

"Make your mind easy, Fay, I shall never urge you to"--Magdalenhesitated--"to go against your conscience. "

"What would you have done in my place?" said Fay hastily. 

"I should have had to speak. "

"You are better than me, Magdalen, more religious. You always havebeen. "

"I should have had to speak, not because I am better or worse than you, but simply because I could not have endured the misery of silence. Itwould have broken me in two. And if I had not had the courage to speakin Andrea's lifetime, I would have spoken directly he was dead, and havereleased Michael and married him. You have not told me why you did notdo that. "

"I never thought of it. I somehow regarded it as all finished. And Ihave never even _thought_ of marrying Michael or anyone when I was lefta widow. I was much too miserable. I had had enough of being married. "

There was a difficult silence. 

"I should never have a moment's peace if--if I _did_ speak, " said Fay atlast. 

"Yes, you would, " said Magdalen with sudden intensity. "That is wherepeace lies. "

Fay raised herself to her knees and looked into Magdalen's eyes. Thedawn had come up long ago, and in its austere light Magdalen's faceshowed very sharp and white in a certain tender fixity and compassion. She had seen that look once before in her husband's dying eyes. Now thatshe was suddenly brought face to face with it again she understood itfor the first time. Had not Andrea's last prayer been that she might begiven peace!

CHAPTER XIX

 There is no wild wind in his soul, No strength of flood or fire; He knows no force beyond control, He feels no deep desire. 

 He knows no altitudes above, No passions elevate; All is but mockery of love, And mimicry of hate. 

 --EDGAR VINE HALL. 

The morning after the storm Wentworth was sitting in the library atBarford, looking out across the garden to the down. Behind the down layPriesthope, where Fay was. 

He was thinking of her. This shewed a frightful lapse in his regulatedexistence. So far he had allowed the remembrance of Fay to invade himonly in the evenings over his cigarette, or when he was pacing amid hispurpling beeches. 

Was she now actually beginning to invade his mornings, those morningssacred to the history of Sussex? No! No! Dismiss the extravagantsurmise. Wentworth was far more interested in his attitude towards athing or person--in what he called his point of view--than in the thingviewed. 

He was distinctly attracted by Fay, but he was more occupied with hisfeelings about her than with herself. It was these which were nowengrossing him. 

For some time past he had been working underground--digging out thefoundations--and as a rule invisible as a mole within them--of a tediouscourtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage ismuch more important to a woman than to a man. This point of view was notto be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciouslydiffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that largebattalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take uponthemselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship. Hehad never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chancemeetings. " But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formedby the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselvesacross his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculineviolets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex;and that when he met the _right_ woman she would set to work like theothers, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would beconveniently arrived at. 

But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparentgrasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certainturn which affairs might one day take. 

At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that oneof the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a furthermasculine advance. Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity, almost anxious. But he communed with himself, analysed his feelingsunder various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged. Hewas aware--at least, he told himself that he was aware--thatextraordinary efforts must be made in love affairs. I don't know how hereconciled that startling theory with his other tenets, but he did. Thechance suggestions of his momentary moods he regarded as convictions, and adopted them one day and disowned them the next with much _naïf_dignity, and offended astonishment, if the Bishop or some other oldfriend actually hinted at a discrepancy between diametrically opposedbut earnestly expounded views. He imagined that he was now grapplingwith the difficulties inherent to love in their severest form. It was ofestrangements like these that poets sang. He opened his Browning andfound he was on the right road, passing the proper milestones at thecorrect moment. He was sustained in his idleness this morning by thecomfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. Heshook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased withhimself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In themeanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wildemotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round alittle paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It wasdelicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition in verse. 

I fear we cannot escape the conclusion that Wentworth was on the vergeof being a prig. But he was held back as it were by the coat-tails fromthe abyss by a certain _naïveté_ and uprightness of character. TheBishop once said of him that he was so impressed with the fact thatdolls were stuffed with sawdust that it was impossible not to be fond ofhim. 

Wentworth in spite of his sweeping emotions was still unconsciouslymeditating a possible retreat as regards Fay, was still glancingfurtively over his shoulder. Strange how that involuntary, self-protective attitude on a man's part is never lost on a woman, however dense she may otherwise be, almost always ends by ruining himwith her. Others besides Lot's wife have become petrified by lookingback. 

Fay, he reflected, must make it perfectly clear to him that if he didpropose he would be accepted--she in short must commit herself--andthen--after all a bachelor's life had great charm. But still--at anyrate he might come back from Lostford this afternoon by way of PilgrimRoad. That would tie him to nothing. She often walked there. It would bean entirely chance meeting. Wentworth had frequently used this "shortcut" of late which did not add more than two miles to the length of hisreturn journey from Lostford. 

It was still early in the afternoon when he rode slowly down PilgrimRoad feeling like a Cavalier. There was no hurry. The earth wasbreathing again after the storm. Everything was resting, and waking inthe vivid March sunshine. As he rode at a foot's pace along the mossytrack dappled with anemones, as he noted the thin powder of green on theboles of the beech trees, and the intense blue through the rosy haze ofmyriad twigs, the slight hunger of his heart increased upon him. Therewas a whisper in the air which stirred him vaguely in spite of himself. 

At that instant he caught sight of a slight black figure sitting on afallen tree near the track. 

For one moment the Old Adam in him actually suggested that he shouldride past, just taking off his hat. But he had ridden past in life, just taking off his hat, so often that the action lacked novelty. Healmost did it yet again from sheer force of habit. Then he dismountedand walked up to Fay, bridle in hand. 

"What good fortune to meet you, " he said. "I so seldom come this way. "

This may have been the truth in some higher, rarer sense than itsobvious meaning, for Wentworth was a perfectly veracious person. Yetanyone who had seen him during the last few weeks constantly riding at afoot's pace down this particular glade, looking carefully to right andleft, would hardly have felt that his remark dovetailed in with theactual facts. The moral is--morals cluster like bees round certainindividuals--that we must not ponder too deeply the meanings of men likeWentworth. 

"I often used to come here, " said Fay, "but not of late. I came to getsome palm. "

She had in her bare hand a little bunch of palm, the soft woolly buds onthem covered with yellow dust. She held them towards Wentworth, and helooked at them with grave attention. 

The cob, a privileged person, of urbane and distinguished manners, suddenly elongated towards them a mobile upper lip, his sleek headslightly on one side, his kind, sly eyes half shut. 

"Conrad, " said Wentworth, "we never ask. We only take what is given us. "

Fay laughed, and gave them both a twig. 

Wentworth drew his through his buttonhole. Conrad twisted his in hisstrong yellow teeth, turned it over, and then spat it out. The action, though of doubtful taste in itself, was ennobled by his perfectrendering of it. He brought it, so to speak, forever within the sphereof exquisite manners. 

Wentworth led him back to the path, tied him to a tree, and then cameback and sat down at a little distance from Fay on the same trunk. Hehad somehow nothing to say, but of course he should think of somethingstriking directly. One of Fay's charms was that she did not talk much. 

A young couple close at hand were not hampered by any doubts as to achoice of subject. 

From among the roots of a clump of alder rose a sweet little noise ofmouse talk, intermittent, _affairé_, accompanied by sudden rustlings anddartings under dead leaves, momentary glimpses of a tiny brown bride andbridegroom. Ah! wedded bliss! Ah! youth and sunshine, and the joy oflife in a new soft silken coat!

Fay and Wentworth watched and listened, smiling at each other from timeto time. 

"I am forced to the conclusion, " said Wentworth at last, "that even inthese early days Mrs. Mouse does not listen to all Mr. Mouse says. "

"How could she, poor thing, when he never leaves off talking?"

"Well, neither does she. They both talk at once. I suppose they have notour morbid craving for a listener. "

"Do you think--I mean really and truly--that they are talking aboutthemselves?" said Fay, looking at Wentworth as if any announcement ofhis on the subject would be considered final. 

"No doubt, " he said indulgently, willing to humour her, and feeling morelike a cavalier than ever. 

Then he actually noticed how pale she was. 

"You look tired, " he said. "I am afraid the storm last night kept youawake. "

"Yes, " she said, and hung her head. 

Wentworth, momentarily released from his point of view, looked at hermore closely, and perceived that her lowered eyelids were heavy withrecent tears. And as he looked, he realised, by some other means thanthose of reasoning and deduction, by some mysterious intuitive feelingnew to him, that all these weeks when he had imagined she was drawinghim on by feminine arts of simulated indifference she had in realitybeen thinking but little of him because she was in trouble. Theelaborate edifices which he had raised in solitude to account for thisand that in her words one day, in her attitude towards him another day, toppled over, and he saw before him a simple creature, who for someunknown and probably foolish reason, had cried all night. 

He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had neverconsidered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriouslyabout him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced womanof the world was in reality an ignorant child at heart. 

He felt vaguely relieved. There were evidently no ambushes, nosurprises, no pitfalls in this exquisite nature. There was reallynothing to withdraw from. He suddenly experienced a strong desire to goforward, a more imperative desire than he had ever known about anythingbefore. Even as he was conscious of it Fay raised her eyes to his and itpassed away again, leaving a great tranquillity behind, together with amounting sense of personal power. 

If Fay had spoken to him he had not heard what she had said. But he didnot mind having missed it. The meaning of the spring was reaching himthrough her presence like music through a reed. He had never understoodit till now. Poor empty little reed! Poor entranced listener mistakingthe reed for music!

Can it be that when God made His pretty world He had certain thingsexceeding sharp and sweet to say to us, which it is His will only towhisper to us through human reeds: the frail human reeds on which wesometimes deafly lean until they break and pierce our cruel hands?

The mystery of the spring was becoming clear and clearer. What Wentworthhad believed hitherto to be a deceptive voice was nothing but areiterated faithful prophecy, a tender warning to him so that he mightbe ready when the time came. 

"The primroses will soon be out, " he said as if it were a secret. 

"Very soon, " she said, though they were out already. Fay always assentedto what was said. 

"I must be going, " she said, getting up. "I have walked too far. If Isit here any longer I shall never get home at all. "

"Let me take you home on Conrad. "

Fay hesitated. 

"I am frightened of horses. "

"But not of Conrad. He is only an armchair stuffed to look like a horse. And I will lead him. "

Fay still hesitated. 

He took an authoritative tone. He must insist on her riding home. Shewas tired already, and it was a long mile up hill to Priesthope. 

Fay acquiesced. To-day of all days she was not in a condition foranything but a dazed acceptance of events as they came. 

Wentworth lifted her gently onto the saddle, and put one small danglingfoot into a stirrup shortened to meet it. 

She was alarmed and clutched Conrad's mane, but gradually her timiditywas reassured, and they set out slowly together, Wentworth walkingbeside her, with his hand on the rein. 

The little bunch of palm was forgotten. It had done its part. 

Wentworth talked and Fay listened, or seemed to listen. Her mindwandered if Conrad pricked his ears, but he did not prick them veryoften. 

Wentworth felt that it was time Fay made more acquaintance with hismind, and he proceeded without haste, but without undue delay toindicate to her portions of his own attitude towards life, his point ofview on various subjects. All the sentiments which must infallibly havelowered him in the eyes of a shrewder woman he spread before her withchildish confidence. He gave her of his best. He expressed a hope thathe did not abuse for his own selfish gratification his power of enteringswiftly into intimacy with his fellow creatures. He alluded to his ownfreedom from ambition, his devotion--unlike other men--to the _small_things of life, love, friendship, etc. : we know the rest. Wentworth hadbeen struck by that sentence when he first said it to the Bishop, andhe repeated it now. Fay thought it very beautiful. She proved a moresympathetic listener than the Bishop. 

I don't know whether like Mrs. Mouse she did not listen to all Mr. Mousesaid. But at any rate she noticed for the first time how lightlyWentworth walked, how square his shoulders were, and the beauty of hisbrown thin hand upon the bridle; and through her mind a little streak ofvanity came back to the surface, momentarily buried under the _débris_of last night's emotion. Wentworth was interested in her. He admiredher. _He_ did not know anything uncomfortable about her--_as Magdalendid_. He thought a great deal of her. It was nice to be with a personwho thought highly of one. It had been a relief to meet him. How well hetalked! What a wide-minded, generous man!

The gate into the gardens must have been hurrying towards them, it wasreached so soon. Wentworth, after a momentary surprise at beholding it, stopped the cob, and helped Fay with extreme care to the ground. One ofFay's attractions was her appearance of great fragility. Men feltinstinctively that with the least careless usage she might break in two. She must be protected, cheered, have everything made smooth for her. Shewas in reality much stronger than many of her taller, morerobust-looking sisters, who, whether wives or spinsters, if theyrequired assistance, had to look for it in quinine. An uneasy jealousyof Fay led Lady Blore frequently to point out that Fay was always wellenough to do what she wanted. Aunt Mary's own Roman nose and stalwartfigure warded off from her the sympathy to which her severe crampsundoubtedly entitled her. 

"When shall I see you again?" said Wentworth, suddenly realising thatthe good hour was over. 

Fay did not answer. She was confused. A very delicate colour flew to hercheek. 

Wentworth, reddening under his tan, said: "Perhaps Pilgrim Road is afavourite walk of yours?"

"Yes. I often go there in the afternoon. "

"I have to pass that way, too, most days, " he said. "It is a short cutto Lostford. "

He had forgotten that an hour before he had announced that he seldomused that particular path. It did not matter, for Fay had not noticedthe contradiction any more than he did. Fay was easy to get on withbecause she never compared what anyone said one day with what they saidthe next. She never would feel the doubts, the perplexities that keenerminds had had to fight against in dealing with him. 

For the first time she looked at his receding figure with a sense ofregret and loss. 

Magdalen was in the house waiting to give her her tea, dear Magdalen whowas so good, and so safe, such a comforter--_but who knew_. Fay shrankback instinctively as she neared the house, and then crept upstairs toher own room, and had tea there. 

 * * * * *

[Illustration: "FAY NOTICED FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW LIGHTLY WENTWORTHWALKED, HOW SQUARE HIS SHOULDERS WERE"]

Wentworth rode home feeling younger that he had done for years. What isthirty-nine? No age for a thin man. (He was in reality nearlyforty-one. ) He was pleased with himself. How quaintly amusing he hadbeen about the mouse. He regretted, not for the first time, that hedid not write novels, for little incidents like that, which theconventional mind of the ordinary novelist was incapable of perceiving, would intertwine charmingly with a love scene. The small service he hadrendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her--hedid not know exactly what--but something larger than to-day. Any fool, any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home on a cob. Hewould like to do something which another person could _not_ do, something which would cheer her, console her, and at the same time placehim in a magnanimous light. 

We all long for an opportunity to act with generosity and tenderness tothe one we love. We need not trouble ourselves to seek for such anoccasion, for though many things fail us in this life the opportunity soto act has never yet failed to arrive, and has never arrived alone, always hand in hand with some prosaic hideously difficult circumstance, which, if we are of an artistic temperament, may appear to us too ugly. 

Wentworth had never wished to do anything for the gay little lady who, afew years ago, had crossed his path. The principal subject of hiscogitations about her had been whether she would be able to adaptherself to him and his habits, to understand his many-sided waywardnature, and to add permanently to his happiness; or whether, on thecontrary, she might not prove a bar to his love of solitude, a drag onhis soaring spirit. So I think we may safely conclude that his feelingsfor her had not gone to breakneck length. But the germ in his mind ofcompassionate protection and instinctive desire to help Fay had in itthe possibility of growth, of some expansion. And what other feeling inWentworth's clean, well-regulated, sterilized mind had shown any powerof growth?

The worst of growth is that a small acorn does not grow into a largeacorn as logical persons expect. It ought to, but it does not. It growsinstead into something quite unrecognisable from its small beginnings, something for which, perhaps, beyond a certain stage, there is noroom, --not even a manger. 

Those who love must discard much. Wentworth had not yet felt the need ofdiscarding anything, and he had not the smallest intention of doing so. He intended instead to make a small ornamental addition, a sort ofportico, to his life. His mind had got itself made up this afternoon, and he contemplated the proposed addition with some complacency asalready made. 

There is, I believe, a method of planting an acorn in a bottle, productive of the happiest results--for those who love small results. You only give the acorn a little water every day, --no soil of course. The poor thing will push up a thin twig of stem through the bottle neck, and in time will unfold a few real oak leaves. Men like Wentworth wouldalways prefer the acorn to remain an acorn, but if it shews signs ofgrowth, some of them are wise enough, take alarm early enough, tosqueeze it quickly down a bottle neck before it has expanded too much toresist the passage. 

Had Fate in store for Wentworth a kinder, sterner destiny than that, orwould she allow him to stultify himself, to mutilate to his ownconvenience a great possibility?

CHAPTER XX

 Look through a keyhole, and your eye will be sore. 

During the weeks which followed Fay's confession Magdalen became awarethat she watched her, and aware also that she avoided her, was neveralone with her if she could help it. 

At this time Fay began to do many small kindnesses, and to talk much ofthe importance of work for others, of the duty of taking an interest inour fellow creatures. This was a new departure. She had not so farevinced the faintest interest in the dull routine of home duties whichare of the nature of kindnesses, and had often reproached Magdalen forspending herself in them. To play halma with zest all the evening with aparent who must always win, to read the papers to him by the hour, notwhile he listened, but while he slept--Fay scorned these humble effortsof Magdalen's. She shewed no disposition to emulate them; but she didshew a feverish tendency towards isolated acts of benevolence outsidethe home life, which precluded any claim upon her by arousing a hope oftheir continuance, which tied her to nothing. Fay began to send boxes ofprimroses to hospitals, to knit stockings for orphans, to fatigueherself with enormous walks over the downs with illustrated papers forthe Saundersfoot work-house. 

It was inevitable at this juncture that she should feel some shockedsurprise at the supineness of those around her. Her altruistic effortswere practically single-handed. She had hoped that when she inauguratedthem, Magdalen at any rate would have followed suit, would have workedcheerfully under her direction. But Magdalen, whose serene cheerfulnesshad flagged of late, fell painfully below her sister's expectation. Faycame to the conclusion that it was more lack of imagination thancallousness on her sister's part which held her back. 

Many careworn souls besides Fay have discovered that the irritableexhaustion, the continual ache of egotism can be temporarily relieved bytaking an inexpensive interest in others. The remedy is cheap andefficacious, and it is a patent. Like Elliman applied to a rheumaticshoulder it really does do good--I mean to the owner of the shoulder. And you can stop rubbing the moment you are relieved. Perhaps theseexternal remedies are indispensable to the comfort of those who dwell bychoice, like Fay, in low-lying swampy districts, and have no thought ofmoving to higher ground. 

Magdalen knew these signs, and sometimes her heart sank. 

Was Fay unconsciously turning aside to busy herself over little thingsthat were not required of her, in order to shut her eyes to the onething needful--a great act of reparation?

If Fay was watching Magdalen, someone else was watching Fay. Bessie'sround, hard, staring eyes were upon her, and if Bessie did anything shedid it to some purpose. 

One afternoon in the middle of April Bessie came into Magdalen's sittingroom and sat down with an air of concentration. 

"I have reason to be deeply ashamed of myself, " she said. "I _am_ashamed of myself. If I tell you about it it is not in order that youmay weakly condone and gloss over my conduct. "

Magdalen reflected that Bessie had inherited her father's graceful wayof approaching a difficulty by finding a preliminary fault in hislistener. 

Bessie shut her handsome mouth firmly for a moment, and then opened itwith determination. 

"I thought that whatever faults I had I was at any rate a lady, but Ifind I am not. I discovered something by the merest chance a short timeago, and since then, for the last fortnight I have been acting in adishonourable and vulgar manner, in short, spying upon another person. "

"That must have made you miserable. "

"It has. I am miserable. But I deserve that. I did not come to talkabout that. The point is this----"

"Bessie, I don't want to hear what you evidently ought not to know. "

"Yes, you must, because someone else needs your advice. "

"We won't trouble our minds about the someone else. "

Bessie had, however, inherited another characteristic trait of herfather's. She could ignore when she chose. She chose now. 

"I may as well put you in possession of the facts, " she continued. "Afew weeks ago I was coming home by Pilgrim Road. I was not hurryingbecause I was struck, as I always am struck--I don't suppose I ampeculiar in this--by the first appearance of spring. Pilgrim Road is asheltered place. Spring always comes early there. "

"It does. "

"I will even add that I was recalling to myself verses of poetryconnected with the time of year, when I saw a couple in front of me. They were walking very slowly with their backs towards me, takingearnestly together. They were Fay and Wentworth. "

Magdalen made no movement, but her face, always pale, became suddenlyashen grey. 

If Fay were seriously attracted by Wentworth would she ever confess, ever release Michael!

"There was no harm in their walking together, " she said tremulously. 

"There was one harm in it, " retorted Bessie. "It made me so angry that Idid not know how to live. They did not see me, and I struck up into thewood, and I had to stay an hour by myself holding on to a little tree, before I could trust myself to come home. "

"It does not help matters to be angry, Bessie. I was angry once for twoyears. I said at the time like Jonah that I did well, but I see now thatI might have done better. "

"I don't particularly care what helps matters and what does not. I nowcome to my own disgraceful conduct. I have spied upon Fay steadily forthe last fortnight. She is so silly she never even thinks she iswatched. And she meets Wentworth in Pilgrim Road nearly every afternoon. I once waylaid her as if by accident, on her way home, and asked herwhere she had been, and she said she had been on her way to Arleighwood, but had not got so far, as she was too tired. Too tired! She hadbeen walking up and down with Wentworth for over an hour. I timed them. She never meant to go to Arleigh wood. And when they said Good-bye, he--he kissed her hand. Since Fay has come back to live here I havegradually formed the meanest opinion of her. She is not truthful. She isnot sincere. She is absolutely selfish. I was inclined to be sorry forher at first, but I soon saw through her. She did not really care forAndrea. She only pretended. Everything she does is a kind of prettypretence. She does not really care for Wentworth. She is only leadinghim on for her own amusement. "

"I think it is much more likely that she is drifting towards marriagewith him without being fully aware of what she is doing. But women likeyou and me are not in the same position towards men as Fay is. Consequently it is very difficult for us to judge her fairly. "

"I don't know what you mean. "

"You and I are not attractive to men. Fay is. You saw Wentworth kiss herhand. You naturally infer, but you are probably wrong, that Fay had beenleading him on, as you call it. "

"It will take a good deal to disabuse me of that at any rate. I believemy own eyes. "

"I should not if I were you. If anyone kissed your hand or mine it wouldnot only be an epoch in our lives, but also the sign manual of someponderous attachment which you, my dear, would carefully weigh, andapproximately value. But do you suppose for one moment that Fayattaches any importance to such an everyday occurrence!"

"I see what you are driving at, that Fay is not responsible for heractions. But she is. She must know when she does things or lets them bedone, that will make others suffer. "

"If you could look into Fay's heart, Bessie, you would find that Fay issuffering herself and attributing her pain to others. As long as we dothat, as long as we hold the stick by the wrong end, we must inflictpain in some form or other. Fay is not happy. You cannot look at herwithout seeing it. "

"I would not mind so much if it were not for Wentworth, " said Bessiewith dreadful courage. "I know it is partly jealousy, but it is not onlyjealousy. There are a few crumbs of unselfishness in it. I thought atfirst--I reasoned it out with myself and it appeared a logicalconclusion--that father was the ostensible but not the real object ofWentworth's frequent visits. I took a great interest in hisconversation; it is so lucid, so well informed, so illuminative. I donot read novels as a rule, but I dipped into a few, studying the lovescenes, and the preliminary approaches to love scenes in order to aid myinexperience at this juncture. I am sorry to say I fell into the errorthat he might possibly reciprocate the growing interest I felt in him, in spite of the great disparity in age. It was a mistake. I havesuffered for it. "

The two roses of Bessie's cheeks bloomed on as unflinchingly as ever. 

Magdalen's eyes were fixed on her own hands. 

"You would not have suited each other if he had cared for you, " she saidafter a moment, "for you would not have done him justice when you got toknow him better, any more than you do Fay justice now that you _do_ knowher better. Wentworth is made of words, just as other men are made offlesh and blood. How would you have kept any respect for him when youhad become tired of words? You are too straightforward, toosledge-hammer to understand a character like his. "

"In that case Fay ought to suit him, " said Bessie grimly. "No one, noteven you, can call her straightforward. But I begin to think, Magdalen, that you actually wish for the marriage. "

"I had never thought of it as possible on her side until a few minutesago, when what you said took me by surprise. Of course I had noticed theattraction on his side, but it appeared to me he was irresolute andtimid, and it is better to ignore the faint emotions of half-heartedpeople. They come to no good. If you repel them they are mortallyoffended and withdraw, and if you welcome them they are terrified andwithdraw. "

"I don't think Wentworth intends withdrawing. "

"No. These meetings look as if he had unconsciously drifted with thecurrent till the rowing back would be somewhat arduous. " There was amoment's silence, in which Magdalen recalled certain lofty sentimentswhich Wentworth had aired with suspicious frequency of late. She knewthat when he talked of his consciousness of guidance by a Higher Powerin the important decisions of his life he always meant following theline of least resistance. In this case the line of least resistance_might_ tend towards marriage. 

"It never struck me as possible till now, " she said aloud, "that Faywould think seriously of him. "

"I don't suppose she is. She is only keeping her hand in. Don't youremember how cruel she was to that poor Mr. Bell. "

"I am convinced that she is not keeping her hand in. "

"Then you actually favour the idea of a marriage. " Bessie got up andstalked slowly to the door. "You will help it on?" she said over hershoulder. 

"No. " Magdalen's voice shook a little. "I will do nothing to help it, orto hinder it. "

CHAPTER XXI

 The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul-- No hill-crown's heavenly aureole, But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal. 

 --D. G. ROSSETTI. 

If Fay's progress through life could have been drawn with a pencil itwould have resembled the ups and downs, like the teeth of a saw, of afever chart. 

To Magdalen it appeared as if Fay could undergo the same feelings withthe same impotent results of remorse or depression a hundred times. Theyseemed to find her the same and leave her the same. But nevertheless shedid move, imperceptibly, unconsciously--no, not quite unconsciously. Thesense--common to all weak natures--not of being guided, but of beingpushed was upon her. 

Once again she tried to extricate herself from the pressure of somemysterious current. There seemed no refuge left in Magdalen. Thereseemed very few comfortable people left in the world, to whom amiserable woman might turn. Only Wentworth. _He did not know. _

Perhaps Fay would never have turned to him if she had not first confidedin and then shrunk from Magdalen. For the second time in her life shelonged feverishly to get away from home, the home to which only a yearago she had been so glad to hurry back, when she had been so restlesslyanxious to get away from Italy. Wentworth was beginning to look like ameans of escape. The duke had at one time worn that aspect. Later onMichael had looked extremely like it for a moment. Now Wentworth wasassuming that aspect in a more solid manner than either of hispredecessors. She was slipping into love with him, half unconsciously, half with _malice prepense_. She told herself continually that she didnot want to marry him or anyone, that she hated the very idea ofmarriage. 

But her manner to Wentworth seemed hardly to be the outward reflectionof these inward communings. And why did she conceal from Magdalen hernow constant meetings with him?

Wentworth had by this time tested and found correct all his intimateknowledge of Woman, that knowledge which at first had not seemed to workout quite smoothly. 

Nothing could be more flattering, more essentially womanly than Fay'sdemeanour to him had become since he had set her mind at rest as to hisintentions on that idyllic afternoon after the storm. (How he had sether mind at rest on that occasion he knew best. ) It seemed thisexquisite nature only needed the sunshine of his unspoken assurance torespond with delighted tenderness to his refined, his cultured advances. He was already beginning to write imaginary letters to his friends, onthe theme of his engagement: semi-humourous academic effusions as to howhe, who had so long remained immune, had succumbed at last to femininecharm; how he, the determined celibate--Wentworth always called himselfa celibate--had been taken captive after all. To judge by the letterswhich Wentworth conned over in his after-dinner mind, and especially oneto Grenfell, the conclusion was irresistible to the meanest intellectthat he had long waged a frightful struggle with the opposite sex tohave remained a bachelor--a celibate, I mean--so long. 

We have all different ways of enjoying ourselves. In the composition ofthese imaginary letters Wentworth tasted joy. 

 * * * * *

In these days Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in thepostman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain inLondon hospitals. 

Fay read the hurried, grateful notes of busy matrons, over and overagain. They were a kind of anodyne. 

On a blowing afternoon in the middle of April she made her way acrossthe down with her basket to a distant hazel coppice to which she had notbeen as yet. 

A fever of unrest possessed her. She had thought when she confessed toMagdalen that her misery had reached its lowest depths. But it had notbeen so. Her wretchedness, momentarily relieved, had since gone a stepdeeper, that was all. She had endeavoured to allay her thirst with a cupof salt water, which had only increased it to the point of agony. 

As she walked a bare tree stretched out its naked arms to waylay her. Itwas the very tree under which Michael and she had kissed each other, sixspring-tides ago. She recognised it suddenly, and turned her eyes away, as if a corpse were hanging in chains from one of its branches. Heraverted eyes fell upon a seagull wheeling against the blue, theincarnation of freedom and the joy of life. She turned away her eyesagain and hurried on, looking neither to right nor left. 

A light wind went with her, drawing her like a "kind constraining hand. "

She stumbled across the bare shoulder of the down to the wood below. 

Magdalen came by the same way soon afterwards, but not to gatherprimroses. Magdalen usually so serene was becoming daily more troubled. The thought of Michael in prison ground her to the earth. Fay's obviouswayward misery, which yet seemed to bring her no nearer to repentance, preyed upon her. She was crushed beneath her own promise of secrecy. Every day as it passed seemed to cast yet another stone on the heapunder which she lay. 

Could she dare to keep that promise? How much longer could she dare tokeep it? And yet if she broke it, what would breaking it avail?Certainly not Michael's release. No creature would believe herunsupported word. She had not even been in Italy at the time. She wouldonly appear to be mad. The utmost she might achieve would be to cast amalignant shadow over her sister. Even if Fay herself confessed thedifficulties of obtaining Michael's release after this lapse of timewould be very great. Unless the confession came from her they would beinsuperable. 

As Magdalen walked her strong heart quailed within her. Long ago in herpassionate youth she had met anguish and had vanquished it alone. Buthow to bear the burden of another's sin without sharing the sin? How tohelp Fay and Michael? Fay had indeed cast her burden upon her. She knewnot how to endure it, she who had endured so much. 

She reached the wood, and entered one of the many aimless paths thatwandered through it. The uneven ground sloped downwards to the south, and through the manifold branches of the undergrowth of budding hazelsthe sea lay deeply blue, far away. The primroses were everywhere amongthe trees. A winding side path beckoned to her. She walked a few stepsalong it, and came suddenly upon a clearing in the coppice. 

She stood still, dazed. 

The primroses had taken it for their own, had laid tender hold upon thatlittle space, cleared and forgotten in the heart of the wood. 

Young shoots of hazel and ash pricked up here and there from ivy-grownstumps, moss gleamed where it could, through the flood of primroses. Thewild green of the mercury, holding its strong shield to the sun, theviolets, and the virgin white of the anemones were drowned in the unevenwaves and billows and shallows of that sea of primroses. They who comein meekness year by year to roadside hedgerow and homely meadow had comein power. The meek had inherited the earth. 

The light wind impotently came, and vainly went. Overhead a lark sangand sang in the blue. But none heeded them. The wind and the song werebut a shadow and an echo. They that are the very core of spring hungforgotten on her garments' fringe. All the passion of the world wasgathered into the still, upturned faces of the primroses, glowing with apale light from within. All the love that ever had been, or could be, all rapture of aspiration and service and self-surrender were mirroredthere. 

 * * * * *

Magdalen wept for Fay, as once in bygone years she had wept for Everard:as perhaps some woman of Palestine may have wept when Jesus of Nazarethpassed by, speaking as never man spake, and her lover went with him alittle way and then turned back. 

 * * * * *

"There is no sorrow, " said the primroses. "There is neither sorrow norsin. You are of one blood with us. You have come through into light, aswe have done, and those others are coming, too. There is no sorrow, onlya little pressure through the brown earth. There is no sin, only alittle waking and stirring in the dark. Why then grieve, oh littlefaith! They are all waking and coming. For the Hand that made us madethem. The Whisper that waked us, wakes them. The Sun that draws us, draws them. The Sun will have us come. "

 * * * * *

Fay had already passed by that way, had picked a few primroses, and hadgone on. _Was she never to be at peace again?_ Was she never to knowwhat it is to lie down in peace at night, never to know what it is to bewithout fear. Her whole soul yearned for peace, as the sick man yearnsfor sleep. Andrea had prayed that she might find peace. Magdalen hadtold her where peace lay. But all that she had found was despair. 

On her way homewards she came again upon the clearing and stopped short. The place seemed to have undergone some subtle change. A tall figurewas standing motionless in it. The face was turned away, but Fayrecognised it instantly. As she came close Magdalen turned. For a momentFay saw that she did not recognise her, that she was withdrawn into agreat peace and light. 

Then recognition dawned in Magdalen's eyes and with it came a look oftenderness unspeakable. 

"Fay, " she said in a great compassion. "How much longer will you tortureyourself and Michael? How much longer will you keep him in prison?"

Fay was transfixed. 

Those were the same words that Andrea had said on his deathbed. Thosewords were alive, though he was dead. Never to any living creature, noteven to Magdalen, had she repeated them. Yet Magdalen was saying them. She could not withstand them any longer. The very stones would shriekthem out next. 

She fell at Magdalen's feet with a cry. 

"I will speak, " she gasped in mortal terror. "I will speak. " And sheclung for very life to her sister's knees, and hid her face in hergown. 

CHAPTER XXII

 To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound. 

 --EMERSON. 

The following afternoon saw Magdalen and Fay driving together toLostford, to consult the Bishop as to what steps it would be advisableto take in the matter of Michael's release. Magdalen felt it would bewell-nigh impossible to go direct to Wentworth, even if he had been atBarford. But he had been summoned to London the day before on urgentbusiness. And with Fay even a day's delay might mean a change of mind. It was essential to act at once. 

But to Magdalen's surprise Fay did not try to draw back. When thecarriage came to the door she got into it. She assented to everything, was ready to do anything Magdalen told her. She was like one stunned. She had at last closed with the inevitable. She had found it too strongfor her. 

Did Fay realise how frightfully she had complicated her position by herown folly? She lay back in her corner of the brougham with her eyesshut, pallid, silent. Magdalen held her hand, and spoke encouraginglyfrom time to time. 

You had to be constantly holding Fay's hand, or kissing her, or takingher in your arms if you were to make her feel that you loved her. Theone light austere touch, the long grave look, that between reserved andsympathetic natures goes deeper than any caress, were nothing to Fay. 

It was a long drive to Lostford, and to-day it seemed interminable. 

The lonely chalk road seemed to stretch forever across the down. Now andthen a few heavily-matted, fatigued-looking sheep, hustled byable-bodied lambs, got in the way. The postman, horn on shoulder, passedthem on his way to Priesthope with the papers. 

Once a man on a horse cantered past across the grass at some distance. Magdalen recognised Wentworth on Conrad. She saw him turn into thebridle path that led to Priesthope. He had then just returned fromLondon. 

"He is on his way to see Fay, " said Magdalen to herself, "and he isactually in a hurry. How interested he must be in the ardour of his ownemotions at this moment. He will have a delightful ride, and he cananalyse his feelings of disappointment at not seeing her, on his wayhome to tea. "

Magdalen glanced at Fay, but she still lay back with closed eyes. Shehad not seen that passing figure. 

Magdalen's mind followed Wentworth. 

"Does she realise the complications that must almost certainly ensuewith Wentworth directly her confession is made?

"Will her first step towards a truer life, her first action ofreparation estrange him from her?"

 * * * * *

The Bishop was pacing up and down in the library at Lostford, waitingfor Magdalen and Fay, when the servant brought in the day's papers. Hetook them up instantly with the alertness of a man who can only maketime for necessary things by seizing every spare moment. 

"Oh! you two wicked women, " he said as he opened the _Times_. "Why areyou late? Why are you late?"

They were only five minutes late. 

His swift eye travelled from column to column. Suddenly his attentionwas arrested. He became absorbed. Then he laid down the paper, and saidbelow his breath "Thank God. "

At that moment Magdalen and Fay were announced. 

For a second it seemed as if the Bishop had forgotten them. Then herecollected and went forward to meet them. He knew that only a matter ofsupreme urgency could have made Magdalen word her telegram as she hadworded it, and when he caught sight of Fay's face he realised that shewas in jeopardy. 

All other preoccupations fell from him instantly. He welcomed themgravely, almost in silence. 

The sisters sat down close together on a sofa. Fay's trembling hand putup her long black veil, and then sought Magdalen's hand, which was readyfor it. 

There was a short silence. Magdalen looked earnestly at her sister. 

Fay's face became suddenly convulsed. 

"Fay is in great trouble, " said Magdalen. "She has come to tell youabout it. She has suffered very much. "

"I can see that, " said the Bishop. 

"I wish to confess, " said Fay in a smothered voice. 

"That is a true instinct, " said the Bishop. "God puts it into our heartsto confess when we are unhappy so that we may be comforted. When we cometo see that we have done less well than we might have done--then we needcomfort. "

Fay looked from him to Magdalen with wide, hardly human eyes, like sometiny trapped animal between two executioners. 

The Bishop's heart contracted. 

Poor, poor little thing!

"Would you like to see me alone, my child?" he said, seeing a fainttrembling like that of a butterfly beginning in her. "All you say to mewill be under the seal of confession. It will never pass my lips. "

It was Magdalen's turn to become pale. 

"Shall I go?" she said, looking fixedly at her sister. 

"Yes, " said Fay, her eyes on the floor. 

Magdalen went slowly to the door, feeling her way as if half blind. 

"Come back, " shrieked Fay suddenly. "Magdalen, come back. I shall neversay it all, I shall keep back part unless you are there to hold me toit. Come back. Come back. "

Magdalen returned and sat down. The Bishop watched them both in silence. 

"I have confessed once, already, " said Fay in a low hurried voice, "under the promise of silence. Magdalen promised not to say, and I toldher everything, weeks ago. I thought I should feel better then, but itwasn't any good. It only made it worse. "

"It is often like that, " said the Bishop. "We try to do something rightbut not in the best way, and just the fact of trying shows us there isa better way--only harder, so hard we don't know how to bring ourselvesto it. Isn't that what you feel?"

"Yes. "

"But there is no rest, no peace till we come to it. "

"No, " whispered Fay. "Never any rest. "

"That is God's Hand drawing you, " said the Bishop, his mind seeming toembrace and support Fay's tottering soul. "There are things He wantsdone, which He needs us to do for Him, which perhaps only we can do forHim. At first we don't understand that, and we are so ignorant andfoolish that we resist the pressure of His Hand. Then we suffer. "

Fay shivered. 

"That resistance is what some people call sin. It is unendurable, theonly real anguish in the world. You see we are not meant to bear it. Andit is no manner of use to resist Him, for God is stronger than we are, and He loves us too much ever to lose heart with us, ever to blame us, ever to leave us to ourselves. He sees we don't understand that He can'tdo without us, and that we can't do without Him. And at last, when wefeel God's need of us, then it becomes possible"--the Bishop paused--"tosay the difficult word, to do the difficult deed. "

Did she understand? Who shall say! Sometimes it seems as if no actualword reaches us that Love would fain say to our unrest and misery. Butour troubled hearts are nevertheless conscious by some other channel, some medium more subtle than thought and speech, that Love and Peacehave drawn very near to us. It is only reflected dimly through dearhuman faces that some of us can catch a glimpse of "the light thatlighteth every man that cometh into the world. "

The small tortured face relaxed between the two calm ones. The sunnyroom was quite still. Fear shrank to a shadow. 

Suddenly the fire drew itself together with a little encouraging sound. 

Fay started slightly, looked at it, and began to speak rapidly in a lowclear voice. 

As Magdalen listened she prayed with intensity that Fay might reallytell the Bishop the whole story, as she had told it to herself, thatstormy night in March, half a life-time ago. 

The little voice went on and on. It faltered, sank, and then struggledup again. One point after another was reached in safety, was passed. Nothing that Fay had already admitted was left out. Gradually, asMagdalen listened, a faint shame laid hold of her. Her whole life hadfor the time centred in one passionate overwhelming desire that Fayshould make to the Bishop as full a confession as she had made toherself. Now she realised that Fay was saying even more than she haddone on that occasion, was excusing herself less, was blaming othersless. 

Fay herself saw no discrepancy between her first and second account ofthe tragedy. But then she never did see discrepancies. Her mind hadshifted a little towards the subject, that was all. This mysteriousunconscious shifting of the mind had been hidden from Magdalen, who hadfelt with anguish that all she had said on that night of the storm hadhad no effect on Fay's mind. She had never seen till now a vestige ofan effect. Fay had shrunk from her persistently afterwards, that wasall. 

Strong and ardent souls often wonder why an appeal which they know, ifmade to themselves, would clinch them forever into a regeneratingrepentance is entirely powerless with a different class of mind. Butalthough an irresistible truth spoken in love will renovate our being, and will fail absolutely to reach the mind of another, nevertheless theweaker, vainer nature will sometimes pick out of the uncomfortableappeal, to which it turns its deaf ear, a few phrases less distressingto its _amour propre_ than the rest. To these it will listen. Fay hadretained in her mind Magdalen's vivid description of the love herhusband and Michael had borne her. She had often dwelt upon theremembrance that she had been greatly loved. During the miserable weekswhen she had virtually made up her mind not to speak, that remembrancehad worked within her like leaven, unconsciously softening her towardsher husband, drawing her towards compassion on Michael. 

Now that she did speak again she did not reproach them. She who hadblamed them both so bitterly a few short weeks ago blamed them nolonger. Nor did she say anything about the culpable silence of the realmurderer. That mysterious criminal, that scapegoat who had so fararoused her bitterest animosity had ceased to darken her mind. 

Fay had passed unconsciously far beyond the limitations of Magdalen'sanxious prayer on her behalf. The love of Andrea and Michael, tardilyseen, only partially realised, had helped her at last. 

The Bishop listened and listened, a little bent forward, his eyes onthe floor, his chin in his hand. Once he made a slight movement when Fayreached Michael's arrest, but he quickly recovered himself. 

The faint voice faltered itself out at last. The story was at an end. The Duke was dead and Michael was in prison. 

"I have kept him there two years, " said Fay, and was silent. 

How she had raged against the cruelty of her husband's dying words. Whatpassionate, vindictive tears she had shed at the remembrance of them. Now, unconsciously, she adopted them herself. She had ceased to resistthem, and the sting had gone clean out of them. 

"Two years, " said the Bishop. "Two years. Fast bound in misery and iron. You in misery and he only in iron. You two poor children. "

His strong face worked, and for a moment he shaded it with his hand. 

Then he looked keenly at Fay. 

"And you have come to me to ask me to advise you how to set Michael andyourself free?"

"Yes, " whispered Fay. 

"It was time to come. "

There was a short silence. 

"And you understand, my dear, dear child, that you can only rescueMichael by taking heavy blame upon yourself, blame first of all forhaving a clandestine meeting with him, and then blame for letting himsacrifice himself for your good name, and lastly blame for keeping aninnocent man in prison so long. "

Fay shook like a leaf. 

The Bishop took her lifeless hands in his, and held them. He made hermeet his eyes. Stern, tender, unflinching eyes they were, with a glintof tears in them. 

"You are willing to bear the cross, and endure the shame?" he said. 

Two large tears gathered in Fay's wide eyes, and rolled down herbloodless cheeks. 

You could not look at her, and think that the poor thing was willing toendure anything, capable of enduring anything. 

The Bishop looked at her, through her. 

"Or would you rather go home and wait in misery a little longer, andkeep him in his cell a little longer: another week--anothermonth--another _year_! You know best how much longer you can wait. "

Silence. 

"And Michael can wait, too. "

"Michael must come out, " said Fay, with a sob. "He was always good tome. "

"Thank God, " said the Bishop, and he rose abruptly and went to thewindow. 

Magdalen and Fay did not move. They leaned a little closer together. Fay's timid eyes sought her sister's like those of a child which hasrepeated its lesson, and looks to its teacher to see if it has donewell. 

Magdalen kissed her on the eyes. 

"I have said everything, haven't I?"

"Everything. "

"I wish I was dead. "

Magdalen had no voice to answer with. 

The Bishop came back, and sat down opposite them. 

"Fay, " he said, "as long as you live you will be thankful that you cameto me to-day, that you were willing to make atonement by this great actof reparation. The comfort of that remembrance will sink deep into yourtroubled heart, and will heal its wounds. But the sacrifice is not to beexacted of you. I had to ask if you were willing to make it. But thereis no longer any necessity for you to make it. Do you understand?"

The Bishop spoke slowly. The two women looked at him with dilated eyes. 

"Is Michael dead?" said Magdalen. 

"No. Michael is, I believe, well. The murderer of the Marchese diMaltagliala has confessed. It is in to-day's papers. The Marchese wasmurdered by his wife. It was quite sudden and unpremeditated, the workof an instant of terror. She has made a full confession on her deathbed. It exonerates Michael entirely. She implores his forgiveness for herlong silence. "

The Bishop's last words reached Fay from a great distance. The room withits many books, and the tall mullioned window with the bare elm branchesacross it, were all turning gently together in a spreading dimness. Theonly thing that remained fixed was Magdalen's shoulder, and even thatshook a little. Fay leaned her face against it, and let all the rest go. The window with its tree quivered for a moment across the dark and thenflickered out. The consciousness of tender hands and voices lingered amoment longer and then vanished too. 

CHAPTER XXIII

 All the heavy days are over. --W. B. YEATS. 

It was very late when Magdalen and Fay reached home. 

Bessie was on the lookout for them, and met them in the hall. 

"Wentworth has been here, " she said. "He arrived about an hour after youhad started. As you were both out he asked to see me. He was greatlyexcited. He had come to tell us that Michael's innocence has suddenlybeen proved. He goes to Italy to-morrow. He said he would call here onhis way to the station a little before eleven, to tell you both aboutit. "

And punctually at a few minutes to eleven Wentworth appeared, and wasushered into the little white morning-room where Fay was waiting forhim. 

The room was full of sunshine. The soft air came gently in, bringingwith it a breath of primroses. 

Delight was in the room, tremulous, shining in Fay's eyes. Delight wasin the whole atmosphere. An enormous boundless relief overflowedeverything. 

Wentworth was excited, softened, swept out of himself. 

He held her soft hand in his. He tried to speak, but he could not. Hiseyes filled with tears. He was ashamed. 

And when he looked up he saw Fay's eyes were wet, too. His heart wentout to her. She was rejoicing with him. He pulled himself together, andtold her what little he knew; not much more than the bare factscontained in the papers. It was now known by the Marchesa's confessionthat the murder took place inside the Colle Alto gardens. Everyone, including the police, had believed that the murder took place in theroad, and that the assassin took advantage of the accident of the gardendoor being unlocked to drag the body into the garden, and hide it there. But the Marchesa stated that she stabbed her husband in the gardensuddenly without premeditation, but with intent to kill him, because ofhis determination to marry their seventeen year old daughter to a friendof his, a _roué_, the old Duke of Castelfranco, who drank himself todeath soon afterwards. 

The Marchesa stated that she dragged the body behind a shrub, walkedback through the garden to the house with the front of her gown coveredwith blood without being noticed, found no attendant in the cloak room, wrapped herself in a long cloak not belonging to her, told her servantsthat the Marchese would follow later, and drove home, partially burnedher gown and the cloak as if by accident, and then awaited events. Thefirst news she received of her husband's death next morning wasaccompanied by the amazing information that Michael had confessed to themurder. 

The Marchesa in her tardy confession stated that she believed Michael, who had always shown her great sympathy, must have actually witnessedthe crime, and out of a chivalrous impulse towards her, had immediatelytaken the guilt of it upon himself. 

"That accounts for his extraordinary silence, " said Wentworth, "notonly to others, but to myself. He never would say a word pro or con, even when I told him it was no use trying to persuade me he was guilty. The mystery is cleared up at last. I shall reach Milan to-night, and Ishall see him to-morrow. And I suppose we may be able to start home thefollowing day. I say these things, but I don't believe them. I can'tbelieve them. It all seems to me like some wonderful dream. And you arelike a person in a dream, too, as if a fairy wand had passed over you?"

As he spoke Wentworth suddenly realised that this marvellous, radianttransformation which he beheld in Fay, which seemed to flow even to theedges of her lilac gown, was happiness, and that he had never seen herhappy till this moment. She had always looked pathetic, mournful, listless. Now for the first time he saw her, as it were, released fromsome great oppression, and the change was almost that of identity. Herbeauty had taken on a new magic. 

There is no joy so rapturous, so perfect as the moment of relief frompain. There was, perhaps, no creature in the world on this particularApril morning whose happiness approached Fay's. She raised her whiteeyelids and smiled at Wentworth. 

His well-conducted heart nudged him suddenly like a vulgar, jocularfriend. 

"Is all your gladness for Michael?" he said boldly. "Have you none tospare for me?"

He was in for it. 

"You must forgive me if I am too impetuous, too precipitate, " he said, "but won't you make me doubly happy, Fay, before I go. " He rose and cametowards her. She looked down, half frightened, and he suddenly felthimself colossal, irresistible, a man not to be trifled with. "You haveknown for a long time that I love you, " he said. "Won't you tell me thatyou love me a little, too?"

A delightful sense of liberty and newness of life were flowing inregenerating waves over Fay's spirit. 

Wentworth seemed a part of this all-pervading joyousness and freedom. She made a little half unconscious movement towards him, and in amoment, that intrepid man, that dauntless athlete of the emotions hadtaken her in his arms. 

CHAPTER XXIV

 He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the rest no longer in his power. --JEAN PAUL. 

The Marchesa's confession made a great and immediate sensationthroughout Italy. Everyone who had known Michael, and a great many whohad not, proclaimed with one consent that his innocence was no news tothem. The possibility that he might be shielding someone had beendiscussed at the time of the trial, but had found no shred ofconfirmation. 

And now the mystery was solved at last, and in the most romantic manner. Michael had come out with flying colours. 

To many minds the romance was enhanced by the fact that the Marchesa wasa gentle, middle-aged, grey-haired woman in no way attractive, whosewhole interest in life centred in her daughter. Michael's transcendentact of chivalry towards the Marchesa, dramatically acknowledged by herat last upon her deathbed, appealed even to the most unimaginativenatures. He became the hero of the hour. Telegrams of congratulationpoured in from every quarter. Letters snowed in on him. Even beforeWentworth could reach him enthusiastic strangers had tried to forcetheir way into his cell. Determined young reporters came out ingondolas, and it was all the warders and the doctor could do to protectMichael from invasion. 

He sat apparently stunned in his cell, the only person unmoved. Everyservant and warder in that dreary establishment had come to offer himtheir congratulations. The other convicts had sent messages. The man inthe next cell, slowly dying of gangrene, had crawled from his pallet tobeat a tattoo on the wall. The doctor was beside himself with joy. 

"You must keep calm, " he kept saying in wild excitement. "Your brotherwill be here to-morrow morning. I implore you to be calm. "

And he brought Michael his best pipe, and some of his most cherishedtobacco, and a weird suit of black clothes, and urged him to spend theevening with him in his own sitting-room. 

But Michael shook his head. He had no hatred of his striped blouse. Hewas accustomed to it. He said he would prefer to await his brother'sarrival in his cell. He was accustomed to that, too. He felt as if hecould not bear to have everything torn from him at once, as if he shouldbe lost if all his landmarks were changed. He sat hour by hour, smoking, and every now and then reading Wentworth's telegram. 

He tried to realise it. He said to himself over and over again: "I amfree. I am going away. Wentworth is coming to take me home. " But it wasno good. His mind would not take hold. 

He looked for the twentieth time at Wentworth's telegram. Wentworth washurrying towards him at this moment, would be travelling all night, would reach him in the morning. Dear, dear Wenty, he would be happyagain now. 

Michael groaned. 

"It's no kind of use. I _can't_ believe it. "

He tried to think of Fay. He should see _her_ soon, touch her hand, hearher voice. Poor little darling! She had not the courage of a mouse. Perhaps she was a little glad at his release. Yes. No doubt she had beenpleased to hear it. He hoped she would not feel shy of him at seeing himagain. He hoped she would not thank him. 

The door, no longer locked, was suddenly opened, and the head warderdeferentially ushered in a visitor. 

A tall, dark man in a tri-coloured sash came in, and the warderwithdrew. 

The man bowed and looked with fixity at Michael, who stared back at him, dazed and confused. Where had he seen that face before?

Ah! _He remembered!_

"I perceive that you have not forgotten me, " said the Delegato. "It wasI who arrested you. It was to me that you confessed to the murder of theMarchese di Maltagliala. "

"I remember. "

"I never was able to reach any certainty that you were really guilty, "continued the Delegato. "I was not even convinced that you had had aquarrel with the Marchese. "

"I had no quarrel with him. "

"I knew that. That you might be shielding someone occurred forcibly tomy mind. _But who?_"

Michael looked steadily at the official. 

"And there was blood upon your hand and sleeve when you confessed. "

"There was. "

"It was not the Marchese's blood, " said the Delegato, drawing a sallowfinger across a blue chin. "It remained a mystery. I will own that ithad not crossed my mind that that fragile and timid lady had killed herhusband, and that as she at last confesses you were shielding her. " TheDelegato looked piercingly at Michael. 

Michael was silent. 

"You have always been silent. Is not the moment come to speak?"

Michael shook his head. 

The Delegato bowed. 

"I came to ask you to discuss the affair openly, " he said, "to relievemy perplexity as a matter of courtesy. But you will not speak. Then Iwill speak instead. When first I read the Marchesa's confession it cameinto my mind that the Marchesa, who I believe was your friend, might forsome reason, possibly the sentimental devotion of an older woman for ayoung man--such things have been--that she _might_ have confessed on herdeathbed to a crime which she had not committed in order to save youfrom--_this_"--he touched the wall of the cell. "I doubted that shereally murdered her husband. _But she did. _ I sought out the maid whohad been with her when the Marchese died, and she, before the confessionwas published, informed me that she had not undressed the Marchesa onher return from the Colle Alto party. And that next morning part of thecloak which was not hers, and part of her gown were found to be burnt asstated in her confession. It was indeed necessary to burn them. TheMarchesa murdered the Marchese. "

There was a long silence. 

"I cannot tell whether you witnessed the crime or not. At first Ithought the blood on your hands and clothes might have come from helpingher to drag the body into the garden. But it was not so. At the time Iattached a great importance to the garden door being unlocked. Toogreat. It led me astray. The gardener, in spite of his oath that he hadlocked it, had probably left it unlocked. We now know from the Marchesathat the murder took place within the garden, and the locking andunlocking of the door was an accident which looked like a clue. .. . But, if you witnessed the murder, and wished to retire without raising analarm, or denouncing that unhappy lady, I ask myself why did you notopen the garden door from within--the key was in the lock, I saw it--andpass out on to the high road. Why did you, instead, try so hard toescape over the wall behind the ilexes that you tore your hands on thecut glass on the top? I found the place next day. There was blood on it. When you were struggling to escape over that wall you were not anxiousto take the Marchesa's guilt upon yourself. When you were hiding behindthe screen in the Duchess' apartment you were not--_at thatmoment_--very determined to shield the Marchesa from the consequences ofher deed. All Italy is ringing with your quixotic, your chivalrous, yoursuperb action. _Nevertheless_, if I had quitted the Duchess' apartment, if my natural and trained acuteness had not made one last effortrespecting the screen, _I do not think you would have followed me intothe garden to denounce yourself_. "

The Delegato paused. 

Michael was quite unmoved. Everything reached him dimly as through amist. He partly saw the difficulty in the official's mind, but it didnot interest him. He was cleared. That was enough. 

"In two years much is forgotten, " said the Delegato, sententiously, "andit is, perhaps, I alone who recall the more minute details of the case, because I was present and my interest was overwhelming. I have notspoken of this to anyone but yourself. I shall not speak of it again. Ihave taken a journey to discuss it with you because I had hoped youwould understand my professional interest in unravelling that whichremains still obscure, a mystery, which is daily becoming to me agreater mystery than before the Marchesa's confession. You have it inyour power to gratify my natural desire for elucidation by anexplanation which can no longer injure you in any way. You are innocent. It is proved. But even now you will not speak. You prefer to preserveyour attitude of silence to the end. Good! I will intrude on you nolonger. I offer you my congratulations. I deplore your inevitableimprisonment. I withdraw. "

The Delegato bowed yet again and went to the door. 

"That of which you will not speak was known to your friend the Duke ofColle Alto, " he said. "_The Duke knew. _"

"The Duke is dead, " said Michael. 

"I am aware of that, " said the Delegato, frigidly. He bowed for the lasttime, and left the cell, gently closing the door. 

CHAPTER XXV

 Est-ce donc une monnaie que votre amour, pour qu'il puisse passer ainsi de main en main jusqu'à la mort? Non, ce n'est pas même une monnaie; car la plus mince pièce d'or vaut mieux que vous, et dans quelques mains qu'elle passe elle garde son effigée. --A. DE MUSSET. 

Wentworth came in the morning, tremulous, eager, holding Michael by theshoulders, as he used to do when Michael was a small boy, as he hadnever done since. 

The brothers looked long at each other with locked hands, water in theireyes. 

"Wenty, " said Michael at last, with his grave smile. 

And that was all. 

They sat down together in silence on the little bed. Wentworth tried tospeak once or twice, but it was no use. 

"Fay cried with joy at the news, " he said at last, looking with shyhungry love at his brother. "If you could have seen her radiant face. Inever saw any creature so changed, so transfigured. "

A faint flush rose to Michael's face. 

"I know how she grieved over your imprisonment. She is the mosttender-hearted woman in the world. I never knew anyone so sympathetic. "Wentworth hesitated. Then he added tremulously. "My great grief has beenher grief, too. She helped me to bear it. "

"I did not know she had--minded so much, " said Michael, almostinaudibly. 

"You might have guessed it, " said Wentworth, "knowing her to be what sheis. She has always been so pale and sad, as if bowed down by trouble. But directly the news came that you were cleared--I went to see her atonce--if you could only have seen her face, her tears of joy, herdelight. "

"Did she send a message, or a note? Just a line. Perhaps you have aletter with you. "

"No, she did not write, " said Wentworth, self conscious, but beaming. "There was not time. There was time for nothing. It was all such a rush. I only saw her on my way to the station. But I know she won't mind mytelling you, Michael--you ought to know first of anyone--it all seems sowonderful. But I daresay--no, I see you have guessed it--I daresay Ihave said things in my letters that showed you it was coming--it was thegrief about you that first drew us together. Fay and I are going to bemarried. "

Michael put his hand to his head. 

"Everything has come at once, " said Wentworth. "I have you again. And Ihave her. I've nothing left to wish for. "

 * * * * *

Michael did not leave the prison in the gondola which had broughtWentworth, and which was waiting to take them both away. The excitementof his brother's arrival had proved too great, and he fell from onefainting fit into another. Wentworth was greatly alarmed, but the doctorwas reassuring and cheerful. He said that Michael had borne the newswith almost unnatural calmness, but that the shock must have been great, and a breakdown was to be expected. He laughed at Wentworth's anxietyeven while he ministered to Michael, and assured him that no one in hisexperience had died of joy. 

But later in the evening when Wentworth, somewhat pacified, had returnedto Venice for the night, the doctor felt yet again for the twentiethtime that the young Englishman baffled him. 

It seemed to him that he was actually relieved when the kind, awkward, tender elder brother had reluctantly taken his departure, promising tocome back early in the morning. 

"Do not distress yourself, you will be quite well enough to leaveto-morrow, " the doctor said to him many times. "I expected thismomentary collapse. It is nothing. "

Michael's eyes dwelt on the kind face and then closed. There was that inthem which the doctor could not fathom. 

He took the food that was pressed on him, and then turned his face tothe wall, and made as if he slept. 

And the walls bent over him, and whispered to him, "Stay with us. We arenot so cruel as the world outside. "

And that night the dying convict in the next cell, nearly as close onfreedom as Michael, heard all through the night a low sound of strangledanguish that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forthanew, from dark to dawn. 

The next morning Michael went feebly down the prison steps, calm andwan, leaning on Wentworth's careful arm, and smiling affectionately athim. 

CHAPTER XXVI

 Les caractères faibles ne montrent de la décision que quand il s'agit de faire un sottise. --DANIEL DARC. 

A week or two after the news of Michael's proved innocence had convulsedHampshire, and before Michael and Wentworth had returned to Barford, Aunt Aggie might have been seen on a fine May afternoon walking slowlytowards "The Towers. " She had let her cottage at Saundersfoot for anunusually long period, and was marking time with the Blores. WhateverAunt Mary's faults might be she was always ready to help her sister inthis practical manner, when Aunt Aggie was anxious to add to the small, feebly frittered away income, on which her muddled, impecuniousexistence depended. 

In spite of the most pertinent remarks to the contrary from her sister, Aunt Aggie believed herself to be an unsurpassed manager of restrictedmeans. She constantly advised young married couples as to the judiciousexpenditure of money, and pressed on Magdalen the necessity ofretrenching in exasperating directions, namely, where a minute economyentailed a colossal inconvenience. 

In her imagination she saw herself continually consulted, depended on, strenuously implored to give her opinion on matters of the utmostdelicacy, fervently blessed for her powerful spiritual assistance ofsouls in jeopardy, and always gracefully attributing the marvellousresults of her intervention to a Higher Power of which she was but theunworthy channel. 

These imaginary scenes were the unfailing solace of Aunt Aggie'ssomewhat colourless life, and the consciousness of them in thebackground gave her a certain meek and even patient self-importance, thebasis of which was hidden from Lady Blore. 

Aunt Aggie had also another perennial source of chastened happiness inrecalling the romance of her youth, those halcyon days before theArchdeacon had been unsuccessfully harpooned and put to flight by LadyBlore. 

Her clerical love affair perfumed her conversation, as a knife which hasonce associated with an onion inevitably reveals, even in estrangement, that bygone intimacy. 

No one could breathe the word Margate without Aunt Aggie remarking thatshe had had a dear friend who had evinced a great partiality forMargate. Were the clergy mentioned in her presence with the scantrespect with which the ministry and other secular bodies have to put up, Aunt Aggie vibrated with indignation. _She_ had known men of the highesttalents holding preferment in the Church. 

But in her imagination her affair of the heart had passed beyondreminiscence. Far from being buried in the past it remained the chieffactor in her life, colouring and shaping the whole of her future. 

Aunt Aggie could at any moment dip into a kind of sequel to that earlyhistory. In the sequel the Archdeacon's wife was, of course, to die;but, owing to circumstances which Aunt Aggie had not yet thoroughlyworked out, that unhappy lady was first to undergo tortures in someremote locality, nursed devotedly--poor thing--by Aunt Aggie. The resultof her ministrations was never in doubt from the first. The Archdeacon'swife was, of course, to succumb, calling down blessings on the devotedstranger at her bedside, with the enigmatical smile which spoke of somesacred sorrow. 

Aunt Aggie had shed many delicious tears over that deathbed scene, andthe chastened grief of the saintly Archdeacon, quite overshadowed by hisboundless gratitude to herself. At this crisis his overwhelmingdesolation wrung from him--with gross disloyalty to the newly dead--afew disjointed sentences which revealed only too clearly how unsuited tohim his wife had been, how little she had understood him, how lonely hiswedded life had been. She had evidently been one of those tall thinmaypoles of women who have but little tenderness in them. 

Aunt Aggie, after giving the children a sample of what a real mothercould be, was to retire to her little home at Saundersfoot. Here thereal joy of the situation was to begin. 

After a decent interval the Archdeacon was to be constantly visitingSaundersfoot, was to be observed visiting Aunt Aggie at Saundersfoot, singling her out from among the numerous spinsters of thatwatering-place to make her the object of reverent attentions. Othersyounger and better looking than Aunt Aggie--especially Miss Barnett, thedoctor's sister, who, it was whispered, wore an artificial cushion fromDouglas's under her hair--were to set their caps or cushions at thedignified Archdeacon, seen pacing the sands. But it was all of no avail. He had eyes for no one but the gentle, retiring Miss Bellairs. AuntAggie was to become the object of burning jealousy and detraction on thepart of the female--that is to say almost the whole--population ofSaundersfoot. But she herself, while envious calumny raged round her, went on her way calm and grave as ever. 

But the proposal long warded off could not be parried forever. Thefrenzied passion of the Archdeacon was at last not to be restrained. Aunt Aggie had in her mind a set of proposals, all good, out of which itbecame harder and harder as time went on to select one. But her answerwas ever the same, a pained but firm refusal. She was happy in her lot. She was greatly needed where she was. She did not wish to marry. She wasno longer young. This last reason was an enormous concession to realismon Aunt Aggie's part. 

Then came the cream of the whole story. The Archdeacon was to pinesecretly. His work was to be neglected. He was to be threatened with anervous breakdown. He was to confide his sorrow to the paternal bosom ofhis Bishop. When Aunt Aggie was in her normal state it was the Bishop inwhom the Archdeacon was to confide. But sometimes in the evenings aftera glass of cowslip wine, her imagination took a bolder flight. TheArchbishop himself was to be the confidant of the distracted cleric. This presented no real difficulty after the first moment, for theArchbishop was in the flower of his age--the Archdeacon's age--andmight easily have been at school with him. Aunt Aggie had once seenLambeth from a cab window as she passed over Westminster Bridge. Underthat historic tower she heard the first subject of the King urge hisbrother prelate to take heart, promising assistance. 

We will pass over Aunt Aggie's amazed reception of a cordial invitationto stay at Lambeth, her hesitating acceptance, her arrival, themagnificent banquet, crowded with ministers and bishops, the fact thatthe Archbishop himself singled her out as the object of courtly thoughsomewhat anxious attentions. And then after dinner Aunt Aggie, in herplum-coloured satin, was to be unconsciously but skilfully withdrawnfrom the glittering throng by the Archbishop. And in his study he was tomake a great, a fervent appeal to her. Aunt Aggie had bought aphotograph of him in order to deaden the shock of this moment. Butnevertheless whenever she reached this point she was always reallyfrightened. Her hands really trembled. The Archbishop was to ask herwith tempered indignation how much longer she intended to nullify thelabours of his ablest colleague, how much longer her selfishpredilection for celibacy was to wreck the life and paralyse the powersof a broken-hearted man. Her cruelty was placed before her in glowingcolours. She was observed to waver, to falter. A tear was seen in spiteof her marvellous self-control to course down her cheek. The eye of anArchbishop misses nothing. With an ejaculation of profound relief hebeckons to a distant figure which appears in a doorway. The Archdeaconin his evening gaiters rushes in. Aunt Aggie gives way!

After this final feat of the imagination Aunt Aggie generally felt soworn out by emotion that food was absolutely necessary to her. 

On this occasion she sat down quivering on a heap of stones by theroadside, and drew forth a biscuit which she had secreted at luncheon atthe Vicarage an hour before. It must be owned that she was fond of food, though not in the same way that most of us are addicted to it. She likedeating buns out of paper bags at odd moments in the open air, andnibbling a sponge cake half forgotten and suddenly found in a drawerwith her handkerchiefs. But in justice to her it ought to be added thatshe seemed only to care for the kind of provender which yielded thelargest increment in the way of crumbs. 

As she sat and nibbled an uneasy recollection stole across her mind. 

This recollection was becoming more disconcerting day by day. And yetshe had acted for the best. That fact did not insure to her immunityfrom blame on the part of that awful personage, her sister Mary. Goodintentions had never yet received their due as extenuating circumstancesin Lady Blore's sweeping judgments. 

If a certain secret chivalrous action of Aunt Aggie's "turned outwrong, " she knew well the intonation in which Lady Blore would ask herwhy she had been such a fool. Nevertheless she, Aunt Aggie, had onlydone with consummate tact what Mary herself had contemplated doing inher rough way, and had been persuaded not to do. 

Some weeks ago Aunt Aggie had concocted in secret, recopied about twentytimes, and had finally despatched a letter to Lord Lossiemouth anentMagdalen. It had been the boldest action of her life. At first, evenafter she had seen that she was the only person able to deal adequatelywith so delicate a matter, she had feared that she would not have thestrength to perform her mission. But strength had apparently been lentto her for the occasion. The letter had actually been posted. 

The moment it was irrevocably gone Aunt Aggie fell into a panic. Supposing it failed in its object, and that Algernon or Mary discoveredwhat she had done. She could not even face such a possibility. But then, supposing on the other hand that her missive united two loving, estranged hearts, and that dear Magdalen owed her happiness--and atitled happiness--to her. Then Algernon and Mary would be forced toadmit that she had shown a courage and devotion greater than theirs. "Weonly talked, you acted, " they would both say, and she would thenceforthbe recognised in her true light, as an incomparable counsellor, and ajudicious, far-seeing friend. 

But three weeks had elapsed since Aunt Aggie, stealing out alone, haddropped that momentous letter into the village post-box. Nothing hadhappened. She had not even received an answer. She was becomingfrightened and anxious. _Was he secretly married?_ She wished she hadthought of that possibility before she posted the letter. 

Many simple-minded men of disengaged affections, cheerfully pursuingtheir virtuous avocations, would be thunderstruck if they knew the darksuspicions harboured against them in spinster bosoms, that they areconcealing some discreditable matrimonial secret, which alone canaccount for their--well--their _extraordinary_ behaviour in not comingforward!

It has actually been said that real life is not always like a novel. This feebly false assertion was disproved forever in Aunt Aggie's mindby the sight of a dog-cart coming rapidly toward her from the directionof Lostford. She glanced indifferently at it as it approached, and thenher pale eyes became glued to it. In the dog-cart sat Everard Constable, now Lord Lossiemouth. She had not seen him for fifteen years, butnevertheless she recognised him instantly. There was no doubt it was he:thickened and coarsened, but still he. He whirled past leaning back inhis seat, looking neither to right nor left. 

Aunt Aggie's heart gave a thump that nearly upset her equilibrium. Thebiscuit dropped onto the road, with a general upheaval of crumbs fromall parts of her agitated person. 

Lord Lossiemouth!

Going in the direction of Priesthope!

Her letter!

She nearly swooned with joy and pride. 

Now Mary and Algernon, now everyone would believe in her. 

She raised herself from the heap of stones and with trembling legshurried towards "The Towers. " She must tell Mary at once. 

She found Lady Blore seated at her writing-table in the drawing-room, which was choked by the eastern and Japanese impedimenta, the draperies, the krises, the metal bowls, the ivory boxes, which an Indian careerseems so inevitably to entail. Sir John had brought back crates of thekind of foreign _bric-à-brac_ cheap imitations of which throng Londonshop windows. The little entrance hall was stuffy with skins. Hornedskulls garnished the walls, pleading silently for decent burial. Eventhe rugs had once been bears. 

Aunt Mary was bored with her drawing-room, which looked like a stall ata bazaar, but, to her credit be it said, that she had never made anychange in it, except to remove a brass idol from the writing-table, atwhich she was at this moment sitting. 

By one of those sudden instincts which make people like Aunt Aggie thedespair of those with whom they live, she instantaneously conceived theidea (for no reason except that she was thinking of her own letter) thather sister was at that moment writing to Lord Lossiemouth. 

She "had a feeling" that this was the case. The feeling became in asecond a rooted conviction. The butler came in, arranged anuncomfortable Indian table, placed a brass tray with tea things on itbefore Lady Blore, and asked if there were any more letters for thepost. Aunt Mary was in the act of giving him one when Aunt Aggieintervened. 

"Don't, " she said in wild agitation, clasping her hands. "Mary, I beg ofyou, I conjure you not to post that letter. "

"Why not? I have resolved to give him another chance. "

"Keep it back one post, I implore you. I have a reason. "

Aunt Mary looked attentively at her sister, and took back the letter. It was not like her to give way. She seemed less overbearing than usual. 

"Well? Why not employ him again?" she said wearily. "The Irish butter isthe cheapest after all. Why do you make such a point of my leaving him. "

Aunt Aggie was entirely nonplussed. A thousand similar experiences hadnever lessened the shock of the discrepancy between what she expectedher sister to say, and what she actually said. 

"I thought, I thought, " she stammered, "I felt sure that, I see now Iwas wrong, but I had a conviction that that letter--you see I knew youwere thinking of writing--was to, was in short to Lord Lossiemouth. "

Aunt Mary's face became magenta colour. 

"To Lord Lossiemouth! Why should you think I was writing to him?"

"Well, I could not help knowing--don't you remember how you discussedthe subject with me and dear Magdalen some weeks ago?--that the subjectof a judicious and dignified letter was in your mind. "

"I was careful not to mention the subject to Magdalen in your presence. I see now that you must have listened outside the door. "

Aunt Aggie experienced a second shock. How did Mary always spy out thesethings?

"I can't think, " continued Lady Blore, "how you can lower yourself toeavesdrop in the way you do; and if you must do these underhand actions, why you don't conceal them better. When you read a private letter ofmine the other day, because I inadvertently left it for a moment on mywriting-table----"

"You always say you lock up your private letters, you do, indeed, Mary. _Be_ fair. I could not _tell_ it was private. "

"You would have been wiser not to have alluded next day to its contents. If you had not done so I might not have known you had read it. "

Aunt Aggie burst into tears. 

"The truth is I am not secretive like you, Mary, " she said between hersobs. "It is as natural to me to be open and trustful with those I loveas it is for you to be the reverse. Whatever I do you think wrong. Butperhaps some day--and that before long--you will be forced to admit----"

At this moment the drawing-room door opened and Colonel Bellairs camein. He often came to tea at "The Towers, " though the meeting seldompassed off without a sharp brush with Lady Blore. 

"Draw up that chair, Algernon, " said that lady, with grim but instantcordiality. "The tea will be ready in a moment. "

Colonel Bellairs looked more floridly handsome than usual. He wasevidently in a state of supreme self-satisfaction. 

"Fine day, " he said, "for the time of year. "

At this moment a small parchment face, and bent figure leaning on astick, might have been seen peering in through the closed windows. SirJohn looked dispassionately at the family group, and shook his head. Then he hobbled back to his chair under the cedar. Tea was evidently ameal to be dispensed with this afternoon. 

"I have news for you, " said Colonel Bellairs, expanding his chest. 

Lady Blore held the tea-pot suspended. 

"Everard Constable--Lossiemouth, I should say--is at this moment sittingin the drawing-room at Priesthope, alone with Magdalen. "

Colonel Bellairs was not disappointed in the effect of his words on hisaudience. 

Aunt Aggie trembled and looked proudly guilty. Lady Blore put down thetea-pot suddenly, and said, "Thank God!"

Aunt Aggie, her mouth open to speak, began to choke. She lookedpiteously from her brother to her sister, struggling in vain toarticulate. It was too cruel that she should be bereft of speech at thissupreme moment. 

Lady Blore turned putty pale and magenta colour alternately. A greatrelief softened her hard face. There were actually tears in her eyes. Then she said majestically, but with a tremor in her metallic voice:

"I am not surprised. "

"It is my doing, " shrieked Aunt Aggie, in the strangled squeak in whichwe always explain that it is "only a crumb" gone wrong. And she relapsedinto a fresh spasm. 

Lady Blore sternly bade her be silent. Colonel Bellairs was slightlyannoyed. 

"It is no use, Mary, your saying you are not surprised, for you are, " hesaid judicially, "and really, " relapsing into complacency, "so am I in away. It is fifteen years since I forbade Everard the house. I fear thatI was unduly harsh. I dismissed him, so it was for me to recall him. Nowthat the cat is out of the bag I don't mind telling you that I wrote tohim a few weeks ago. "

"You--wrote--to--him!" said Aunt Mary in great agitation. "Algernon, yousent me word by Magdalen that you refused to meddle in the matter. "

"I daresay I did. I may not have liked the tone you took about it, Mary. You are so devilish high-handed. In short, I don't mind telling you thatI was annoyed by your interference in the matter. But after matureconsideration--I turned the matter over in my mind--I was not the leastinfluenced by your long-winded epistle--that in fact rather put me offthan otherwise--still after a time I wrote a manly, straightforwardletter to Everard, not blinking the facts, and I told him that if hisfeelings were unchanged--mark that--as I had reason to believeMagdalen's were--he was at liberty to come to Priesthope and resumecordial relations with us all. You observe that I only asked him to comeif his feelings were unchanged. _He is there now. _"

It would be impossible to describe the varying emotions which devastatedLady Blore, as her brother made his announcement. Her hands trembled somuch that she was obliged to give up any pretence of holding her cup. Itchattered against its saucer. 

"When did you write?" she asked at last. 

"About three weeks ago. "

Aunt Mary seemed to make a mental calculation. 

"It is my doing. I wrote a month ago, " gasped Aunt Aggie. "Algernon, youmust not take the credit of it. I waited till you and Mary had decidednot to write--you know, Mary, you told Magdalen you would not--andthen--and then--I could not stand by and see that dear child's happinessslip away for want of one bold word, one brave friend to say for herwhat she could not say for herself, --I have seen so many lives wreckedfor want of a sympathetic hand to draw two severed heartstogether, --that I wrote. I wrote a month ago. A week before you did. "

"I might have known you would do some folly, " said Colonel Bellairs withcontempt. "I am glad this did not come to my ears earlier, or I shouldhave been very angry. It was most unsuitable, most undignified, that youand I should both write. But, " it was evidently impossible for him to beseriously annoyed by anything on this particular afternoon, "all's wellthat ends well. We will say no more about it, Aggie. Don't cry. Youcan't help being a fool. But don't do anything of that kind, or of anykind again. I might not be so easy going next time. "

Lady Blore drank down a large cup of tea. Her black silk bosom heaved. Contrary to all precedent she did not turn on her quaking sister. 

"Where are Fay and Bessie?" she asked. 

"Fay is spending the afternoon with the Carters, and Bessie is outsomewhere, I don't know where. But I saw her start after luncheon. "

"How fortunate! Then you knew he was coming?"

"Yes. I had a telegram from him this morning saying he was in theneighbourhood, and would come over this afternoon. "

"Of course you warned Magdalen?"

"Not I. I knew better than that. She has a cold, so I knew she could notgo out. So directly I had seen him drive up I came off here. I did notthink I was particularly wanted at home. Two is company and three'snone. "

"Oh, Algernon, what tact! Most men would never have thought of that, "said Aunt Aggie. 

"Have another cup, Algernon, " said Lady Blore graciously. 

Colonel Bellairs stroked his moustache. He had another cause, a secretone, for self-complacency. At last, after many rebuffs from charmingwomen, thirty years his junior, he was engaged to be married. Should hemention it? Was not this a most propitious moment? Yes? No. Perhapsbetter not. Another time! The lady had accepted him some weeks ago, buthad expressed altruistic doubts as to whether she could play a mother'spart to daughters as old as herself, whether in short, much as shecraved for their society, _they_ might not feel happier, moreindependent in a separate establishment, however modest. It was on asudden impulse of what he called "providing for the girls, " that ColonelBellairs had written to Lord Lossiemouth. 

The renewal of his engagement to Magdalen would pave the way to ColonelBellairs's marriage. He had already decided that Bessie would live withMagdalen, who would take her out. Fay had her jointure. But he had a notunfounded fear that his second nuptials would be regarded with profounddisapproval, even with execration, by his sisters. 

Magdalen alone knew about it as yet. She had taken the news, which herfather had feared would crush her to the earth, very tranquilly. She wasa person of more frigid affections than he had supposed. He had alreadyasked her to break the news to Fay and Bessie. Perhaps it would bebetter to let her break it to his sisters too. If he did it himself theymight, at the first moment, say things they might afterwards regret. Yes, he would leave the announcement to Magdalen. 

CHAPTER XXVII

 Our chain on silence clanks. Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs. 

 --GEORGE MEREDITH. 

Lord Lossiemouth had come into his kingdom. He was rich, but notvulgarly so. He had a great position, and what his artistic naturevalued even more, the possession of one of the most beautiful places inEngland. The Lossiemouth pictures and heirlooms, the historic house withits wonderful gardens--all these were his. 

He had at first been quite dazed by the magnitude of his good fortune. When it came to him it found him somewhat sore and angry at a recentrebuff which had wounded his vanity not a little. But the excitement ofhis great change of fortune soon healed what little smart remained. 

A few months before he succeeded, he had fallen in love, not for thefirst time by many times, with a woman who seemed to meet hisrequirements. She was gentle, submissive, pretty, easily led, refined, not an heiress, but by no means penniless. 

To his surprise and indignation she had refused him, evidently notwithout a certain tepid regret. He discovered that the mother had otherviews for her daughter, and that the daughter, though she inclinedtowards him, was quite incapable or even desirous of opposing hermother. She was gentleness and pliability itself. These qualities, soadmirable in domestic life, have a tendency of which he had not thoughtbefore to make their charming owner, if a hitch occurs, subside intobecoming another man's wife. If only women could be adamant until theyreach the altar, and like wax afterwards. 

When everything bitter that could be said at the expense of women hadbeen ably expressed, Lord Lossiemouth withdrew. A month later, when hewas making an angry walking tour in Hungary, he learned from an Englishpaper, already many days old, of the two deaths which effected his greatchange of fortune. He communicated with his lawyer, arranged to returnby a certain date, and continued his tour for another month. 

On his return he had gone at once to Lossiemouth, which he had visitedoccasionally as a poor and peppery and not greatly respected relation. Business of all kinds instantly engulfed him. He was impatient, difficult, _distrait_, slightly pleased with himself at showing solittle gratification at his magnificent inheritance. 

On the third day he sorted out the letters which looked like personalones, from among a heap of correspondence, the accumulation of manyweeks. 

Quantities of envelopes were torn open, and the contents thrown aside, begging letters, decently veiled congratulations from "old friends" whohad not so far shown any particular desire to make their friendship ajoy to him. 

Presently he came upon a long, closely written letter of several sheets, in a slanting hand, which he was about to dismiss as another beggingletter when his eye fell on the signature. Bellows? Bulteel? Buller?_Bellairs?_

Aunt Aggie's signature was quite illegible. It was an arranged squigglepainfully acquired in youth, which through life had resulted in allkinds of difficulties with tradespeople, and in continual annoyance andinconvenience to herself. Letters and parcels were frequently directedto her as A. Buller, Esq. She could only account for this mistake by thebusiness-like nature of her style and handwriting. She often told herfriends that, unless people knew her personally, her letters weregenerally believed to be a man's. 

It had never struck Aunt Aggie that Lord Lossiemouth might possibly, inan interval of fifteen years, have forgotten who _A. _ Bellows might be. 

But the words "my beloved niece Magdalen" strongly underlined, and thepostmark on the envelope, showed him who A. Bellairs was. He thought heremembered an old aunt who lived near Priesthope. 

He read the long sentimental effusion and bit his lip. 

Ah, me! Was that half-forgotten, dim-in-the-distance boyish love of histo be raked up again now!

He sighed impatiently. Why had Fate parted him and Magdalen? He stillregretted her in a way, when he was depressed or harassed, or disgustedwith the world in general; and he was often depressed and harassed anddisgusted. 

More letters. What business had people to give him the trouble ofreading them? The floor was becoming strewn with his correspondence. Theempty fireplace had become a target for crumpled balls of paper. 

A short one in a large, scrambling, illiterate hand with a signaturethat might mean anything. That tall capital, shaped like a ham, wasperhaps a B. 

The letter was written on Priesthope notepaper. "_My daughterMagdalen. _"

This, then, was from Colonel Bellairs. 

It was not such a very bad letter, but it was a deplorably unwise one. When had Colonel Bellairs ever indited a wise one! But he made hisprecarious position even less tenable by ignoring the fact that LordLossiemouth's fortunes had altered, by asserting that he had had it inhis mind to write to this effect the previous Christmas but had not hadtime. When Colonel Bellairs concocted that sentence he had felt, notwithout pride, that it covered the ground of his fifteen years' silence, and also showed that Lord Lossiemouth's wealth had nothing to do withhis recall. For the letter was a recall. 

"Blundering old idiot, " said Lord Lossiemouth, but he had become veryred. 

All kinds of memories were surging up in him; Magdalen's crystal lovefor him, her indefinable charm, her gaiety, her humility, her shyness, her exquisite beauty. 

Life had never brought him anything so marvellous, so enchanting, asthat first draught of April passion. And he had quenched his thirst atmany other cups since then. His lips had been blistered and stained atpoisoned brims. Why had that furious old turkey-cock parted him andMagdalen! His heart sank for a moment at the remembrance of his firstlove. 

But what was the use! The Magdalen he had loved had ceased to exist. Thewand-like figure with its apple-blossom face faded, faded, and in itsplace rose up the image of the thin, distinguished-looking grey-hairedwoman who had supplanted that marvel. He had met Magdalen accidentallyonce or twice in London of late years, and had felt dismayed anger atthe change in her, an offended anger not wholly unlike that with whichhe surveyed himself at his tailors', and inspected at unbecoming angles, through painfully frank mirrors, a thick back and a stout neck and jawwhich cruelly misrepresented his fastidious artistic personality. 

He returned to his letters. 

Three sheets in a firm, upright hand. 

"I do not suppose you remember me, " it began, "but I intend to recallmyself to your memory, which I believe to be none of the best. I am thewife of Sir John Blore, and aunt to Magdalen Bellairs. "

He flung the letter down. But this was intolerable, a persecution. Andwhat fools they were _all_ to write. Had Magdalen set them on?

He groaned with sudden self-disgust. What unworthy thought would come tohim next? Of course she knew nothing of this. 

He looked at the date of each letter carefully. Aunt Aggie's accordingto her wont had only the day of the week on it, just Tuesday, or itmight be Thursday--but Colonel Bellairs's and Lady Blore's were fullydated, and about a fortnight apart. Colonel Bellairs had written last. 

Lord Lossiemouth divined that each of the three believed him or herselfto be the only one to tackle the subject. 

How ghastly! What a cruelly good short story it would make for amagazine!

Then he read Lady Blore's letter. Apparently it was not pleasantreading. It seemed to prick somewhat sharply. He winced once or twice, and spoke angrily to it. 

"My good woman, as if I did not _know_ that! Men are always behavingheartlessly to women in their opinion. It is the normal male state. Itis an established fact that we are all brutes. Why do you want me tomarry your paragon if you have such a low opinion of me?"

Still he could not put the letter down. 

"It is possible though improbable, " wrote that dauntless woman, "thatyour vacillating and selfish character may have improved sufficiently inthe course of years for you to have become aware that you have behaveddisgracefully to a woman, who, if she had had any sense, ought never tohave given you a second thought, who was and still is deeply attached toyou; probably the only person on this earth who has the misfortune tocare two pins about you. "

Lord Lossiemouth tried to feel sarcastic. He tried to laugh. But it wasno use. Lady Blore's arrow had penetrated a joint in his harness. 

After all he need take no notice of any of these monstrous effusions. 

He was disgusted with opening letters. Nevertheless he hurried on. Perhaps he should find others less intolerable. 

A somewhat formal letter from his cousin the Bishop of Lostford, who hadnever been cordial to him since his engagement to Magdalen had beenbroken off. The Bishop pointed out certain grave abuses connected withhouse property at Lostford, at which the late Lord Lossiemouth hadpersistently connived, but which he hoped his successor might enquireinto personally and redress. 

Quantities of other letters were torn open and aimed in balls at theempty grate. But at last he came to a long one which he readbreathlessly. 

It was from the mother of the girl who had so recently refused him, aninvolved tortuous epistle, which implied that the daughter was seriouslyattached to him, and hinted that if he were to come forward again hewould not be refused a second time. There was also a short, wavering, nondescript note with nothing in particular in it from the girl herself. The mother had evidently made her write. 

A very venomous expression settled on Lord Lossiemouth's heavy face. Hesuddenly took up a Bradshaw and looked out the trains for Lostford. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

 Tard oublie qui bien aime. 

On this momentous afternoon Magdalen was sitting alone in themorning-room at Priesthope somewhat oppressed by an oncoming cold. Ithad not yet reached the violent and weeping stage. That was forto-morrow. She, who was generally sympathetically dressed, wasreluctantly enveloped in a wiry red crochet-work shawl which Bessie hadmade for her, and had laid resolutely upon her shoulders before she wentout. 

She tried to read, but her eyes ached, and after a time she laid downher book, and her mind went back, as it had a way of doing--to Fay. 

Fay had told her as "a great secret" that she had accepted Wentworth. She was so transfigured by happiness, so radiant, so absolutely unlikeher former listless, colourless, carping self that Magdalen could onlysuppose that two shocks of joy had come simultaneously, the discoverythat she loved her prim suitor, and the overwhelming relief to hertortured conscience of Michael's release. 

Wentworth and Michael were still at Venice. Michael, it seemed, had beenprostrated by excitement, and had been too weak to travel immediately. But they would be at Barford in a few days' time. 

When Magdalen saw Fay entirely absorbed in trying on a succession of newsummer hats, sent for from London in preparation for Wentworth'sreturn, she asked herself for the twentieth time whether Fay hadentirely forgotten her previous attraction for Michael, or that theremight be some awkwardness in meeting her faithful lover and servantagain, especially as the future wife of his brother. 

Two years had certainly elapsed since that sudden flare-up of disastrouspassion, and in two years much can be forgotten. But after two yearseverything may still be remembered, as Magdalen knew well. And shefeared that Michael was among those who remember. 

Magdalen had that day told Fay of her father's intention of marryingagain, but she took almost no notice of the announcement. To use one ofAunt Aggie's metaphors, the news "seemed to slide off her back like aduck. "

She only said, "Really! How silly of him!"

As Magdalen thought of Fay the door opened and Bessie, who was supposedto have gone for a walk, came in. 

She had a spray of crab-apple blossom in her hand. She held it towardsMagdalen as if it were a bill demanding instant payment. These littleamenities were a new departure on Bessie's part. 

Magdalen's pleasure in the apple blossom seemed to her somewhatexaggerated, but she made allowances for her, as she had a cold. 

"Are you going out again?" asked Magdalen. 

"No. "

"Then I should like to have a little talk with you. I have something totell you. "

Bessie sat down. 

"I am prepared for the announcement you have to make. I have seen itcoming. It is about Fay. "

"No, it is about Father. He has asked me to tell you that he is engagedto be married. "

"Father!"

"Yes, it is not given out yet. "

"Father!"

"It is to a Miss Barnett. You may have seen her. The doctor's sister atSaundersfoot. "

"I know her by sight, a tall, showy-looking woman of nearly forty, withamber hair and a powdered nose. "

"Yes. "

"Father has sunk very low, " said Bessie, judicially. "He must have beenrefused by a lot of others, younger and better-looking, and ladies, tobe reduced to taking her. And fancy anyone in their senses being willingto take Father, with his gout, and his tendency to drink, and his totaldisregard of hygiene. Well, she looks a vulgar pushing woman, but I amsorry for her. And I must own that I am disappointed that if there wasto be an engagement in our family it should be Father. There is notlikely to be more than one going for a home like ours. It is just likehim to grab it. "

Magdalen tried not to laugh. 

"I've looked round, " continued Bessie. "I don't say that at present Icould entertain the thought of marriage myself. I can't just yet, but Imean to in the future. It's merely a question of time. Marriage is thehigher life. Besides, if one remains unmarried people are apt to thinkit is because one can't help it. It would certainly be so in my case. And I have looked round. There is not a soul in the neighbourhood forany of us to marry that I can see except Wentworth, who is of courseextremely elderly. Hampshire seems absolutely bare of young men. And ifthere are a few sons in some of the houses, they are never accessible. And the really superior ones like Lord Alresford's only son would neverlook at me. It would be waste of time to try. There is positively noopening in Hampshire unless I marry the curate. "

"That reminds me that he is to call this afternoon about theboot-and-shoe club. I wish, my dear, in the intervals between youraspirations towards the higher life, you would go through the accountswith him. My head is so confused with this cold. "

"I will. And where on earth are you going to live when Father marriesagain? Of course, I shall graduate at Cambridge. He won't oppose thatnow. Magdalen, why don't you marry, too?"

"I can't, dear Bessie. No one wants me. "

"May I go on?"

"No. Please don't. "

"I think I will all the same. Why not marry Lord Lossiemouth after all?Don't speak. I want to place the situation dispassionately before you. Ihave thought it carefully over. You are an extremely attractive woman, Magdalen. I don't know what it is about you, I fail to analyse it, butone becomes attached to you. You can make even a home pleasant. And if aman once cared for you it is improbable that he would cease to care justbecause you are no longer young. I take my stand on the basic fact thatthere certainly has been a mutual attachment. I then ask myself----"

At this moment the door opened and the footman announced "LordLossiemouth. "

The shock to both women was for the moment overwhelming. 

Magdalen recovered herself almost instantaneously and welcomed him withgrave courtesy, but she was unable to articulate. 

He had seen the amazement in the four eyes turned on him as he came in, and cursed Colonel Bellairs in his heart. Why had not the old idiotwarned Magdalen of his coming?

He had felt doubtful of his reception. A simulated coldness onMagdalen's part was, perhaps, to be expected. But for her blankastonishment he was not prepared. 

"This is Bessie, " she said in a shaking voice. 

Bessie! This tall, splendid young woman. Could this be the tiny child ofthree who used to sit on his knee, and blow his watch open. 

"I cannot be expected to remember you, " said Bessie, advancing a limphand. She fixed a round dispassionate eye on his heavy, irritable face, and found him unpleasant looking. 

He instantly thought her odious. 

And they all three sat down simultaneously as if by a preconcertedsignal. 

"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" asked Magdalen, as a paralysedsilence became imminent. A faint hectic colour burnt in her cheeks. 

Lord Lossiemouth pulled himself together, and came to her assistance. Together they held back the silence at arm's length. 

Yes, he was staying in the neighbourhood--at Lostford in fact. Houseproperty near the river. Liable to floods. 

Did he mention the word floods?

Yes. Floods at certain seasons of the year. Time to take measures nowbefore the autumn, etc. 

Magdalen was glad to hear of some measures being taken. Long needed. 

Yes, culpable neglect. 

A wall?

Yes, a wall. Certainly a wall. 

Bessie rose, marched to the door, opened it, hit her body against it, and went out. 

A certain degree of constraint went with her. 

"I had your Father's leave to come, " he said after a moment. "I shouldnot have ventured to do so otherwise. "

"I wish Father had warned me, " she said. 

They looked away from each other. Here in this room fifteen years agothey had parted. Both shivered at the remembrance. 

Then they looked long at each other. 

Magdalen became very pale. She saw as in a glass what was passingthrough his mind; and for a moment her heart cried out against thosetreacherous deserters, her beauty and her youth, that they should havefled and left her thus, defenceless and unarmed to endure his crueleyes. But she remembered that he had left her before they did. They hadnot availed to stay him. They had only slipped away from her in hiswake. And at the time she had hardly noticed their departure, as he wasno longer there to miss them. 

Lord Lossiemouth had come determined to propose to Magdalen, hisdetermination screwed "to the sticking point" by a deliberately recalledremembrance of the change the years had wrought in her. He had toldhimself he was prepared for that. Nevertheless, now that he was actuallyface to face with her, in spite of his regard and respect for her, ahorrid chasm seemed to yawn between them, which only one primitiveemotion can span, an emotion which, like a disused bridge, had falleninto the gulf years ago. 

And yet how marvellously strong, how immortal it had seemed once--inthis same room with this same woman. It had seemed then as if it couldnot break, or fall, or fade. 

It had broken, it had fallen, it had faded. 

As he looked earnestly at her he became aware that though she had beenmomentarily distressed a great serenity was habitual to her. The eyeswhich now met his had regained their calm. It seemed as if her life hadbeen steeped in tranquil sunshine, as if the free air of heaven hadpenetrated her whole delicate being, and had left its clear fragrancewith her. 

Oh! if only they had been married fifteen years ago! What happiness theymight have given each other. How perfect to have owed it all to eachother. How fond he would still be of her. How tender their mutual regardwould still be. Then his present feeling for her would not be amiss. They ought to be sitting peacefully together at this moment, not in thisintolerably embarrassing personal relation towards each other, but atease with each other, talking over their boy at Eton, and the new ponyfor their little daughters. He did not want to _begin_ being married toher now. 

She knew what he felt. 

"Magdalen, " he said, "I am distressed that I have taken you by surprise. I had hoped that you were prepared to see me. But my coming is not, Itrust, painful to you. "

A pulse fluttered in her cheek. 

"I am glad to see you, " she said. "If I did not seem so the first momentit was only because I was taken aback. "

"A great change has come over my fortunes, " he continued, anxious togive her time, and yet aware that no conversation except on the objectof his visit was really possible. "I am at last in a position to marry. "

"When I heard the news I thought that you would probably marry soon. "

"Our engagement was broken off solely for lack of means, " he continued. Her eyes dropped. "Now that that obstacle is removed I have come to askyou, to beg you most earnestly to renew it. "

"It is very good of you, " she said almost inaudibly. "I appreciateyour--kindness. "

He saw that she was going to refuse him. But he was prepared for thatcontingency. It was a natural feminine method of readjusting the balancebetween them. He would certainly give her the opportunity. He owed it toher. Besides, the refusal would not be final. He knew from her relationsthat she still loved him. 

"If your feeling towards me is unchanged will you marry me?"

The door opened, and the footman announced "Mr. Thomson. "

The new curate came slowly into the room, his short-sighted eyes peeringabout him, a little faggot of papers girdled by an elastic band, claspedin his careful hand against his breast. 

Magdalen started violently, and Lord Lossiemouth experienced a furiousexasperation. 

Magdalen mechanically introduced the two men to each other, and they allthree sat down, with the same sudden automatic precision as when Bessiehad been present. 

"The days are beginning to lengthen already, " said Mr. Thomson. "I havenoticed it, especially the last few days, and the rooks areclamourous--very clamourous. "

"It was to be expected, " faltered Magdalen. 

"The accounts are, I am glad to say, in perfect order. I am proud toadd, though I fear a statement so unusual may lay me open to a charge ofromancing, that we have a small balance in hand. "

How he had looked forward to saying these words. With what a flash ofsurprised delight he had expected this astounding, this gratifyingannouncement would be received. 

He paused a moment to let his words sink in--evidently Miss Bellairs hadnot heard. 

"Three pounds five and nine, " he said. 

"It is wonderful, " said Magdalen emphatically. 

"Quite wonderful. I never heard of a boot-and-shoe club which was notin debt. Have you?" And she turned to Lord Lossiemouth. 

But Lord Lossiemouth's temper was absent. He found the situationintolerable. He only answered, "Never. "

"Bessie is waiting to hear all about it in the schoolroom, " continuedMagdalen. "I have asked her to go over the papers with you. She will beas surprised and delighted as I am. Shall we go and tell her?"

And without waiting for an answer she rose and led the way to theschoolroom, followed by Mr. Thomson. Bessie was sitting alone there, staring in front of her, paralysed by Lord Lossiemouth's arrival, andindignant at the possibility that Magdalen might marry that "horrid oldthing, " who was not the least like the charming photograph of him in hersister's album. However, she grasped the situation, and after animploring glance from Magdalen, grappled with all her might with theboot-and-shoe club. 

Magdalen hurriedly tore off the little red shawl and returned to themorning-room, and closed the door. It was a considerable effort to herto close it, and by doing so to invite a renewal of Lord Lossiemouth'soffer. But it could not be left open. 

"It was not poor Mr. Thomson's fault, " she said, "but I wish I couldhave saved you this annoyance. "

He struggled to recover his temper. Her quivering face shewed him thatshe was suffering from the miserable accident of the interruption evenmore than he was. 

"I was asking you to marry me, " he said with courage, but with visibleirritation. "Will you?"

"I am afraid I cannot. "

"I knew you would say that. I expected it. But I beg you to reconsiderit, that is if--if your feeling for me is still unchanged. "

"It is unchanged. "

"Then why not marry me?"

"Because you do not care for me. "

"I felt certain you would say that. But I _do_ care for you. Should I behere if I did not? We are two middle-aged people, Magdalen. The oldraptures and roses would be out of place, but I have always cared foryou. Surely you know that. Have you forgotten the old days?"

"No. "

"Neither have I. All we have to do is to forget the years between. " Ashe spoke he felt that the thing could hardly have been better put. 

"I have no wish to forget them. "

He had made a great effort to control his temper, but he found herunreasonable. His anger got the upper hand. 

"It is one of two things that makes you refuse me. Either you can'tforgive me, and I daresay I don't deserve that you should, I am notposing as a faultless character--or you have ceased to love me. Which isit?"

"I have not ceased to love you, " she replied. "Have I not just told youso? But you would find yourself miserable in the--lop-sided kind ofmarriage which you are contemplating. It is unwise to try to make brickswithout straw. "

"Then if your mind was so absolutely made up beforehand to refuse me, why was I sent for?" he stammered, white with anger. He struck thetable with his hand. "What was the use of urging me to come back, if Iwas to meet with a frigid, elegantly expressed, deliberately plannedrebuff directly I set foot in the house!"

"Why were you _sent for_?" she said aghast. "Surely you came of your ownaccord. _Sent for!_ _Who_ sent for you?"

She sat down feebly. A horrible suspicion turned her faint. 

"_Who_ sent for me?" he said venomously. "Why am I here?"

He tore some letters out of his pocket, and thrust them into her hands. Always sensitive to a slight, he was infuriated by the low cunning, thedesire to humiliate him, with which he imagined he had been treated. Others could be humiliated as well as himself. 

"Read them, " he said savagely, and he walked away from her, and stood bythe window with his back to her. 

Magdalen read them slowly, the three letters, her father's, Aunt Mary's, Aunt Aggie's. Then she put them back into their envelopes and wiped thesweat from her forehead. 

Humiliation, shame, despair, the anguish of wounded love, she saw themcreep towards her. She saw them crouch like wild beasts ready to spring, their cruel eyes upon her. She had known their fangs once. Were they torend her again?

She sat motionless and saw them pass, as behind bars, pass quite away. They could not reach her. They could not touch her. 

She looked at the lover of her youth, standing as she had so often seenhim stand at that window in years gone by, with his hands behind hisback, looking out to the sea. 

She went softly to him, and stood beside him. 

"I am more grieved that I can say about these, " she said, touching theletters. "I did not know the poor dears had written. It was good of youto come back at the call of these unhappy letters. Will you not burnthem, Everard, and forget them? There is a fire waiting for them. "

She put them into his hand. She had not spoken to him by his Christianname before. His anger sank suddenly. He took them in a shamed silence, and dropped them into the fire. Magdalen sat down by the hearth, and hesat down near her. Together they watched them burn. 

"I ought to have burnt them yesterday, " he said remorsefully. 

"I am glad you did not. I am so thankful to see you again, and thatthese foolish letters brought you. I have often longed to have a talkwith you. 

"It seems unreasonable, " continued Magdalen, her clear eyes meeting his, "but the fact of your asking me to marry you makes it possible for me totell you what I have long wished to tell you. I have often thought ofwriting it. I did write it once, but I tore it up. It seems as if awoman _can't_ say certain things to a man till he has said, 'Will youmarry me?' Then it is easy, because then nothing she may say can rouse asuspicion in his mind that she wants to make him say it. "

"I have proposed to you twice, Magdalen. Is not that enough?" His voicewas very bitter. "I venture to prophesy that you will be safe from mypestering you with a third offer. "

"I am sure of it. I never dreamed that you would ask me this secondtime. I never thought we should meet again except by chance, as we did ayear ago. But I have had you in my mind, and I have oftenfeared--often--that I was a painful remembrance to you; that when youthought of me it was with regret that you had perhaps--it is not so easyto say after all--that you had spoilt my life. "

"I did reproach myself bitterly with having made love to you when youwere so very young and inexperienced, and when I ought to haveremembered that I was not in a position to marry. Your father did rubthat in. As if I could help my poverty. "

"Father is not a reasonable person. You were nearly as young as I was. Looking back now it seems as if we had both been almost children. "

"It was a great misfortune for both of us, " he said, colouring. He hadnot felt it great after the first. 

"Not for me, " she said. "That is what I have long wished to tell you. Ithas been my great good fortune. Not at first--but after a time. I shouldnever have known love--of that I am sure--unless it had been for you. You were the only person who could waken it in me. The power to love isthe great gift; to be permitted to know that marvel, to be allowed oncein one's life to touch the infinite. Love opens all the doors. Someopened in pain, but they did open. I never knew, I never guessed untillong after you had come into my life, and gone away again, how much Iowed to you. Then I began to see, first in gleams, and then plainly. Your momentary attraction towards me was a tiny spark of the Divinelove, a sort of little lantern leading me home through the dark. "

He stared at her amazed. Her transparency transfixed him. What issuperficial is also often deep in clear natures such as Magdalen's, likea water lily whose stem goes down a long way. 

"Love releases us from ourselves, our hard proud selves, and makeseverything possible to flow in to us, happiness, peace, joy, gratitude. I thank God for having let me know you, for having made me love you. Imight have missed it. I see others miss it. I might have gone throughlife not knowing. I might have had to bear the burden of life, withoutthe one thing that makes it easy. I see other people toiling andmoiling, and getting hopeless and miserable and exhausted till my heartaches for them. After the first I have never toiled, never grieved, never despaired. I have been sustained always. For there are not twokinds of love, Everard, but only one. The love of you is the cup ofwater, and the love of God is the well it is taken from. .. . You hadbetter go now before anyone else comes in, but I want you to rememberwhen you think of me that I bless and thank you, and am grateful to you. I have been grateful for years. "

She took his leaden hand in both of hers, and held it for a moment toher lips. 

Lord Lossiemouth's face was pinched and aged. His hand fell out ofhers. 

Then his face became suddenly convulsed, frightful to behold, like thatof a man being squeezed to death. 

"I never loved you, " he said in a fierce, suffocated voice. "I was alittle in love with you, that was all, and that was not much. I soon gotover it. "

"I know, " she said. 

"I felt pain for a time. You were very beautiful, and you were thefirst. I was the same as you then. But I found other beautiful women. Itook what I could get out of life, and out of women. I rubbed out mypain that way. It was not your father who parted us, it was myself. Iwould not own it, I was always bitter against him, but it was my fault. I did not mean to work, and tie myself to an office stool: I had thechance, but I wanted to travel and see the world. It was not lack ofmeans that parted us. I said a few minutes ago that it had been the onlyobstacle to our marriage, and your eyes dropped. You have known betterall the time, but you wouldn't say. All these years I have put it downto that. But it was _not_. We were parted by lack of love. "

"I know, " she said again. 

"On my side. "

"It was not your fault. We can't love to order, or by our own will. Itis a gift. "

"Some of us can't love at all, " he said fiercely. "That is about it. Wehave not got any room for it if--if it _is_ given us. It could not get afoothold. It was crowded out. I was often glad afterwards that I did nottie myself to you. _Glad!_ Do you hear, Magdalen? It left me free to--itdid give me pain when I thought of you. I knew what I had done to you. I used to tell myself that you gave me up very easily, that you did notreally want me. But I knew in my heart that you did. But it only made mebitter, and I put the thought away. That time, it is ten years ago; goodGod! it is all so long ago, when you nearly died of scarlet fever inLondon, I heard of it by chance when you were at your worst, I wasshocked, but I did not really care, for I had long ceased to want you. Iused to visit a certain woman every day in that street, and I once askedher who the straw was down for, and she said it was for a 'Miss MagdalenBellairs. ' I was in love with her at the moment, if you can call itlove. I have dragged myself through all kinds of sordid passionssince--we parted. "

Tears of rage stood in his eyes. He looked at her through them. Itseemed as if no wounding word under heaven would be left to say by thetime he had finished. 

"And I did not come back in order to make amends, " he went on. "You knowme very little if you think that. I came back solely out of pique. Itwas not those absurd letters which brought me, or held me back. It wasanother woman. I wanted to pay her out. "

"I thought perhaps it was something like that, " said Magdalen. 

"It was a virtuous attachment this time. I am nearly forty. I am gettinggrey and stout. Young women have a difficulty in perceiving myexistence. It was high time to settle, and to live on some attractivewoman's money. There are thousands of women who must marry someone. Sowhy not me? I found the attractive woman. I walked into love with her, "he stammered with anger. "I regarded it as a constitutional. But theattractive woman, though she liked me a little, weighed the pros andcons exactly as I had done, and decided not to take her constitutionalin my impecunious company. She refused me when I was poor, and_now_--now that I am rich--she is willing. "

The harsh voice ceased suddenly. Magdalen looked for a moment at thesavage, self-tortured face, and her heart bled. 

"That is how I have treated you, " he said, choking with passion. "Nowyou know the truth of me--for the first time. That is the kind of man Iam, hard and vindictive and selfish to the core: the man whom you haveidealised, whom you have put on a pedestal all these years. "

"I have known always the kind of man you were, " she said steadily. "Inever idealised you, as you call it. I loved you knowing the worst ofyou. Otherwise my love could not have endured through. A foolishidealism would have perished long ago. "

"And then I come down here, on a sudden despicable impulse, intending touse you as a weapon to strike her with, not that she is worth striking, poor feeble pretty toy. And I encouraged myself in a thin streak ofpatronising sentiment for you. I wrote a little cursed sonnet in thetrain how old affection outlasts youthful passion, like violets bloomingin autumn. How loathsome! How incredibly base! And then, when my temperis aroused by your opposition, I am dastardly enough, heartless enoughto try to humiliate you by shewing you those letters, to try to revengemyself on you. On you, Magdalen! On you! On you!"

She did not speak nor move. Her face was awed, as the face of one whowatches beside the pangs of death or--birth. 

Outside in the amber sunset a thrush piped. 

"Magdalen, " he said almost inarticulately, "you have never repulsed me. Don't repulse me now, for I am very miserable. Don't pour your love intothe sand any more. Give it me instead. I am dying of thirst. Give me todrink. You can live without me, but I can't live without you. I havetried--I have tried everything. I am not thinking of you, only ofmyself. I am only asking for myself, only impelled towards you by my ownneeds. Does not that prove to you that I am at last speaking the truth?Does not that force you to believe me when I tell you that I want youmore than anything in the world. I have wanted you all my life withoutknowing it. I don't want to make amends to you for the past. I want youyourself, for myself, as my wife. I swear to God if you won't marry me Iwill marry no one. You are the only woman I can speak to, the only onewho does not fail, who holds on through thick and thin, the only one whohas ever really wanted me. I daresay I shan't make you happy. I daresayI shall break your heart. God help me, I daresay I shall put myconvenience before your happiness, my selfish whims before your health. I have always put myself first. But risk it. Risk it, Magdalen. Take meback. Love me. For God's sake marry me. "

Each looked into the other's bared soul. 

Something in his desperate face which she had always sought for, whichhad always been missing from it--she found. 

"I will, " she said. 

They made no movement towards each other. They had reached a spiritualnearness, a passion of surrender each to each, which touch of hand orlip could only at that moment have served to lessen. 

"You are not taking me out of pity? You are sure you can still love me alittle?"

"More than in the early days, " she said. "For you have not only come tome, Everard. You have come to yourself. "

CHAPTER XXIX

 Me, too, with mastering charm From husks of dead days freeing, The sun draws up to be warm And to bloom in this sweet hour. The stem of all my being Waited to bear this flower. 

 --LAURENCE BINYON. 

It would be hardly possible to describe the unholy, the unmeasuredrejoicing to which Magdalen's engagement gave rise in her family. It is, perhaps, enough to say that the twenty years of her cheerful, selflessdevotion to the domestic hearth had never won from her father and hertwo aunts anything like the admiring approval which her engagement atonce elicited. The neighbourhood was interested. Lord Lossiemouth was abrilliant match for anyone (if you left out the man himself). Theannouncement read impressively in the _Morning Post_. The neighboursremembered that there had been a youthful attachment, an earlyengagement broken off owing to lack of means. And now it seemed themoment he was rich he had come flying back to cast his faithful heartonce more at her feet. It was a real romance. Magdalen was considered anextraordinarily fortunate woman by the whole countryside, but LordLossiemouth was placed on a pedestal. What touching constancy. Whatbeautiful fidelity. What a contrast to "most men. " "Not one man in ahundred would have acted in that chivalrous manner, " was the feminineverdict of Hampshire. 

A wave of cheap sentiment overflowed the Bellairs family, in whichColonel Bellairs floated complacently like a piece of loose seaweed, andin which even Aunt Mary underwent a dignified undulation. 

Bessie alone was unmoved. 

"You said, 'Yes' too soon, " she remarked to Magdalen in private. "Ishould never have thought you would be so lacking in true dignity. Hegoes away for fifteen years and I should not wonder a bit if he hadthought of someone else in the interim for all you know to thecontrary--men are like that--and then he just lounges in and says 'Marryme, ' and you agree in a second. You might at any rate have made him waitfor his answer till after tea. In my opinion you have made yourselfcheap by such precipitate action. He thinks he has only got to ask, andhe can have. "

Magdalen did not answer. 

"I don't understand you, " continued the pained monitor. "I have alwayshad a certain respect for you, Magdalen, and when he came back Isupposed you would give in to him in time if he pressed you withoutintermission, and was constant for a considerable period--say a coupleof years; but I never thought it possible you would collapse like this. I fear you have not taken his character sufficiently into consideration. If I were in your place I should be afraid that Everard would not allowmy nature free scope, or take an interest in my mental development, andthat the sacrifices which make domestic life tolerable might have to beall on my side. He is absolutely unworthy of you, and his nose is quitethick. I daresay you have not remarked it, but I did at once. And in myopinion he ought for his own good to have been made to _realise_ it. Even Aunt Mary, though she says she entirely approves of the marriage, admits that you have shown too much eagerness. "

Fortunately for Magdalen the interest of the neighbours, and even of herown family, was speedily diverted to another channel by the return ofWentworth and Michael to Barford. The enthusiastic welcome which Michaelreceived from all classes, and from distant families who had neverevinced much cordiality to his elder brother, astonished Wentworth, touched him to the quick. 

"I had no idea we had so many friends, " he said repeatedly. 

Michael smiled vaguely and took everything for granted. Wentworth was soanxious to shield him from fatigue and excitement that at first he wasonly too thankful that Michael took everything so quietly. But after afew days he became uneasy at his brother's inertness of mind and body. Agreat doctor, however, explained Michael's state very much as theItalian doctor had done. He was in an exhausted condition. What wasessential to him was rest. He must not be made to see anyone or doanything he did not like. 

"Your brother will regain his health entirely, " the great man had said, "if he is left in peace, and nothing happens to overexcite him. He isworn to a shadow by that accursed prison. Many men in his conditioncan't rest. Then they die. He can. He has the temperament thatacquiesces. He will cure himself if he is left alone. Let him lie inthe sun, and give nature a chance. "

In spite of his anxiety Wentworth saw that Michael's bodily strength wasslowly returning. Every afternoon he left him half asleep in the sun, and rode over to see Fay. Since she had accepted him it had become anecessity to him to see her every day. 

Wentworth had long been bent to the dust under the pain of Michael'simprisonment. Fay had been bent with anguish to the dust by the weightof her own silence which had kept him there. 

And now in the twinkling of an eye they both stood erect, freed. Lifewas transfigured for both at the same instant. 

This marvellous moment found them both just when they were decidingmildly to love each other. It took them and flung them together in acommon overwhelming joy. It almost seemed as if the shock might make aman of Wentworth. 

Did he half know (he was certainly always tacitly guarding himselfagainst the assumption of such an idea in the minds of others) that hehad so far been left out, not only from the whirl of life--he haddeliberately withdrawn from that--but from the weft of life itself. Thegreat loom had not swept him in. It had not appeared to need him. Someof us seem to hang on the fringe of life, of thought, of love, ofeverything. We are not for good or ill interwoven into the stuff, partof the pattern. 

Wentworth felt young for the first time in his life, happy for the firsttime in his life, really energetic for the first time. A certain languidfatigue which had been with him from boyhood, which had always lainmournfully on its back waving its legs in the air like a reversedBattle, had now been jolted right side upper-most, and was using thoselegs, not as proofs of the emptiness of the world, but as a means oflocomotion. 

He had at first been enormously raised in his own self-esteem by hisengagement to a young and beautiful woman. He was permanently relievedfrom the necessity of accounting to his friends for the fact that he wasstill unmarried, reminding them that it was his own fault. Perhaps atthe bottom of his heart a fear lurked, implanted by the brutal Grenfell, that he was going to be an old maid. That fear was now dispelled. It wasmercifully hidden from Wentworth that Grenfell and the Bishop and mostof his so-called friends would still so regard him even if he weremarried. 

But gradually and insensibly the many petty reasons for satisfactionwhich his engagement to Fay had given him, and even the delight in beingloved, were overshadowed by a greater presence. 

At first they had never been silent together. Wentworth liked to hearhis own voice, and prosed stolidly on for hours with exquisite enjoymentand an eye to Fay's education at the same time, about his plans, hisaspirations, his past life (not that he had had one), the hollowness ofsociety (not that he knew anything about it), a man's need of solitude, and the solace of a woman's devotion, its softening effect on a lifedevoted hitherto, perhaps, too entirely to intellectual pursuits. 

Fay did not listen to him very closely. She felt that his mind soaredbeyond her ken. But she was greatly impressed, and repeated little bitsof what he had said to Magdalen afterwards. And she looked at him withrapt adoration. 

"Wentworth says that consideration in little things is what makes thehappiness of married life, " she would announce pontifically. 

"How true!"

"And he says social life ought to be simplified. "

"Indeed! Does he happen to mention how it is to be done?"

"He says it ought to be regulated, and that everyone ought to be atliberty to lead their own life, and not to be expected to attend cricketmatches and garden parties, if you are so constituted that you don'tfind pleasure in them. I used to think I liked garden parties, Magdalen, but I see I don't now. I care more for the big things of life now. DoesEverard ever talk to you like that when you and he are alone?"

"Never. Never. "

"And Andrea never did, either. Wentworth is simply wonderful. You shouldhear him speak about fame being shallow, and how the quiet mind lookingat things truly is everything, and peace not being to be found in themarket place, but in a walk by a stream, and how in his eyes a woman'slove outweighs the idle glitter of a social success. Oh! Magdalen, I'mbeginning to feel I'm not worthy of Wentworth. I've always liked beingadmired, so different from him. I did not know there were men sohigh-minded as he. He makes me feel very petty beside him. And he is sohumble. He says I must not idealise him, that he does not _wish_ it, forthough he may not be worse or better than I think he is only tooconscious of his many deficiencies. But I can't help it. Who could?"

And Fay let fall a tear. 

"We needs must love the highest when we see it. "

But the highest some of us can see is the nearest molehill. 

What Michael and the Duke had failed to do for Fay Wentworth wasaccomplishing. 

"You are made for each other, " said Magdalen, with conviction. "Everyday shows me that you and Wentworth bring out the best in each other. Perhaps, gradually, you will keep nothing back from each other, telleach other everything. "

"He tells me everything now, " said Fay. "He trusts me entirely. "

"And you?" said Magdalen. "Do you tell him everything?"

 * * * * *

Wentworth, too, had reached the conviction that he and Fay were made foreach other. He might have starved out the deeper love, the truth andtenderness of a sincerer nature, if it had been drawn towards him. Hehad often imagined himself as being the recipient of the lavisheddevotion of a woman beautiful, humble, exquisite and noble, whose truthwas truth itself, and had vaguely wondered why she had not come into hislife. But perhaps if he had met such a woman, and if she had loved himas he pined to be loved, he would have become suspicious of her, andwould have left her after many vacillations. He did not instinctivelyrecognise humility and nobility when he met them, because they bore butslight resemblance to the stiff lay figures which represented thosequalities in his mind. To meet them in reality would have been to himbewilderment, disappointment, disillusion. 

Fay was not only what he seemed to want, what he had feebly longed for. She was more than this. Her nature was the complement of his. A lack ofshrewdness, of mental grasp, a certain silliness were absolutelyessential to the maintenance of a lifelong devotion to him. Wentworthhad found the right woman to give him what he wanted. Fay had found theright man. 

Love, which had been knocking urgently at their doors for so many futileyears, heard at last a movement as of someone stirring within, and ahand upon the disused latch. 

CHAPTER XXX

 O Yanna, Adrianna, They buried me away In the blue fathoms of the deep, Beyond the outer bay. 

 But in the Yule, O Yanna, Up from the round dim sea And reeling dungeons of the fog I am come back to thee!

 --BLISS CARMAN. 

Wentworth stood at the open window of the library watching Michael. 

Michael was lying on a deck chair on the terrace playing with a puppy. His face was losing a certain grey drawn look which it had worn since hehad left prison. He looked more like himself since his hair had time togrow. Wentworth felt that he ought to be reassured about him, but avague anxiety harassed him. 

Suddenly, without a moment's warning, the puppy fell asleep. Michaelmade a movement to reach it, but it was just beyond his grasp. 

In an instant Wentworth was beside him, lifting the sleeping mass ofsleek fat on to Michael's knee. Michael's long hands made a little cribfor it. 

"He will sleep now for a bit, " he said contentedly. 

"Do _you_ sleep better?" said Wentworth. He had not forgotten thosefirst nights at Venice when Michael's feeble step had dragged itself toand fro in the next room half the night. 

"I sleep like a top. I'm asleep half the time. "

"You are much better the last few days. "

"Oh! I'm all right. "

"All Hampshire has been to call. I knew you would be bored, so I did notlet them disturb you. "

"Thanks. "

"Is there anyone you would like to see?"

"No one that I know of. "

"No one at _all_?"

Michael made a mental effort which did not escape Wentworth. 

"I should like very much to see--presently--if it could be done----"

"Yes, " said Wentworth eagerly. "Of _course_ it can be done, my dear boy. You would like to see?"

"Doctor Filippi, " said Michael, looking deprecatingly at Wentworth. "Hewas so good to me. And I am accustomed to seeing him. I miss him all thetime. I wonder whether you would let him come and stay here for hisholiday. He generally takes it in June. And--let me see--it's May now, isn't it?"

Wentworth's heart swelled with jealousy and disappointment. The jealousywas of the doctor, the disappointment was about Fay. The larger of thetwo emotions was jealousy. 

"You have sent Doctor Filippi a very handsome present, " he said coldly. "I chose it for you, a silver salver. I went up to London on purpose atyour wish a week ago. "

"Y-yes. "

"And I don't think he would care to come here. No doubt he has his ownfriends. You must remember a man like that is poor. It would be puttinghim to expense. "

Michael looked down at the sleeping puppy. He did not answer. 

Wentworth was beginning to fear that his brother had an ungrateful, callous nature. Was Michael so self-absorbed--egotism revoltedWentworth--that he would _never_ ask to see Wentworth's future wife, thewoman who had shown such unceasing, such tender interest in Michaelhimself. 

"I hoped there was someone else, someone very dear to me, and a devotedfriend of yours, whom you might like to see again. "

Wentworth spoke with deliberation. 

"I could send him a cheque. He need not be at any expense, " said Michaelin a low voice. His exhausted mind, slower to move than ever, had notleft the subject of Doctor Filippi. His brother's last remark had notpenetrated to it. 

Wentworth became scarlet. He made an impatient movement. Then part ofthe sense of his brother's last words tardily reached Michael's blurredfaculties. 

"An old friend of mine, " he said, vaguely flurried. "What old friend?"

"Fay, " said Wentworth, biting his lip. "Have you forgotten Fay_entirely_? How she tried to save you, how she grieved for you? Hergreat goodness to you? And what she is to _me_!"

"No, " said Michael. "No. I don't forget. Her goodness to me. How shetried to save me. Just so. Just so. I don't forget. "

"Won't you see her? She and Magdalen are driving over here this morning. You need not see Magdalen unless you like. "

"I should like. She is going to be married, too, isn't she? I feel as ifI had heard someone say so. "

"Yes, to Lossiemouth. You remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does notcare a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him. But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apartfrom the world and its sordid motives and love of wealth and rank thatit is always a shock and a surprise when I come in contact with its wayof looking at things. I never liked Magdalen. I always considered hersuperficial. But I never thought her mercenary--till now. But Fay----"

"I will see her, too, " said Michael. "Yes, of course. I somehow thoughtof Fay as--as--but my mind gets so confused--as at a great distance, quite removed all this time. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away inEngland. Left Italy for good. "

"My dear boy, she is living at Priesthope, four miles off. I've told youso over and over again. I go and see her every day. "

"Yes, at Priesthope, of course. Four miles. I know the way. You can goby Wind Farm, or Pilgrim Road. You did tell me. More cheerful as timepasses on. "

Wentworth looked with perplexity at Michael's thin profile. The doctorhad most solemnly assured him that his mind was only muffled anddeadened by his physical weakness. But it sometimes seemed to Wentworthas if his brother's brain were softening. 

He felt a sudden return of the blind despairing rage which was wont togrip him after his visits to Michael in prison. This inert, cold-bloodedshadow; was this all that was left of his brother?

A great tenderness welled up in his heart, the old, old protectivetenderness of many years. He put his strong brown hand on his brother'semaciated, once beautiful hand, now disfigured by coarse labour, andscarred and discoloured at the wrist. 

"Get well, Michael, " he said huskily. 

Michael's hand trembled a little, seemed to shrink involuntarily. 

Then a servant appeared suddenly, coming towards them across the grass, and Wentworth took back his hand instantly. 

"The Duchess of Colle Alto and Miss Bellairs are in the library. "

"Are you quite sure that you _really_ wish to see them--that it will nottire you?" said Wentworth. 

"Quite sure. "

"I will bring them out. "

"No. Send one at a time. Fay first. "

Michael lay back and closed his eyes. 

 * * * * *

On this May morning as Fay and Magdalen drove together to Barford, Magdalen looked at her sister's radiant face, not with astonishment, shehad got over that, but with something more like fear. 

The happiness of some natures terrifies those who love them by itsappearance of brittleness. To Magdalen Fay's present joy seemed like abit of Venetian glass on the extreme edge of a cabinet at a child'selbow. 

It is difficult for those who have imagination to understand the_insouciance_ which looks so like heartlessness of the unimaginative. The inevitable meeting with Michael seemed to cast no shadow on Fay'sspirits; Wentworth's ignorance of certain sinister facts did not seem todisturb her growing love for him. 

Their way lay through a pine wood under the shoulder of the down. Thewhortleberry with its tiny foliage made a miniature forest of palegolden green at the feet of the dark serried trunks of the pines. 

Small yellow butterflies hovered amid the topmost branches of thisunderfoot forest. 

Fay leaned out of the pony carriage and picked from the high bank aspray of whortleberry with a butterfly poised on it. 

"I thought for one minute I might find a tiny, tiny butterfly nest witheggs in it, " she said. "I do wish butterflies had nests like birds, Magdalen, don't you? But this is a new butterfly, not ready to fly. Ishall hurt it unless I'm careful. "

She made her sister stop the pony, and knelt down amid the shimmeringwhortleberry, and tenderly placed the sprig with the butterfly stillclinging to it in a little pool of sunshine. But as she did it thebutterfly walked from its twig on to her white hand and rested on it, opening and shutting its wings. 

It was a pretty sight to watch Fay coax it to a leaf. But Magdalen'sheart ached for her sister as she knelt in the sunshine. Words rose toher lips for the twentieth time, but she choked them down again. Whatuse, what use to warn those who cannot be warned, to appeal to deafears, to point out to holden eyes the things that belong to their peace?

The vision is the claim, but it must be our own eyes that see it. We maynot look at our spiritual life through another man's eyes. 

As Magdalen waited her eyes wandered to the blue haze between the treetrunks which was the sea, and marked a white band like a ribbon betweenthe blue and the fields. That was a piece of land newly reclaimed fromthe sea. When a tract of land is thus captured, the first year that itis laid open to the ministry of sun and air and rain it bears anoverflowing crop of white clover. The clover seed has lain dormant, perhaps a thousand years under the wash of the wave. The first springtide after the sea is withdrawn it wakes and rushes up. It was so now inthat little walled-in tract by the shore, where she had walked butyesterday. Surely it was to be so in Fay's heart, now that the bittertides of remorse and selfishness were ceasing to submerge it, now thatat last joy and tenderness were reaching it. Surely, love itself, theseeds of which lie dormant in every heart, love like a marvellous tideof white clover, was finding its chance at last, and would presentlyinundate her heart. 

Then, unharassed, undelayed by vain words and futile appeals fromwithout--all would go well. 

 * * * * *

At the last moment when the meeting with Michael was really imminentFay's _insouciance_ began, as Magdalen feared it might, to show signs ofcollapse. It deserted her entirely as they drove up to Barford. 

"Come out with me, " she whispered in sudden panic, plucking at hersister's gown, when Wentworth asked her to go and speak to Michael for afew minutes in the garden. But Magdalen had drawn back gravely andresolutely, and had engaged Wentworth's attention, and Fay had beenobliged to go alone across the lawn, in the direction of the deck chair. 

Her step, lagging and irresolute, was hardly audible on the grass, butMichael heard it, recognised it. We never forget the footfall, howeverlight, that has trodden on our heart. 

The footfall stopped and he opened his eyes. 

Fay was standing before him. 

And so they met again at last, those two who had been lovers once. Shelooked long at the man she had broken. He was worn down to the lastverge of exhaustion, barely more than a shadow in the suave sunshine. She would hardly have recognised him if it had not been for the tranquilsteady eyes, and the grave smile. They were all that was left of him, ofthe Michael she had known. The rest was unfamiliar, repellant. And hishands! His hands were dreadful. Oh! if only she had known he was goingto look like that she would never have come. Never, never! Fayexperienced the same unspeakable horror and repugnance as if, walking inlong, daisy-starred grass, she had suddenly stumbled against and nearlyfallen over a dead body. 

The colour ebbed out of her face and lips. She stood before him withouta word, shrinking, transfixed. 

He looked long at her, the woman for whom he had been content to suffer, that he might keep suffering from her. Fay's self torture, herprotracted anguish, her coward misery, these were written as it wereanew in her pallid face. They had been partially effaced during theheedless happiness of the last few weeks, but the sudden shock ofMichael's presence drew in again afresh with a cruel pencil the haggardlines of remorse and despair. 

He had not been able to shield her from pain after all. 

"Oh, Fay!" he said below his breath. "How you have suffered. "

"No one knows what it has been, " she said hoarsely, sinking into achair, trembling too much to stand. "I could not live through it again. I couldn't bear it, and I had to bear it. "

"You will never have to bear it again, " he said with compassion. "It isover and done with. You are going to be happy now. "

"You have suffered too, " she said, reddening. 

"Not like you. It has been worst for you. I never guessed that you hadfelt my imprisonment so much as I see now by your face you have. "

"Not have felt it! Not have suffered from it!" said Fay, amazed. "Michael, how could I help grieving day and night over it?"

The question almost rose to his lips, "Why then did you not release me?"But the words were not spoken. There is one pain which we need not bear, but which some of us never rest till we have drawn it upon ourselves, that of extorting from the one we love vain excuses, unconscious lies, feeble, inadequate explanations that explain nothing. Let be. Theexcuses, the lies, these shadows of the mind will vanish the momentLove lights his lamp. Till then their ghost-like presence, theirsemblance of reality but show that the chamber of the Beloved is dark. 

Michael was silent. Though his body and mind were half dead, his spiritwas alive and clear, moving swiftly where the spent mind could notfollow. 

"How could I help breaking my heart over the thought of you in prison?"said Fay again, wounded to the quick. 

She stared at him, indignant tears smarting in her eyes. Another longlook passed between them, on her side bewildered, pained, aghast atbeing so misunderstood, on his penetrating, melancholy, full ofcompassionate insight, that look which seems to herald the partingbetween two unequal natures, but which is in reality a perception thatthey have never met. 

"I knew you would rejoice when I was set free, " he said tranquilly, smiling at her. "Ah! Here are Magdalen and Wentworth. How radiant shelooks!"

When Magdalen and Fay had departed, and Wentworth had seen them to thecarriage, he came back and sat down by Michael. 

"Not over-tired?" he said, smiling self-consciously, and poking holes inthe turf with his stick. 

"Not in the least. "

"She was looking a little pale to-day. " It was obvious that he wished totalk about Fay. 

"She is more beautiful than ever, " said Michael, willing to give hisbrother a leg-up. 

"Isn't she!" said the affianced lover expansively. "But it isn't herbeauty I love most, it is her _character_. She is so feminine, soreceptive, so appreciative of the deeper side of life, so absolutelydevoted. Her heart has been awakened for the first time, Michael. Shehas, I feel sure, never been loved before as I loved her. "

"I imagine not. "

"I can't believe she ever cared for the Duke. I saw him once, and hegave me the impression of a very cold-blooded individual. "

"I don't think he was cold-blooded. "

"Evidently not the kind of man capable of drawing the best out of awoman like Fay. "

"Perhaps not. "

The man who felt himself capable of this feat prodded a daisy and thenwent on:

"You used to see a good deal of them in Rome before--while you were_attaché_ there. Did you gather that it was a happy marriage, a trueunion?"

"Not very happy. "

"I daresay he was selfish and inconsiderate. That is generally the cruxin married life. Fay has had an overshadowed life so far, but I shallfind my chief happiness in changing all that. It will be my object toguard her from the slightest touch of pain in future. The masculineimpulse to shield and protect is very strongly developed in me. "

"It is sometimes difficult to guard people, " said Michael half tohimself. 

"I hope some day, " Wentworth went on shyly, colouring under his tan, "your turn may come, that you may meet the right woman, and feel as I donow. It will be a revelation to you. I am afraid it may seem exaggeratedin a person like myself, who am essentially a man's man. (This was afavourite illusion of Wentworth's. ) But some day you will understand, and you will find as I have done that love is not just slothfullyaccepting a woman's slavish devotion. "

"Indeed!"

"No, Michael, believe me, it is something far greater. It is living notonly for self, but as for her sake. To take trouble to win the smile ofone we love, to gladly forego one's momentary pleasures, one'sconvenience, in order to serve her. That is the best reward of life. "

Michael's eyes filled with tears. He felt a hundred years older thanWentworth at that moment. A tender pained compassion welled up withinhim. And with it came a new protective comprehension of the man besidehim who had cherished him from his childhood onwards. 

He put out his hand and gripped Wentworth's. 

"God bless you, Wenty, " he said. 

And for a moment they who were so far apart seemed very near together. 

CHAPTER XXXI

 She sees no tears, Or any tone Of thy deep groan She hears: Nor does she mind Or think on't now That ever thou Wast kind. 

 --HERRICK. 

It quickly became plain to Magdalen that Fay's peace of mind had beenshaken by her interview with Michael. She had vouchsafed no wordconcerning it on her way home. But in the days that followed sheappeared ill at ease, and a vague and increasing unrest seemed topossess her. Magdalen doubted whether she had as yet asked herself whatit was that was disturbing her tranquillity. But it was at any rateobvious that she shrank from seeing Michael again, and that she was attimes dejected in Wentworth's presence. 

Wentworth perceived the change in her, and attributed it to a mostnatural and pardonable jealousy of Michael to which, while he made thefullest allowance for it, he had no inclination to yield. 

Michael had for a moment seemed to take more interest in life afterFay's visit, and although he had quickly relapsed into apathy Wentworthtold himself that he was anxious to foster this nascent interest byanother meeting between him and Fay. At the same time he desired torehearse the part of central figure poised between two great devotionswhich was to be his agreeable _rôle_ in the future. For Michael would ofcourse live with them after his marriage with Fay. And if there were anyebullitions of jealousy between Fay and Michael--Wentworth dwelt withcomplacency on the possibility--he felt competent to deal with them withtact and magnanimity, reassuring each in turn as to their equal share inhis affections. 

Michael at any rate showed no disinclination to meet Fay again, and evenevinced something verging on a desire to see Magdalen. And presentlyWentworth arranged to drive him over to luncheon at Priesthope. Throughout life he had always liked to settle, even in the most trivialmatters, what Michael should do, with whom he should associate. Thesituation was not new, nor was there any novelty in Michael'spliability. 

But when the day came Wentworth arrived without his brother, andevidently out of temper. Magdalen asked if Michael were less well, andwas curtly assured that he was steadily improving. The luncheon draggedthrough somehow as under a cloud. Colonel Bellairs was fortunatelyabsent on a visit to Miss Barnett at Saundersfoot. His absence was theonly silver lining to the cloud. Fay hardly spoke. Magdalen was thankfulthat her prickly Lord Lossiemouth had departed the day before. 

After luncheon, when they were sitting on the terrace over their coffee, Bessie left them, and Magdalen was about to do the same, when Wentworthsaid suddenly:

"I left Michael with the Bishop of Lostford. That is why he is not herenow. The Bishop is inducting the new Rector of Wrigley this afternoon, and he sent a wire this morning--he is always doing things at the lastmoment--he never considers others--to say that he would call at Barfordon his way to see Michael. Michael is his godson, and he has always beenfond of him. I left them together. "

Magdalen and Fay sipped their coffee in silence. 

"Michael had been as inert and apathetic as usual, " continued Wentworthsullenly, "until the Bishop appeared. The Bishop took him off into thegarden, though I said I did not like his going out so soon afterdressing--he was only just up--and it was perfectly plain they did notwant me. I believe that was why they went out. I was of no account. TheBishop has always been like that, your friend one day, and oblivious ofyou the next. But he and Michael seemed to have a great deal to say toeach other. I watched them from the library walking up and down. Michaelcan walk quite well when he wants to. Then when the victoria cameround--I thought he would find that less fatiguing than the dogcart--Iwent to tell him that it was time to start, but he only stared vaguelyat me, and the Bishop took his arm and said that you must excuse him forthis once, as he did not mean to let him go at that moment. So I cameaway without him. "

"There will be many more opportunities of seeing us, and one must clutchwhat few chances one can of seeing the Bishop, " said Magdalen. 

"When I went to warn Michael that the carriage was there, " continuedWentworth, "he did not see me till I was quite near--there was a bushbetween--and I could not help hearing him say, 'That was half an hourbefore I was arrested. '"

There was an uneasy silence. 

"It seems, " said Wentworth with exceeding bitterness, "that I have notMichael's confidence. The Bishop has it, but I, his only brother. Oh, no. He can talk to the Bishop about his imprisonment, but to me--not aword, not a single word. At first when we were together at Venice Iasked him quietly about it once or twice. I asked him why he had neversaid a word to _me_ about it at the time, why he had not confided to meat any rate that he was shielding the Marchesa, but I soon saw that thesubject distressed him. He always became confused, and he never wouldreply. Once, since we were back at Barford, when he seemed clearer, Iasked him most earnestly to tell me one thing, whether he actuallywitnessed the murder of the Marchese by his wife, as she supposed, andwhat had first put it into his head to take the blame on himself. But itseemed that any allusion to the subject exhausted and worried him. Isaid to him at last: 'Do you still hate talking of it as much as ever?'And he said 'yes. ' I could understand that, and from that day to this Inever alluded to it again. But though he won't say a word to me, itseems he can to others. "

The miserable jealousy in Wentworth's face touched Magdalen. 

"He knew you had strained every nerve to save him, " said Wentworth, turning to Fay. "Has he ever shown his gratitude for what you tried todo for him?"

"N-no, " stammered Fay. 

"His imprisonment has changed his nature, that is what it is. He went inalive, and he has come out dead. He has ceased to care for anything oranyone. He has been killed by inches. He was so affectionate as a boy. Iwas father and mother to him. He used to trot after me like a littledog. And if anyone had his whole confidence I had. I was everything tohim. My one fear of marrying has always been that he might feel painedat seeing another person first with me. " (Wentworth had never had thisaltruistic misgiving, but he stated it with conviction. ) "But now he isnot the same. I suppose he still has some affection for me. He shows itsometimes by a kind of effort. He seemed to wake up a bit after you cameover, Fay. I think he had a sort of glimpse from things I said to him ofwhat love can be, and just for a moment he was more like his old self, and appeared to enter into my feelings. But he soon sank back again. Asoften as not he seems to shrink from any real conversation. We sometimessit whole evenings together without speaking. He does not really want meany more, or anyone. He talked at first a little about the Italiandoctor, but he never mentions him now. And as for my marriage, as forbeing distressed by my caring for someone else, " resentfully, "he isabsolutely indifferent. You would think that Fay and I, the two peopleof all others who have done most for him, who have grieved most overhim, who have shown him most affection, were nothing to him. "

There was a ghastly silence. 

"I don't blame him, " said Wentworth with something nearer passion thanhe had ever experienced before, in which even his petty jealousy wasmomentarily extinguished. "At least, I can't look at him and remainangry with him. It breaks my heart to see him like this, so callous, soregardless of all I have suffered on his account. I don't blame him. Heis not himself. His brain is weakened by his poor body. No. The person Ido blame is that accursed woman who allowed him to suffer for her, whoskulked behind him for two endless years, who let him sacrifice his lifefor hers, who never had the courage to say the word, and take her crimeupon herself, and get him out of his living grave. "

Fay became cold as death in the May sunshine. What ghost was this whichwas taking form before her? What voice was this, how could it beWentworth's voice, which was saying at last aloud with passion what thatother accusing voice within had so hoarsely, so persistently whisperedfrom its cell, during the long years? Her brain reeled. 

"The Marchesa did repent, " said Magdalen. 

Wentworth laughed harshly. 

"Oh, yes. On her deathbed, in order to save her soul. She wanted to beright with the next world. But how could she go on, year in year out, letting him burn and freeze alternately in that vile cell? She must haveknown, someone must have told her, what his life was like. How well Iremember, Fay, your saying: 'Why does not the real murderer confess? Howcan he go on letting an innocent man wear out his life in prison, bearing the punishment of his horrible crime?' How little we both knew. I always supposed the assassin was a man, a common criminal of thelowest order. Yet it seems there are women in the world, educated, refined women, who can remorselessly pinch a man's life out of him withtheir white hands. The Marchesa has murdered two people, first herhusband, and then my boy, my foolish, quixotic, generous Michael. MayGod forgive her! I never will!"

CHAPTER XXXII

 But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you. 

 --W. B. YEATS. 

 Je veux aimer, mais je ne veux pas souffrir. 

 --A. DE MUSSET. 

In the days that followed the Bishop's visit Michael's mind showed signsof reasserting itself. He was as quickly exhausted as ever, and withfatigue came the old apathy and helpless confusion of ideas. But hislanguid intelligence had intervals of increasing clearness. His facetook on at these times a strained expression, as if he dimly sawsomething with which he felt powerless to cope. We see such a looksometimes, very piteous in its impotence, in the faces of the old, whenan echo reaches them of the anguish of the world in which they oncelived, which they have well nigh forgotten. 

Michael's body, which had so far profited by the inertness of hisfaculties, resented the change, and gave unmistakable signs ofrelinquishing the slight degree of strength it had regained. 

Wentworth became suddenly frantically anxious once more, and in a momentthe wrongs on which he was brooding were forgotten. He decided to go toLondon the same day under the guise of business, and to consult thegreat doctor privately about Michael, perhaps arrange to bring him backwith him. 

"I wish you would drive oftener, " he said to Michael before he left. "It's much better for you than walking up and down. Why not, if you feelinclined, as you will be alone all day, drive over to Priesthope thisafternoon. I said you would come the first day you could. It's only fourmiles, just an easy little drive. "

An indefinable change passed over Michael's vacant face at the mentionof Priesthope. His eyes became fixed. He looked gravely at his brother, as if the latter had solved some difficult problem. 

"It's a good idea, " he said slowly. "I ought to have gone before, but----"

"The Bishop stopped you most inconsiderately last time. "

"Did he? I don't remember being stopped. Oh! yes, yes, I do. But if I_had_ gone that day---- But anyhow I will go to-day. "

 * * * * *

Fay was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope, pretending toread, when Michael was announced. 

When he had been conveyed to a chair and had overcome the breathlessnessand semi-blindness that any exertion caused him he saw that she lookedill, and as if she had not slept. 

"I ought to have come before, " he said mechanically, making a greatmental effort and putting his hand to his head. "I meant to come, but----" he looked hopelessly at her. He had evidently forgotten what heintended to say. 

"The day you were coming with Wentworth the Bishop stopped you, " saidFay drearily. Every word that Wentworth had said that afternoon wasstill echoing discordantly in her brain. 

"That's it. The Bishop, " said Michael with relief. "He told me, we had along talk"--his mind was clearing rapidly--"how you meant to save me. "

"Yes, I meant to do it, " said Fay, looking at him with miserable eyes. "But the Marchesa, the same day--it was in the papers. "

"I know, I know. The Bishop told me. He said I ought to know that youhad been willing to make the sacrifice. I have come to thank you, Fay, and to ask you to forgive me for misjudging you. You see I was not awareyou--had thought of it. "

"It's for you to forgive me, Michael, not me you. And you don't bear mea grudge, do you? I somehow don't feel as if you did. And--oh, Michael, you never, never will say anything or do anything, will you--you_could_, you know--to stop my marrying Wentworth?"

Michael's eyes turned on her almost with scorn. 

"When first we met again, that second time in Italy, " he said gently, "do you remember it by the tomb in the gardens? There were roses allover it. I never saw such roses. Perhaps there were none like them. ThenI had no faintest thought or hope of marrying you, though I had notforgotten you, Fay. I had put it all away, buried it. You were anotherman's wife. Now that we meet again--_the position is the same_. "

Fay looked at Michael. 

The impersonal detached look which she had set herself to extinguishthat day amid the roses, which had been in his face when she saw himfirst as a lad, which she had _twice_ extinguished, was in his eyesagain. There was no pain in them now, any more than there had been whenthey leaned together beside the tomb: only the shadow of somethingexceeding sharp, endured, accepted, outlived. Michael looked throughher, beyond her. 

"And yet the position is not quite the same, " he said tranquilly, "forthen you were married to a man you did not love, and now you are tomarry a man you--Oh! Fay, you _do_ care for Wentworth, don't you?"

"I would not have kept _him_ in prison for a day, " she said, and hid herface in her hands. 

If only it might have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for herwith what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm heragonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is illto take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in herheart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself forher, for Michael possibly, but not for her. 

"Wentworth is worth caring for, " said Michael. "Not worth caring for inpart, a bit here and a bit there, who is? but worth caring for_altogether_. I have loved him all my life. I love him more than anyonein the world. You asked me just now not to say anything to stop hismarrying you. But that is just what I've come about. I am so afraid ofhis marriage with you being stopped. "

Fay raised her face out of her hands, and stared at him. 

"It's the only thing I've ever known him really wish for, almost keenabout. He can't care much about things, not as other men care. He hasalways waited to see whether things will come to him of themselves, andthen if they didn't he thought it was a wise Providence taking themaway, showing him the vanity of setting his heart on anything, while allthe time it's his own nature really that makes things somehow slip awayfrom him. People slip away from him. I've seen it happen over and overagain. He can't take hold like other men. He does not put himself outfor any one, you know, and he doesn't realise that other people _do_; hehas no idea how men like the Bishop and Grenfell and the Archbishopstand by each other, and hold together through thick and thin. Wentworthhas no friends, but he doesn't know it. He has only you and me. TheBishop said we must remember that, and that if--anything happened toshake his--his feeling for either of us, his belief in either of us, itwould be cruelly hard on him. "

"Why should anything happen, " said Fay faintly, "if you don't tell him?"

"I shan't tell him on purpose, you may be sure of that, but since--sincethe Bishop came over I'm certain he suspects something, I don't knowwhat, and I have to be careful all the time. Fay, I've grown so stupidand muddle-headed since I've been in--in _Italy_ that I _can't_ rememberwhat I may say and what I mayn't about that time. My only safety is inabsolute silence, and lately that has begun to vex him. And he asks suchodd questions, which I don't see the meaning of at first, like traps. Heoften tells me he never asks any questions, but he does, indirect ones, all the time. I'm getting afraid of being alone with him. Sometimes Ithink if I stay much longer at Barford I'm so idiotic he'll get it outof me. Has he asked you any leading questions?"

"No. Once he asked if you showed any gratitude for what I had done foryou in the past. And I said no. It was the first time I had told him alie, for it was a lie except in the actual words. "

"Aren't you afraid, " said Michael gently, "that it may not be the onlyone, that perhaps there may be some more?"

There was a long pause. 

"I think Wentworth will find out some day, " he went on. "I'm _sure_ hewill. Then, Fay, it might be too late for you and me to save him from agreat pain. He might feel that we had both betrayed him. "

Fay turned her quivering face towards him. 

"Oh, no. I haven't done that. It's you I betrayed, Michael. I'm sothankful it was _you_, and not him. "

"I was yours to keep or to throw away. You could do what you liked withyour own. But it is not the same for Wentworth. Wentworth belongs--to_himself_. "

In her heart she knew it. Love had shown even her certain things aboutthe man she loved. 

"And I am afraid he might feel it if he found out that you had let mestay--in Italy. "

"I'd give anything I have, " she said with a sob; "I'd give both myhands, I'd give my being pretty, which I think so much of, and he thinksso much of, I'd give anything if only I had not--done that, if I couldonly undo that. Sometimes I wake in the morning and think I haven't doneit, that it's only a dream. And it's like Heaven! I cry for joy. Andthen the knowledge comes. I did not know, Michael, what I was doing. But since you came back I've _seen_; since I loved Wentworth I've_seen_--what I've done to you; just brushed you aside when you got inthe way, and left you to die. "

He looked at her in silence. It had come, the moment of anguishedrealisation that he had foreseen for her, but it had come to her throughlove for another. That to which his great love would fain have drawnher, she had reached at last by a lesser love than his. 

"I have been cruel to Wentworth. I might have tried to get you out forhis sake if not for yours. He never had a moment's happiness while youwere shut up. But I didn't. I didn't really care for him then. I onlytried at last to get you out, because I could not bear the misery of itany longer. I have never cared for anyone but myself--till now. I seenow that I have been hard and cruel. I have always thought myself gentleand loving and tender-hearted, like you thought me, poor, poor Michael. You have paid for that. Like Wentworth thinks me now. Oh, Michael, _mustWentworth pay too_?"

Michael looked at her with compassion. "I am afraid he must. But do notlet him pay a penny more than is necessary. You still have it in yourpower to save him part of the--the expense. Let him pay the lesser priceinstead of the greater. Tell him, instead of letting him find out. "

Silence. 

"It is the only thing to do, Fay. "

No answer. 

"I am afraid you do not love him after all, " said the inexorable voice. 

Again silence. 

Michael dragged himself feebly from his chair, and took her clenchedhands between both of his. 

"Love him a little more, " he said. "Take the risk and tell himeverything--while there is still time. Listen, Fay, and try to forgiveme if I seem cruel. You thought you loved me once. But it was not enoughto risk anything for me. You threw me away by your silence because youfound the truth too difficult. Don't, don't throw Wentworth away too, because the truth is difficult. Fay, believe me, " Michael's voice shook, "it's hard to find out you've been deceived. It's hard to be betrayed. "His voice had sunk to a broken whisper. "Don't put him through it. Youwouldn't if you--if you knew what it was like. "

 * * * * *

Magdalen, coming in half an hour later found Fay lying on her face onthe sofa alone. She looked, poor little creature, with her outstretchedarms, not unlike a cross on which Love might very well be crucifiedanew. It does not matter much whether it is on a cross of wood, or offear, or of egotism, that we nail Love to his slow death. 

Fay loved for the first time. Was she going to crucify that love, topierce its upholding hands, to betray that benign saviour, come so latebut come at last, to help her in her sore need?

CHAPTER XXXIII

 His own thought drove him like a goad. --TENNYSON. 

"Now, " said the great doctor to Michael next day, "I have been hustleddown here against my will by Mr. Maine. I'm wanted elsewhere. Icalculate my time at a pound a minute. Out with it. What is it that'sworrying you?"

Michael did not answer. 

The great man groaned. But his eyes were kindly. 

"You want something you have not got, eh? like the rest of us. We areall in the same steam launch. "

"I don't want anything, thanks. "

"In love?"

"No. "

"Quite sure? I have always observed that people who are in love aredesperately offended at the bare supposition that such a thing ispossible. Things might be arranged, you know. Young women aren'tintended by nature to live single any more than you are. Would a fewweeks in London meet the case? The season's just beginning. No theatres, of course, and no late hours. Your brother here seems made of money, though he will soon be ruined if he goes on sending for me. For I alwayscharge double if I'm sent for unnecessarily. Come, sir, what _do_ youwant?"

"I don't know, " said Michael, half amused. He was still exhausted by hisexpedition to Priesthope of the previous day. "I don't want anything, thanks. I'm--all right. "

"What do you say to a change?"

"I had not thought of that, " said Michael with a flicker of interest. "Now you mention it--yes. That's the very thing. I should like--achange. "

Wentworth came forward at once. 

"Norway?" he said eagerly, "or Switzerland. We must be guided by you, doctor. Or a yacht? You used to be fond of yachting, Michael. We will goanywhere you like. "

Michael's face fell. 

The doctor leaned back and examined his finger tips. He had seen what hewanted. 

"The yacht won't do, " he said with decision. "And Norway's out of thequestion. Much too far. In fact, there's only one place that will do. "

"Where is that?" said Wentworth. 

"I don't know yet. Where is it, Mr. Carstairs?"

"I should like, " said Michael, colouring painfully, for he knew he wasgoing to hurt Wentworth, "I should like to go to Lostford; not for long, just for a little bit. "

"Lostford!" exclaimed Wentworth, amazed. "Lostford, down in that hole. Oh! no. "

"Well, and why not Lostford?" said the doctor with asperity. "Mr. Carstairs shows his sense. He is not up to a long journey. Quite near. Interesting cathedral. Cultivated society. I should have suggestedLostford myself if he had not. "

"I will ride over and take rooms at the 'Prince Consort' to-day, " saidWentworth meekly. 

"You will do no such thing. Are you taking leave of your senses. Yourbrother is not fit to stay in a rackety hotel. "

"The Bishop has asked me, " said Michael faintly, "to spend a week or twowith him whenever I like. I believe--it's very quiet there. "

"The Bishop!" said Wentworth. "It would be far from quiet at the Palace. Worse than an hotel. The Bishop lives in a perpetual turmoil. "

Then he suddenly stopped short, and became very red. Michael preferredthe Bishop to himself. 

"It's a good idea, " said the doctor. "I know the Bishop. Splendid man. The best of company. " He got up with decision. "My orders are, Mr. Carstairs, that you proceed to Lostford without delay. How far is it?Six miles. Go to-morrow. " Then he turned to Wentworth. "You will go overand see him in a week's time, and report to me. "

"You think him worse, " said Wentworth nervously to the doctor in thehall. 

"No, " said the doctor emphatically, watching his motor sliding to thedoor, "but he is not better. He is anxious about something, and he can'tafford to be anxious. He is not in a fit state to have a finger achewith impunity. "

"He has nothing to be anxious about, " said Wentworth. "And if he had atrouble I should be the first to hear of it. I have his entireconfidence--at least, I had till lately. I must own he has become verychanged of late. Of course, I never appear to notice it, but----"

"Quite right. Quite right. I wish others were as sagacious as you are. Let him go to Lostford for a week or two--and get you off his nerves, "the doctor added to himself as the motor shot down the beech avenue. 

 * * * * *

A few days later Wentworth was sitting idly watching the stream ofPiccadilly from the windows of his club. The same day that Michael hadgone to Lostford he had discovered that he had business in London. Hewould have found it difficult to say what his business there was. Butone of Wentworth's many theories about himself was that he was a verybusy man. He had so constantly given "urgent business" as a reason forevading uncongenial social engagements that he had finished by believinghimself to be overwhelmed with arduous affairs. So he went to London, and visited a publisher anent his forthcoming history of Sussex, anddined with a man whom he met at Lord's, whom he had not seen for years, and wrote daily to Fay, expressing ardent but vague hopes that he mightbe able to "get away" from London by the end of the week. 

He was in no hurry to return. 

A vague fear of something grievously amiss with Michael, he knew notwhat; an unformulated anxiety weighed upon him. And he was jealous. Jealousy had brought him up to London. He was not going to remaindeserted at Barford. Jealousy was keeping him there now. He had seenthat Michael was glad to get away from him, that he had caught at thedoctor's suggestion of a change. His sullen heart was very sore aboutMichael. Why did he _want_ to leave him? Where would he meet anyone moredevoted to him than himself? What could any man do for another that hehad not done for Michael? Was it true then, after all, what he had sooften heard was the fate of men of deep affections like himself, thatthey give all, and are given nothing in return. 

A sudden exclamation made him look up. 

"Why, Maine, is it you?"

A tall, bald man was holding out his hand to him. For a moment Wentworthdid not recognise him. Then he remembered him. Lord John Alington. 

He shook hands with tepid civility, but Lord John always mistook apained recognition for an enthusiastic welcome. He drew up a chair atonce. 

"Now this is what I call luck, " he said, his red face beaming. "And soyour brother is freed at last. Only heard the news when I landed fromNorway a week ago. I congratulate you with my whole heart. I never wasso glad about anything before. " And Lord John sawed Wentworth's limphand up and down. 

"I was present, you know, " he went on. "Made a great impression on me. Sobered me for a long time I can tell you. I saw Carstairs come forwardand give himself up. Never had such a shock in my life. "

"I remember now you were there. "

"Rather. And I was dead certain from the first that he had never doneit. I always said so. And now at last the mystery is cleared up. And Iwas proved right. He hadn't. But fancy shielding that old Marchesa withher long teeth. Why, she was forty if she was a day. Who would ever havethought of it!"

"No one did, " said Wentworth. 

"_I_ didn't. I may tell you frankly that I did _not_. The Marchesa! Iknew her. But it never so much as crossed my mind that she had massacredher old hubby. 'Good God! The Marchesa!' Those were my exact words whenI heard a week ago. Is Carstairs in London? I should like just to shakehim by the hand. "

"He is not in town. He is still feeling the effects of hisimprisonment. "

"I should like to have seen him. It was my fault he was found you know. I said 'Perhaps he's behind the screen. ' Dreadfully sorry. Wish Ihadn't. Only my fun. Never thought he was there, or anyone. I've neverforgotten his coming out from behind the screen. But what I want to knowis, " Lord John tapped Wentworth on the arm with his eyeglass, andlowered his voice confidentially, "_why he ever went behind it_. That'swhat has been puzzling me ever since I read the Marchesa's confession. If he wanted to shield her, why the deuce did he hide at all? Why notstrike a noble attitude bang in the middle of the room--from the first?"

Wentworth looked at him astonished. The vague suspicion of the lastweeks that Michael was concealing something from him was taking shape atlast. 

There was no doubt that Lord John had got hold of a listener. 

"No, no, Maine. When Carstairs was hiding behind the screen he was notdying with anxiety to take the Marchesa's crime on his whiteshoulders--not at that moment. That explanation don't wash. I believe Iknow a better one. "

Wentworth became very red. 

"The Duchess's maid! Did you ever see her? No, evidently not. You've notime for looking at young maids. Taken up with contemplating an oldmaid in the glass. You miss a lot, I can tell you. She was the prettiestlittle baggage I've set eyes on for years. And she was not of an ironvirtue. But she wouldn't look at a little thing like me. Can't thinkwhy. Come, now, don't look so demure. We aren't all plaister saints likeyou. _I'm_ not, in spite of my Madonna face. Wasn't that the truth? TheMarchesa story is for the gallery. But you and I are behind the scenes. Mum's the word. But wasn't that why Carstairs was hanging about thehouse after everyone else had gone just for the same reason that Iwas--to get a word with that little hussy?"

At that moment a tall, middle-aged man came into the room, and LordJohn's roving eye fell upon him. He sprang to his feet. 

"Lossiemouth, " he said, seizing the latter's unwilling hand. "Why, you're the very man I wanted to see. Congratulations, my dear chap. Allmy heart. Ship come in, and ancestral halls, and going to be marriedtoo, all in one fell swoop. Know Miss Bellairs a little. Jumped with herin the same skipping rope in childhood's happy hours, danced with her ather first ball. Madly in love with her. Never seen her since. "

Wentworth escaped. 

The chamber of his soul had been long in readiness, swept and garnishedfor the restless spirit that had returned to it--not alone. 

CHAPTER XXXIV

 Est-il indispensable, qu'on s'élève à un point d'où le devoir n'apparaisse plus comme un choix de nos sentiments les plus nobles, mais comme une silencieuse nécessité de toute notre nature. 

The following afternoon Fay was sitting in the little morning-room atPriesthope, trying to write a letter, a long, long letter. Wentworth'slast note to her, just arrived by the second post, was open before her, telling her that he could not return for two days. And then the dooropened gently and he was before her. 

She turned a white, miserable face towards the door. Then as shesuddenly recognised him the colour rushed to her face, and she flew tohim with a cry and locked him in her arms, kissing his shoulder, hiscoat, his hands. 

He was thunderstruck. Could a few days' absence so profoundly move thesedelicate, emotional creatures, whom an all-wise Providence had madealmost too susceptible to masculine charm! He had never seen Fay likethis. But then, he had never seen anything like anything. She withdrewherself suddenly, and stood a little apart, her face and neck onecarnation of soft shame. 

"But you are in London, " she said, her lip quivering, her eyes fallingbefore his. "I have your own word for it that you are still in London. "And she pointed at his letter. "I was not expecting to see you. "

A joy so great that it was akin to pain laid its awakening hand on him. 

"I am glad you were not expecting me, " he said, in a voice that hehardly recognised as his own. "I'm thankful. "

And he drew her back into his arms more moved than he had ever been. 

Yes. He was loved. He loved and was loved. He had not known the worldcontained anything as great as this. He had always thought that life atits best was a solitary thing, that passion was a momentary madness withwhich he did not care to tamper, that celibacy was a cheap price to payfor his independence. But he and this woman were one. This was rest andpeace and joy and freedom. This was what he had always wanted, withoutknowing he wanted it. One of the many barriers between them went down. He thought it was the only one. 

They sat a long time in silence, his head against her breast. Her facehad become pinched and sharp, the lovely colour had faded. All itsbeauty and youth had gone out of it. Her terrified eyes stared at thewall. 

"Speak! Speak now, " said the inner voice. "You were too late last time. Speak now. "

 * * * * *

"I am very miserable, Fay, " in a whisper against her cheek. 

Her arms tightened round him. 

"Not so miserable now I am with you, but----"

It seemed to Fay that she was holding to her breast the point of thesword that was to stab her to death. 

He raised his head, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. Twiceshe had seen tears in those narrow grey eyes before: once when he hadtalked to her of Michael in prison, and once when Michael wasexonerated. 

They had drawn a little apart. 

"When I came here I had not meant to tell you anything about it, I haddecided not to, but--Fay, I can't believe it, I haven't slept all night, I have known for two days, I only found it out by the merest accidentthat that has happened which I never thought could happen, somethingimpossible. " Wentworth's lip quivered. "Michael has deceived me, not bymistake, not just for a moment, but systematically, purposely--foryears. "

There was anger as well as pain in his voice. 

"It was about the murder of the Marchese, " he said hoarsely, "but Idon't care what it was about. That is not the point. He has deceived mefor reasons of his own. I don't know what they were. And I am afraid, mydarling, he has not stopped there. I am afraid he has deceived you too. I am afraid he hoodwinked you when he persuaded you to let him hide inyour room. Why did he hide if he wanted to shield the Marchesa? Don'tyou see that there was no sense in his hiding, though I never thought ofit till--lately? I always believed in him implicitly, as you have done. I thought him just the kind of person who _would_ sacrifice himself fora woman. I can understand doing it. It appeals to a nature like mine. Iwas deeply hurt by his reserve about it, since he came home, but I neverthought, it never struck me for one single second that it concealedanything discreditable. "

"It does not, " said Fay suddenly. 

"My dearest, I am afraid there is no doubt it _does_. What was Michaeldoing in the garden at that time of night. You forget that. I am thelast person in the world to think him capable of anything disgraceful, but I can't resist the conclusion that he was waiting--Oh! Fay, yourears ought not to be polluted by such things--was waiting about in thegarden because he was attracted by someone in the house. "

He felt her hand quiver in his. 

How womanly she was, how pure. How could any man have had the heart tothrow dust in those innocent eyes. He kissed the cold hand reverently. 

"I hate to speak of such a thing to you, and it somehow seems out of thequestion when I think of Michael's character. I had brought him up socarefully. I had impressed on him my own high code of morals from thefirst. And yet--and yet--I am afraid, dearest, that Michael must havebeen hanging about to have a word with--don't start so, why do youtremble?--with your maid. "

There was a moment's silence. Fay shook her head. She was unable toarticulate. 

"Then why was he there? You must have been very much surprised andalarmed at his coming to your room so late. And unless he had given yousome reason, you would not have tried to hide him. We always come backto that. Fay, why _did_ Michael hide?"

Fay struggled to speak. Her white lips moved, but no sound came forth. 

"You and the Duke tried to save him from being discovered. We all knowthat. The Duke told me so himself. "

Another silence. Fay's face became convulsed. 

"You are no diplomatist, Fay, thank God. I see very well, my darling, that you know more than you will say. It is plain to me that in thegoodness of your soul you are trying to shield Michael--_for the secondtime_. "

He kissed her on the forehead and rose to go. 

"Stop!" said Fay, almost inarticulately. "It isn't the second time. Ididn't shield him last time. I let him slide. But I will now . .. I wantto tell you . .. I must tell you . .. Michael has been here, he came whenyou were away in London. And he has begged me, --Oh, Wentworth, he hasimplored me to--tell you everything. "

Wentworth became very red. His face hardened. 

"_He_ has begged you to tell me! He has gone behind my back and tried todepute you to do it, to plead his cause for him. He has not even thecourage to come to me himself. No, Fay, I am going. It is no useimploring me to stay. I'm not going to listen to you making excuses forhim. I don't blame you, but you ought not to have agreed to do it. Whatever I ought to know I must hear from Michael himself. I shall goover and see him to-morrow morning. Even you, dearest, must not comebetween--Michael and me. "

CHAPTER XXXV

 Aimer quelqu'un, c'est à la fois lui ôter le droit, et lui donner la puissance de nous faire souffrir. 

The following morning the Bishop and Michael were sitting in the libraryat Lostford Palace. The Bishop was reading a letter, while Michaelwatched him, sunk in an arm-chair. 

Presently the Bishop thrust out his under lip, and gave back the letterto Michael. 

"Wentworth has dipped his pen in gall instead of in his inkpot, " hesaid. "For real quality and strength give me the venom of a virtuousperson. The ordinary sinner can't compete with him. Evil doers are outof the running in this world as well as in the next. I often tell themso. That is why I took orders. What do you suppose Wentworth suspectswhen he says Alington has suggested a discreditable reason for yourbeing in the di Collo Alto villa that night, and that he is not going toallow you to skulk behind a woman any longer? He will be here directlyto extort what he is pleased to call 'the truth. ' What are you going tosay?"

"I don't know, " said Michael. "That is the worst of me. I never know. "

The Bishop frowned and rubbed his chin. 

"I see one thing, " continued Michael, "and that is that it's allimportant that he should not break with Fay. "

"That will be his first step--if he knows the truth. "

"I am afraid it will, and yet--that's the pity of it, she will lastlonger than I shall, and he does like her--a little--which is a greatdeal for him. You don't believe it, but he really does. And he'll wanther more than ever--when I'm gone. "

The Bishop looked keenly at his godson. 

Michael had never before alluded to his precarious hold on life. It wasobvious that he was only considering it now in its bearings onWentworth's future. 

"Can a man who has grown grey looking at himself in the glass, andrecording his own microscopic experiences in a diary, can such a man_forgive_?" said the Bishop. "Forgiveness is tough work. It needsknowledge of human nature. It needs humility. I forgave somebody oncelong ago. And it nearly was the death of me. I've never been the sameman since. "

"Wentworth will have his chance, " said Michael. "It's about all we cando for him. "

"We all know he says he can, but then he says such a lot of things. Hedares to say he loves his fellow men. But I've never yet found thatassertion coincide with any real _working_ regard for them. There arecertain things which those who care for others never say, and that isone of them. The egoist on the contrary is always asserting of himselfwhat he ought in common decency to leave others to say of him, --onlythey never do. Wentworth actually told me not so long ago that he wasintent on the service of others. I told him it was for those others tomention that interesting fact, and that nobody had lied about him tothat extent so far in my diocese. "

"He always says that there is perfect confidence between us, " saidMichael. "I've heard him say so ever since I can remember, and I'veheard him tell people that I always brought him my boyish troubles. ButI never did, even as a boy, even when I got into a scrape at Eton. Mytutor stood by me in that. Wentworth never could endure him. He said hewas such a snob. But snob or not, he was a firm friend to me. And Inever told him even at the first of my love for Fay. I somehow couldnot. You simply can't tell Wentworth things. But he has got it into hishead that I always have, and that this is the first time I have keptanything from him. If I had only Fay's leave to tell him! It is the onlything to do. "

The door opened, and to the astonishment of both men, Fay and Magdalencame in. Fay looked as exhausted, as hopeless, as she had done threemonths ago when Magdalen had brought her to make her confession to theBishop in this very room. 

She evidently remembered it. She turned her lustreless eyes on him andsaid, "Magdalen did not make me come this time. I have come myself. Doyou think, is there any chance, Uncle John, that God will have mercy onme again, like He did before?"

"Do you mean by God having mercy, that Wentworth will still marry you ifhe knows the truth?"

She did not answer. That was of course what she meant. 

She looked from one to the other of her three friends with a muteimploring gaze. Their eyes fell before hers. 

"I have not slept all night, " she said to the Bishop. "Magdalen stayedwith me. And we came quite early because I had to come. Wentworth mustbe told. It isn't because Magdalen says so. She hasn't said so, though Iknow she felt he ought to be told from the first. And it isn't becausehe's sure to find out. And oh! Michael, it isn't for your sake, to putyou right with him. It ought to be, but it isn't. But I can't let himkiss me any more, and not say. It makes a kind of pain I can't bear. Ithas been getting worse and worse ever since Michael came back, only Idid not know what it was at first, and yesterday----" she stopped short, shuddering. "He came to see me yesterday, " she said in a strangledvoice. "He was so dear and good, so wonderful. There never was anyonelike him. It is in my heart that he will forgive me. And he trusts meentirely. I can't deceive him any more. "

The eyes of Michael and Magdalen met in a kind of shame. Those two whohad loved her as no one else had loved her, who had understood her as noone else had understood her, saw that they had misjudged her. They hadjudged her by her actions, identified her with them. And all the timethe little trembling "pilgrim soul" in her was shrinking from the painof those very actions, was growing imperceptibly apart from them, wasbeginning to regard them with horror, not because they had causedsuffering to others, but because they had ended by inflicting anguishupon herself. The red-hot iron of our selfishness with which we brandothers becomes in time hot at both ends. We don't know at first what itis that is hurting us, why it burns us. But our blistered hands, clingas they will, must needs drop it at last. Fay's cruel little white handhad let go. 

Michael took it in his and kissed it. 

"Wentworth is coming here this morning, " said the Bishop gently. "He mayarrive at any moment. Stay here and speak to him. And ask him to forgiveyou, Fay. You need his forgiveness. "

"I don't know how to tell him, " gasped Fay. "I tried yesterday, and Icouldn't. "

"Let me tell him, " said Michael, and as he spoke, the door opened oncemore, and Wentworth was announced. 

He had got ready what he meant to say. The venomous sentences which hehad concocted during a sleepless night were all in order in his mind. 

Who shall say what grovelling suspicions, what sordid conjectures, hadblocked his inflamed mind as he drove swiftly across the downs in thestill June morning? He meant to extort an explanation from his brother, to have the whole subject out with him once for all. He should not besuffered to make Fay his accomplice for another hour. His tepid spiritburned within him when he thought of Michael's behaviour to Fay. He saidto himself that he could forgive that least of all. 

He had expected to find Michael alone, or possibly the Bishop only withhim, the Bishop who _knew_. He was disconcerted at finding Fay andMagdalen there before him. 

A horrible suspicion that Magdalen also knew darted across his mind. 

It was obvious to him that he had broken up a conference, a conspiracy. His bitter face darkened still more. 

"I don't know what you are all plotting about so early in the morning, "he said. "I must apologise for interrupting you. I seem to be always inthe way now-a-days. People are always whispering behind my back. But Ihave come over to see Michael. I want a few plain words with him withoutdelay, and I intend to have them. "

"That is well, " said the Bishop, "because you are about to have them. Wewere speaking of you when you came in. "

"I wish to see Michael alone, " said Wentworth, stung by the Bishop'sinstant admission of being in his brother's confidence. 

He looked only at Michael, who, his eyes on the ground, was leaningwhite as death against the mantelpiece. 

"Do you wish us to go, Michael?" said the Bishop. 

"I wish you all to stay, " he said, raising his eyes for a moment. Hishand shook so violently that he knocked over a little ornament on themantelpiece, and it fell with a crash into the fireplace. His voiceshook, too, but his eyes were steady. His great physical weakness, poignantly apparent though it was, seemed a thing apart from him, like acloak which he might discard at any moment. 

"I cannot say all I have to say before others, " said Wentworth fiercely, "even if they are all his confederates in trying to keep me in the dark, all, that is, except Fay. We know by experience that she can shield aman who has something to hide even from his best friends. We know byexperience that dust can be thrown in her unsuspecting eyes. "

"You have been kept in the dark, " said the Bishop with compassion; "youhave not been fairly treated, Wentworth, you have much to forgive. "

In spite of himself Wentworth was awed. He had a sudden sense ofimpending calamity. He looked again at Michael. 

Michael's hand shook. His whole body shook. His lips trembledimpotently. 

Wentworth sickened with shame. His love was wounded to the very depthsto see his brother like this, as it had never been wounded even by thefirst sight of him in his convict's blouse. 

"I always trusted you, " he said with a groan, putting up his hand so asto shut out that tottering figure. "I don't know what miserable secretyou're keeping from me, and I don't care. It isn't _that_ I mind. It isthat--whatever it was, however disgraceful it was, you should have keptit from me. God knows I only wanted to help you. Surely, surely, Michael, you might have trusted me. What have I done that you shouldtreat me as if I were an enemy? I thought I was your friend. "

No one spoke. 

"After all, I don't know that I care to hear. Why should I care. It'srather late in the day to hear now what everyone knows except me, whatI've been breaking my heart over, racking my brains over as you well knowfor these two endless years, what you aren't even now telling me of yourown accord, what you have been persuaded to by this--this"--Wentworthlooked at the Bishop--"this outsider, this middle man. "

A great jealousy and bitterness were compressed into the words "middleman. "

"You have got to hear, " said Michael, and the trembling left him. 

He turned towards his brother, still supporting himself with one hand onthe mantelpiece. The two stern faces confronted each other, and Magdalenfor the first time saw a likeness between them. 

"I have kept things from you. You are right there, " said Michael, speaking in a low, difficult voice. "But I never intentionally deceivedyou till the Marchese was murdered. Long before that, four years beforethat, I fell in love. "

Wentworth's heart contracted. He had always feared that moment forMichael, had always awaited it with a little store of remedial maxims. He had felt confident that Michael had never even been slightlyattracted by any woman. How often he had said to himself that if therehad been any attraction he should have been the first to know of it. Yetthe incredible truth was being thrust at him that Michael had struggledthrough his first love without drawing upon the deep wells ofWentworth's knowledge. 

"The woman I fell in love with was Fay. She was seventeen. I wasnineteen. "

The room went round with Wentworth. 

"Fay, " he said, in blank astonishment, "Fay!" Then a glare of lightbroke in on him. 

"Then it was she, " he stammered, "not her maid, as that brute Alingtonsaid--it was she--she herself that----"

"It was her I went to see the night I was arrested. I was deeply in lovewith her. "

Michael paused a moment, and then added gently, "She never cared forme. I did not see that clearly at the time, because I was blinded by myown passion. I have seen it since. "

Wentworth made no movement. 

"I decided to leave Rome. Fay wrote to me that I ought to go. I went tosay good-bye to her in the garden the night the Marchese was murdered. While I was in the garden, the murder was discovered and the place wassurrounded, and I could not get away. I hid in Fay's boudoir. The Dukecame in and explained to Fay what had happened. It was the first I knewof it. Then, when they searched the house and I saw that I must bediscovered in another moment, I came out and gave myself up as themurderer, because I could not be found hiding in Fay's rooms at night. It was the only thing to do. "

Fay took a long breath. What a simple explanation it seemed after all. Why had she been so terrified? Wentworth could not blame her seriouslynow. 

"I never tried to shield the Marchesa, " Michael went on. "That was herown idea. I only wanted to shield Fay from being--misconstrued. The Dukeunderstood. He saw me hiding behind the screen, and tried to save me. Hetold me so next day. The Duke was good to me from first to last. "

Wentworth turned a fierce, livid face towards his brother. 

"Have I really got at the truth at last?" he said. "How can I tell? TheDuke could have told me, but he is dead. Did he really connive at yourromantic passion for his wife? If I may venture to offer an opinion, that part of the story is not quite so well thought out as the rest, though it is excessively modern. Anyhow he is dead. You tell me he sawyou behind the screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no needof an explanation. How like an Italian. But he is dead. And you forcedyour love on another man's wife, though you own she did not return it, wormed yourself into her rooms at night, and then--_then_--yes, I beginto see a grain of truth among these heaps of lies--then when by an evilchance, an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, there was danger of yourbeing discovered, then you persuaded her, the innocent, inexperiencedcreature whom you would have wronged if you could--you worked upon herfeelings, you made her into your accomplice, you persuaded her to hideyou. .. . You mean cur!. .. You only sneaked out of your hole when escapewas absolutely impossible. And so the truth, or some garbled part of it, is choked out of you at last. No wonder you were silent all these years. No wonder you would not speak. No wonder you let your poor dupe of abrother break his heart over your silence. Credulous fool that I havebeen from first to last. So help me God, I will never speak to youagain. "

The violent, stammering voice ceased at last. 

Fay shivered from head to foot, and looked at her lover. 

Both men had forgotten her. Their eyes never left each other. Wentworth's fierce face was turned with deadly hatred upon his brother. Michael met his eye, but he did not speak. 

There was death in the air. 

Suddenly as in a glass she saw that Michael was saving her again, wassacrificing himself for a second time at enormous cost, the cost of hisbrother's love. 

"Michael!" said Fay with a sob, "Michael, I can't bear it. You aretrying to save me again, but I can't bear to be saved any more. I havehad enough of being saved. I won't be saved. It hurts too much. I won'tlet you do it a second time. I have had enough of being silent when Iought to speak, I have had enough of hiding things, and pretending, andbeing frightened. "

Fay saw at last that the truth was her only refuge from that unendurablehorror which was getting up out of its grave again. She fled to it forvery life, and flung herself upon it. 

She took Michael's hand, and turning to Wentworth began to speakrapidly, with a clearness and directness which amazed Magdalen and theBishop. 

It all came out, the naked truth; her loveless marriage, the greatkindness of her husband towards her, her determination bred of idlenessand vanity to enslave Michael anew when he came to Rome, his resistance, his decision to leave Italy, her inveigling him under plea of urgency tocome to the garden at night, his refusal to enter the house, her franticdesire to keep him, his determination to part from her. 

There was no doubt in the minds of those who listened in awed silencethat here was the whole truth at last. 

Fay looked full at Wentworth and then said: "He asked me why I had sentfor him, what it was that he could do for me. And I said--I said--'Takeme with you. '"

"No, " said Michael, wincing as under a lash, "No, you did not. Fay, younever said that. "

"You did not hear it, but I said it. "

Michael staggered against the mantelpiece. 

Wentworth had not moved. His face had become frightful, distorted. 

"I am a wicked woman, Wentworth, " said Fay. "I tried to make him in lovewith me. I tried to tempt him. I could make him love me, but not dowrong. And then I let him take the blame when he was trapped. I hadtrapped him there first. He did not want to come. I forced him to come. I let him spoil his life to save my wretched good name. He is right whenhe told you just now that I never loved him. The love was all on hisside. He gave it all. I took it all, and I went on taking it. It was Iwho kept him in prison quite as much as the Marchesa. It was I who lethim burn and freeze in his cell. A word from me would have got him out. "

Wentworth laughed suddenly, a horrible, discordant laugh. 

They had rotted down before his eyes to loathsome unrecognisablecorpses--the man and the woman he had loved. 

Fay looked wildly at him. 

"But you are good, " she said faintly. "You won't, Wentworth, you won'tcast me off like--like I did Michael. "

He did not look at her. 

He took up his gloves and straightened the fingers as his custom was. 

"There is no longer anything which need detain me here, " he said to theBishop, and he moved towards the door. 

"Nothing except the woman whose fate is in your hands, " said the Bishopgently. "What of her? She deserted Michael because her eyes were holden. Now you can make the balance even if you will. But will you? You canrepay cruelty with cruelty. You can desert her with inhumanity evengreater than hers, because you do it with your eyes open. But will you?Is it to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? She loves youand is at your mercy, even as Michael was once at hers. You can crushher if you will. But will you?"

"Wentworth!" said Fay, and she fell at his feet, clasping his knees. 

His face was as flint, as he looked down at her, and tried to push awayher hands. 

"Let him go, my child, " said the Bishop sternly, and he took Fay'shands, and held them. "It is no use trying to keep a man who does notlove you. Go, Wentworth. You are right. There is nothing to keep youhere. In this room there are two people, one of whom has sinned and hasrepented, and both of whom love you and have spoken the truth to you. But there is no love and truth in you to rise up and meet theirs. You donot know what love and truth are, even when you see them very close. Youhad better go. "

"I will go, " said Wentworth, his eyes blazing. And he went out and shutthe door behind him. 

Fay's hands slipped out of the Bishop's, her head fell forward, and shesank down on the floor. The Bishop and Magdalen bent over her. 

Michael looked a moment at her, and swiftly left the room. He overtookWentworth in the hall, groping blindly for his hat. 

"Come in here, " said Michael, "I want a word with you, " and he halfpushed Wentworth into a room leading out of the hall. It was a drearylittle airless apartment with a broken blind, intended for awaiting-room but fallen into disuse, and only partially furnished, thecorners piled with great tin boxes containing episcopal correspondence. 

Michael closed the door. 

"Wentworth, " he said breathlessly, "you don't see. You don't understand. Fay loves you. " He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter wereacting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. Heseemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's insulting words towardshimself. 

"I see one thing, " said Wentworth, "and that is that I'm not inclined tomarry your cast-off mistress. "

Michael closed with him instantly, but not before Wentworth had seen thelightning in his eyes; and the two men struggled furiously in the dim, airless little room with its broken blind. 

Wentworth knew Michael meant to kill him. The long, scarred hands hadhim by the throat, were twisting themselves in the silk tie Fay hadknitted for him. He tore himself out of the grip of those iron fingers. But Michael only sobbed and wound his arms round him. And Wentworth knewhe was trying to throw him, and break his back. 

Wentworth fought for his life, but he was over-matched. The awful, murderous hands were feeling for his neck again, the sobbing breath wason his face, the glaring eyes staring into his. The hands closed on histhroat once more, squeezing his tongue out of his mouth, his eyes out ofhis head. He made a last frightful struggle to wrench the hands away. But they remained clutched into his flesh, choking his life out of him. There was a thin, guttural, sawing noise mixed in with the sobbing. Thenall in a moment the sobbing ceased, he felt the hands relax, and then anavalanche of darkness crashed down on him, and buried him beneath it. 

CHAPTER XXXVI

 That game of consequences to which we all sit down, the hanger-back not least. --R. L. STEVENSON. 

Down, very deep down. Buried in an abyss of darkness, shrouded tightlyin a nameless horror that pressed on eyes and breath and hands andlimbs. 

At last a faint sound reached Wentworth. Far away in some other world aclock struck. His numbed faculties apprehended the sound, and thenforgot it when it ceased. 

At last he felt himself stir. He found himself staring at a glimmer oflight. He could not look at it, and he could not look away from it. Whatwas it? It had something to do with him. It grew more distinct. It was awindow with a broken blind. 

Someone close at hand began to tremble. Wentworth sat up suddenly andfound it was himself. He was alone, lying crumpled up against the wallwhere he had been flung down. He knew where he was. He saw the piles oftin boxes. He remembered. 

He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave afterwave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had triedto kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. For a long time he did not move. 

At last the clock struck again. 

He staggered to his feet as if he had been called, and looked withintentness at a fallen book and upset inkstand. There was a quill penbalancing itself in an absurd manner with its nib stuck in the canebottom of an overturned chair. He took it out and laid it on the table. He saw his hat in a corner, stooped for it, missed it several times, andthen got hold of it, and put it on. There was a little glass over themantelpiece. A ghastly face with a torn collar was watching himfurtively through it. He turned fiercely on the spy and found the facewas his own. He turned up his coat and buttoned it. Then he went to thehalf-open door and looked out. 

His ear caught a faint sound. Otherwise the house was very still. 

A maid servant on her knees with her back to him was washing the whitestone floor of the hall at the foot of the staircase. Another servant, also with her back to him, was watching her. 

"Then it is early morning, " he said. And he walked out of the room, andout of the house, through the wide open doors. A fine rain was falling, but he did not notice it. He passed out through the gates and foundhimself in the road. He stopped unconsciously, not knowing what to donext. 

A fly dawdling back to the town from the station, passed him, and pulledup, as he hesitated. 

"Station, sir?" said the driver. 

"No, Barford, " said Wentworth, and he got in. The fly with its fadedcushions and musty atmosphere seemed a kind of refuge. He breathed morefreely when he was enclosed in it. 

As in the garden of Eden desolation often first makes itself felt as arealisation of nakedness. We must creep away. We must hide. We have noprotection, no covering. 

Wentworth cowered in the fly. He passed without recognising them all theold familiar landmarks, the twisting white road that branched off toPriesthope, the dew ponds, the half hidden, lonely farms. He was in astrange country. 

He looked with momentary curiosity at a weather-worn sign post whichpointed forlornly where four roads met. It was falling to pieces withage, but yet it must have been put up there since the morning. He hadnever seen it before. He shouted to the driver that he had taken thewrong road. The man pointed with his whip to where, a mile away, thesmoke of Barford rose among its trees. The landscape suddenly slid intofamiliar lines again. He recognised it, and sank back, confused andexhausted. The effort of speaking had hurt his throat horribly. Was hegoing mad? How could his throat hurt him like this--if it wasn't--ifMichael had not----

He thrust thought from him. He would wait till he got home, till his ownroof was safely over him, the familiar walls round him. 

This was his gate. Here was his own door, with his butler lookingsomewhat surprised, standing on the steps. 

He found himself getting out, and giving orders. He listened to himselftelling the servant to pay the fly and to send word by it to hisdog-cart to return home. Of course he had gone to Lostford in thedog-cart. He had forgotten that. 

Then he heard his own voice ordering a whiskey and soda to be broughtto him in the library. And he walked there. 

The afternoon post had arrived with the newspapers and he took up apaper. But it was printed in some language unknown to him, though herecognised some of the letters. 

How long had he been gone, an hour, a day, a year?

He looked at the clock. 

Half-past two. But this great shock with which the air was still rockingmight have stopped it. He put his ear to it. Strange! It was going. Andit always stopped so easily, even if the housemaid dusted it. 

Was it half-past two in the afternoon or in the night?

There was a band of sunshine across the floor and outside the gardensand the downs were steeped in it. 

Perhaps it was day. 

The butler brought in a tray, and placed it near him. 

"Have you had luncheon, sir?"

Wentworth thought a moment, and then said "yes. "

"And will Mr. Michael return to-day, sir?"

Wentworth remembered some old, old prehistoric arrangement by whichMichael was to have come back with him to Barford this afternoon. 

"No, " he said, the room suddenly darkening till the sunshine on thefloor was barely visible. "No. He is not coming back. "

The man hesitated a moment, and then left the room. 

Wentworth groped for the flagon of whiskey, poured out a quantity, anddrank it raw. Then he waited for the nightmare to lift. 

His mind cleared gradually. His scattered faculties came sneaking backlike defeated soldiers to camp. But they had all one tale of disasterand one only to tell. He must needs believe them. 

_Michael had tried to kill him. _ Whatever else shifted that remainedtrue. 

Wentworth bowed his stiffening head upon his hands, and the sweat randown his face. 

Michael had tried to kill him, and had all but succeeded. Oh! if only hehad quite succeeded. If only his life had not come back to him! He haddied and died hard in that little room. And yet here he was still aliveand in agony. 

Michael first. That thought was torture. Then Fay. That thought wastorture. The woman he had so worshipped, on whom he had lavished awealth of love, far greater than most men have it in them to bestow, haddeceived him, had been willing to be his brother's mistress. 

Why had he ever believed in Fay and Michael? Had he not tacitlydistrusted men and women always from his youth up? Had he not gaugedlife and love and friendship at their true value years ago? Why had hemade an exception of this particular man and woman? They were no worsethan the rest. 

What was any man or woman worth? They were all false to the core. Whatwas Fay? A pretty piece of pink and white, a sensual lure like otherwomen, not better and not worse. And what was Michael but a man likeother men, ready to forget honour, morality, everything, if once hispassions were aroused. It was an old story, as old as the hills, thatmen and women betray each other. It was as old as the psalms of David. 

Pah! what a fool he was to allow his heart to be wrung by what was onlythe ordinary vulgar experience of those who were so silly as to mixthemselves up with their fellow creatures. 

He had only himself to thank. 

Well, at any rate, he was free now. He was awake now. He was not goingto put his hand in the fire a second time. 

He was going abroad immediately. He would start to-morrow morning. Inthe meanwhile, he would go and see somebody, call somewhere, be in highspirits somewhere with others. They (they were Fay and Michael) wouldhear of that afterwards, would see how little he cared. 

He seized up his hat and went out. But when he had walked a few hundredyards he sank down exhausted on a wooden seat in the alder coppiceoverhanging the house, and remained there. The baby pheasants crept inand out, all round him. Their little houses, each with an anxiousstep-mother in it, were set at regular intervals along the grassy path. Only yesterday he had walked along that path with the keeper, and hadthought that in the autumn he and Michael would be shooting togetheronce more. 

They would never shoot together again. 

 * * * * *

As the dusk fell he heard a sound of wheels. His dog-cart returning fromLostford, no doubt. It did not turn into the court-yard, but came on upto the house. Wentworth peered down through the leaves. 

It was the Bishop's dog-cart. He recognised the groom who drove it. Tohis amazement he saw Lord Lossiemouth get out. After some parley he wentinto the house. 

Why should he have come?

Oh! of course, how dense he was. He had been sent over on an embassy byMagdalen and the Bishop. They wanted to hush up the fight, and bringabout a reconciliation between him and Fay. He should be told Fay wasmaking herself ill with crying. His magnanimity would be appealed to bythat pompous prig. Well, he had had his journey for nothing. Wentworthsaw his servants looking for him, and hid himself in the coppice. 

A couple of hours later he left the wood, and went down the steep pathto the gardens. It was nearly dark now. Lights twinkled in the house. The lamp in the library laid a pale finger of light upon the lawn, through the open glass doors. 

Wentworth went up to it, and then as he was about to enter, shrank backastonished. 

Lord Lossiemouth was sitting there with his back to the window. Wentworth stood a long time looking at him. He was evidently waiting forhim to come in. He sat stolidly on as if he were glued to his chair, smoking one cigarette after another. 

At last he got up. Surely he would go now. He walked to the bookshelvesthat lined the walls, inspected the books, selected one, and settledhimself with a voluminous sigh in his arm-chair once more. 

Wentworth stole away across the grass as noiselessly as he had come, anddisappeared in the darkness. 

CHAPTER XXXVII

 Age by age, The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard For its old, heavy, dull, and shapeless ease. 

 --W. B. YEATS. 

Wentworth never knew how he spent the night, if indeed that interminabletract in which time stopped could have been one night. It was longerthan all the rest of his life put together. In later years, in peacefullater years, confused memories came to him of things that he must haveseen then, but of which he took no heed at the time; of seeing thebreath of animals like steam close to the ground; of stumbling suddenlyunder a hedgerow on a huddled, sleeping figure with a white face, whichstruggled up unclean in the clean moonlight, and menaced him in a foulatmosphere of rags. 

And once, many years later, when he was taking an unfamiliar short cutacross the downs, he came upon a little pool in an old chalk pit, andrecognised it. He had never seen it by day, but he knew it. He hadwandered to it on a night of moon and mist, and had seen a fox bringdown her cubs to drink just where that twisted alder branch made an archover the water. 

Wentworth sat by that chalk pit on the down utterly spent in body andmind hour after hour, till the moon, which had been tangled in the alderstooped to the violet west with one great star to bear her company. Whoshall say through what interminable labyrinths, through what sloughs, across what deserts, his tortured mind had dragged itself all night? Thesun had gone down upon his wrath. The moon had gone down upon his wrath. 

The land was grey. The spectral horses moving slowly in the misty fieldswere grey. A streak of palest saffron light showed where the dim earthand dim sky met. 

A remembrance came to him of a summer dawn such as this, years and yearsago, when Michael had been dangerously ill, and how his whole soul hadspent itself in one passionate supplication that he might not be takenfrom him. 

 * * * * *

A tender green transparent as the light seen through a leaf in May waswelling up the sky. Two tiny clouds floated in it like rafts of rosecolour upon a sea of glass. 

 * * * * *

A deep and bitter sense of injustice was growing within him with thegrowing light. 

A hundred times during the night he had recalled in cold anger everyword of that final scene in the library, his own speech, his ownactions, his great wrongs, his unendurable pain. 

And yet again it returned upon him, always with Fay's convulsed face, and clinging hands, always with the Bishop's scathing words ofdismissal. Their horrible injustice rankled in his mind, theirabominable cruelty to himself revolted him. Hideous crimes had beencommitted against him, but _he_ had done no evil, unless to love and totrust were evil. Why then was he to be thus thrust into the wrong, thuscondemned unheard, cast forth with scorn because he had not obedientlyfallen in with the Bishop's preposterous demand on him to condoneeverything? _It was not to be expected of him. _

Suddenly the faces of the others watching him after Fay's confessionrose before him, the Bishop's, Magdalen's, Michael's. He saw that theyhad not expected it of him either--not even Michael. Only in Fay'sup-raised eyes as she held him by the knees had there been one instant'sanguished hope. Only in hers. And that had been quickly extinguished. _He had extinguished it himself. _

 * * * * *

The little clouds turned to trembling flame. The whole sky flushed andthen paled. A thread of fire showed upon the horizon. It widened. Itdrew into an arch. The sun rose swiftly, a sudden ball of living fire;and in a moment the smallest shrub upon the down, the grazing horses, the huddled sheep, were casting gigantic shadows across the whole world. 

A faint sound of wheels was growing clearer and nearer. 

Wentworth saw a dog-cart coming towards him along the great white road. As he looked it pulled up and then stopped. A man got out and cametowards him. The raw sunlight caught only his face and shoulders. Heseemed to wade towards him waist deep through a grey sea. 

Lord Lossiemouth again!

Lord Lossiemouth's heavy tired face showed sharp and white in the garishlight. 

"I have been looking everywhere for you, " he said, not ungently. "Iwaited half the night at Barford, and then went on to Saundersfootstation, and then to Wrigley. Your servants thought you might possiblyhave gone there. But you had not been seen there. Magdalen sent me totell you you must go back to the Palace. Your brother is very ill. Hehad an attack of hæmorrhage apparently just after you and he parted inthe hall. I promised her not to go back without you. Shall we driveon?"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

 Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss. --GOETHE. 

Michael was dying. All night Magdalen and the Bishop, with nurse anddoctor, fought for his life, vainly strove to stem the stream of bloodwith which his life was ebbing away. 

He had been found by Lord Lossiemouth and a servant lying unconscious atthe foot of the staircase in the hall. He had been carried into a roomon the ground floor. Everything had been done, but without avail. Michael was dying, suffocating in anguish, threshing his life outthrough the awful hours, in wild delirium. 

He was in prison once more, beating against the bars of his narrowwindow looking out over the lagoon. His hoarse strangled voice spokeunceasingly. His hands plucked at his wrists, and then dropped exhaustedbeneath the weight of the chains which dragged him down. 

Magdalen would fain have spared Fay the ordeal of that vigil. But theBishop was inexorable. He bade her remain. And shrunk away in a corner, shivering to her very soul, Fay listened hour by hour to the wild feeblevoice of her victim, back once more in the cell where he had been sosilent, where the walls had kept his counsel so well. She sawsomething--at last--of what he had endured for her, of what he had madeso light. 

At last the paroxysm passed. Michael pushed back the walls with hishands, and then suddenly gave up the struggle. 

"They are closing in on me, " he said. "I cannot keep them back anylonger. "

The contest ceased all in a moment. He lay back motionless withhalf-closed eyes, his face blue against the white pillows. The blood hadceased at last to flow from his colourless lips. Death was very near. 

He knew no one. Not the Bishop, not Magdalen who kept watch beside him, listening ever for Wentworth's step outside. 

In the dawn Michael's spirit made as if to depart, but it seemed as ifit could not gain permission. 

The light grew. 

And with the light the laboured breathing became easier. He stirredfeebly, and whispered incoherently from time to time. He was still inhis cell. Wentworth's name, the Italian doctor's, rose to his lips. Then, after a pause, he said suddenly:

"The Duke is dead. She will come now. "

There was a long silence. He was waiting, listening. 

The Bishop and Magdalen held their breath. Fay knew at last what it isto fail another. She had failed Michael. Wentworth had failed her. 

"Fay!" Michael said, "come soon. "

She had to bear it, the waiting, the faltered anguish, the suspense, thefaint reiterated call to deaf ears. 

The Bishop got up from his knees beside Michael, and motioned Fay totake his place. She went timidly to the low couch and knelt down by it. 

"Speak to him, " said the Bishop sternly. 

"Michael!" she said. 

He knew her. All other voices had gone from him, but hers he knew. Allother faces had faded from him, but hers he knew. He looked full at her. Love stronger than death shone in his eyes. 

"Fay, " he said in an awed voice--"at last. "

She had come to release him, after the Duke's death, as he knew shewould. 

She leaned her white cheek a moment against his in speechlessself-abasement. 

He whispered to her. 

"Have I served you?"

She whispered back, "Yes. "

He whispered again, "Do you still love me?" The words were quiteinaudible. 

Again she said, "Yes. "

Again a movement of the lips, but no sound. 

He looked at her with radiant questioning eyes. 

Again she murmured, "Yes. "

It had to be like that. He had always known that this moment had tocome. Had he not foreseen it in some forgotten dream?

A great trembling laid hold on Michael, and then a stillness ofexceeding joy. 

In the silence the cathedral bells chimed out suddenly for earlyservice. The sound of the bells came faintly to him as across widewater, the river of death widening as it nears the sea. It was all partof his dream. The bells of Venice were rejoicing with him, in this hisblessed hour. 

He was freed at last, free as he had never been, free as the seagullseen through the bars that could no longer keep him back. Useless bars, why had he let them hold him so long? He was out and away, sailing overthe sheening water in a boat with an orange sail; in a boat like abutterfly with spread wings; sailing away, past the floating islands, past that pale beautiful grief of sea lavender--he laughed to see itshine so beautiful--sailing away into a pearly morning, under a luminoussky. 

The prison was far away now. Left behind. There was a great knocking atits gates, hurried steps upon the stairs, and a voice crying urgentlythrough the bars. 

But he could not stay to listen. He was too far away to hear. The voicewas to him but like the thin harsh cry of the sea-mew wheeling near, blended in with the marvel of his freedom. He took no heed of it. He wasafloat on the great sea-faring tide. Far away before him, but nearer, nearer, and yet nearer, the sea gleamed in trembling ecstasy. 

 * * * * *

"He does not know me. He does not hear me, " said Wentworth, on his kneesbeside Michael, raising a wild, desperate face to Magdalen. WasMichael's last look of deadly hatred to remain with him through life?

"Speak to him again, Fay, " said Magdalen. "Tell him Wentworth is here. "

Fay was still kneeling on the other side. The two lovers' eyes metacross the man they had murdered. 

"Michael, " the tremulous voice whispered. 

"Louder, " said Wentworth hoarsely. 

"Michael, " said Fay again. 

But Michael's face was set. He was sunk in a great rest, breathing deepand slow, deeper and slower yet, his long arms faintly rising andfalling with each breath. 

"Oh, Fay. For God's sake make him hear, " said Wentworth with a cry. 

The Bishop and Magdalen standing apart looked at each other. 

"He has forgiven her, though he does not know it, " he said below hisbreath. 

Fay stooped down. She raised Michael in her arms, and laid his head onher breast, turning his fading face to his brother. 

"Michael, " she whispered into his ear, with a passion which would havecloven death itself. "Come back, come back and say one word toWentworth. "

 * * * * *

Very near the sea now. Very near the great peace and light. This was thereal life at last. All the rest had been a vain shadow, a prison wherehe had dwelt a little while, not seeing that this great all-surroundingwater, which had seemed to hem him in, was but a highway of light. 

Who were these two with him in the boat? Who but the two he loved best!Who but Fay and Wentworth! They were all floating on together inexceeding joy. They were very near him. He felt them one on each side, but the light was so great that he could not see them. His head was onFay's breast. His hand was in Wentworth's hand. It was all as in dimdreams he had longed for it to be. 

Fay's voice reached him, pressed close to his ear, like the sound of thesea, held in its tiniest shell. 

He opened his eyes and his brother's white face came to him for amoment, like sea foam, blown in from the sea of love to which he wasgoing, part of the sea. 

"Wenty!" he said, and smiled at him. 

And like blown foam upon a breaking wave, the face passed. 

And like the whisper in the shell under the hush of the surge, the voicepassed. 

The shadow which we call life--passed. 

THE END