Chapter Twenty
An Enforced Armistice
”… Yet he talks well
But what care I for words? yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
… But for my part
I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him.”
As You Like It.
There was not, however, much appearance of enmity by the following morning between these two thus strangely thrown together. All other feelings were for the time merged in increasing anxiety about poor Alys. For the night that followed her accident was a sadly restless and suffering one, and on the doctor’s early visit the next day he detected feverish symptoms which clouded his usually cheery face.
“I can say no more as to what lasting – or, comparatively speaking, lasting – injuries she may have received,” he said, in reply to Mr Cheviott’s anxious inquiries. “What we have to do at present is to try to get her over the immediate effects of the shock. An attack of fever would certainly only complicate matters, and I cannot see that she need have it if only we can keep her perfectly quiet.”
“Then there is no chance of moving her at present?” said her brother.
“It would be most unwise – bringing on the very risk I speak of,” replied Mr Brandreth, decidedly. “She is comfortable enough – thanks to Miss Western.”
“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, “thanks to Miss Western – but that is just the point.”
“What?”
“I cannot expect Miss Western to turn into a sick-nurse to oblige absolute strangers – people who have no sort of claim upon her,” replied Mr Cheviott, haughtily.
Mr Brandreth glanced at him with some curiosity.
(“I wonder how much truth there was in those reports about Captain Beverley and Lilias Western,” he said to himself.)
“She must be required at home – her time must be valuable – I cannot offer to pay her,” continued Mr Cheviott, with increasing annoyance in his tone.
“They might be able to spare her. I believe they do keep a servant,” said Mr Brandreth, dryly.
“Nonsense, Brandreth, don’t joke about it,” said Mr Cheviott, irritably. “You must understand what I mean – the extreme annoyance of having to put one’s self under such an obligation to – to – ”
“To people you know exceedingly little about, it is clear,” said Mr Brandreth, severely. “If it be a right and Christian thing to do, Mr and Mrs Western will spare their daughter to nurse your sister, Mr Cheviott, just as readily as they spared her to nurse Jessie Bevan when she broke her leg.”
“So Miss Western herself told me,” observed Mr Cheviott.
“Ah, then you have come upon the subject?” said the doctor. “And evidently Miss Mary has rubbed his high mightiness the wrong way,” he added to himself, with an inward chuckle.
“Not exactly. I never thought of having to ask her to stay longer than to-day. All that was said was when I was thanking, or trying to thank, her last night for what she had done, and I suppose I made a mess of it,” said Mr Cheviott, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Well, I must be going,” said Mr Brandreth, rising as he spoke.
“And what is to be done?” asked Mr Cheviott, helplessly. “Am I to ask her to stay?”
“You are certainly not to send her away,” replied Mr Brandreth, greatly enjoying the situation; till, pitying Mr Cheviott’s discomfort, he added, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I will tell Mary she is not to leave Miss Cheviott on any account till I see her again in the afternoon, and in the mean time I will see Mrs Western and explain it all to her, and let you know the result. I’ll take it all on myself, if that will comfort you.”
“You are very good,” said Mr Cheviott, fervently.
“I am sure they will spare her for a fortnight or so – ”
“A fortnight!” ejaculated Alys’s brother, ruefully.
“At least,” said Mr Brandreth, pitilessly, “and be thankful if the fortnight sees you out of the wood. Lilias Western is going away to-morrow, or the day after, but the mother’s quite capable of managing without her daughters for once, and it will do Miss Alexa, the only fine lady of the family, no harm to have to exert herself a little more than usual.”
“Another daughter,” exclaimed Mr Cheviott. “Good Heavens! how many are there?”
“Five – and three sons. I’ve known them all ever since they were born.”
“And the eldest one – Miss Western – the one here is the second, is she not? – the eldest is going away, you say?” inquired Mr Cheviott, indifferently, imagining he had quite succeeded in concealing the real curiosity he felt as to this new move in the enemy’s camp.
“Yes,” said Mr Brandreth, mischievously, “she is certainly going away, but where to I don’t know. She is a beautiful girl – you have seen her? – I should not be surprised to hear of her marriage any day. There has been some amount of mystery about her of late – they are rather reserved people at all times – and I could not help wondering if there could be anything on the tapis. She seems in very good spirits, anyway.”
“Ah, indeed!” said Mr Cheviott, carelessly. He hated gossip so devoutly that not even to satisfy the very great misgivings Mr Brandreth’s chatter had aroused, would he encourage it further. “Then we shall see you again in the afternoon, and till then I am to do nothing about these arrangements?” he added, and Mr Brandreth felt himself dismissed.
It was not afternoon, however, but very decidedly evening before the doctor paid his second visit to the farm. In the mean time he had seen Mrs Western and explained to her the whole situation, and the result had been a note to Mary from her mother desiring her not to think of coming home that afternoon, as she had intended, and promising a visit from Lilias the following morning, when all should be discussed and settled. Concerning this note, however, Mary, not feeling it incumbent on her to do so, had made no communication to Mr Cheviott.
“It will be time enough to tell him what my mother says if he mentions the subject,” she thought. “There is not much fear of his thinking I am staying here for the pleasure of his society.”
And in her absorbing care of poor Alys, and anxious watching for abatement in the unfavourable symptoms of the morning, she really forgot, feeling satisfied that she was acting in accordance with her parents’ wishes, any personal association of annoyance in her present surroundings.
Mr Cheviott marvelled somewhat at her calm taking-for-granted that she was to stay where she was; but, true to his agreement with Mr Brandreth, he said nothing. And the long, dull, rainy day passed, with no conversation between the two watchers but the matter-of-fact remarks or inquiries called forth by their occupation. By evening Alys’s feverishness and excitability decreased, yielding evidently to Mary’s scrupulous, fulfillment of the directions left with her.
“She has fallen asleep beautifully – she is as calm and comfortable as possible,” the young nurse announced triumphantly to Mr Cheviott, as she came into the kitchen where he, manlike, sat smoking by way of soothing his anxiety.
He looked up. Mary stood in the door-way, her eyes sparkling, a bright smile on her face. Just then there could not have been two opinions about her beauty. Mr Cheviott rose quickly.
“You are a born sick-nurse, Miss Western,” he said, heartily, speaking to her for almost the first time without a shadow of constraint in his voice. But, as he uttered the words, the smile faded out of Mary’s face and a white, wearied look crept over it. She half made a step forward, and then caught at a chair standing close by, as if to save herself from falling.
“It’s nothing,” she exclaimed, recovering herself instantaneously. “Don’t think I was going to faint. I never do such a thing. I was only giddy for an instant. I had been stooping over Al – Miss Cheviott’s bed to see if she was really asleep.”
“You have been doing a great deal too much, and I can never thank you enough – the truth is, I don’t know how to thank you without annoying you by my clumsiness,” said Mr Cheviott, remorsefully. But so genuinely cordial – almost boyish – was his way of speaking that Mary, even had she felt equal to warfare, could have found no cause of offence in his words.
“Don’t thank me, then,” she said with a smile, as she sat down in the old wooden arm-chair – the most comfortable the kitchen contained – which Mr Cheviott had drawn round for her to the side of the fire.
“I am too tired to discuss whether your ‘clumsiness’ or my ‘touchiness’” – a slight cloud overspread her face at the word, but only for an instant – “is to blame for my ungraciousness yesterday. If Mr Brandreth pronounces your sister decidedly better when he comes to-morrow I shall be well thanked.”
Mr Cheviott sat down without speaking, and looked at her. He could do so for the moment without risk of offence, for Mary’s eyes were fixed on the fire, which danced and crackled up the chimney with fascinating loveliness. Her face, seen now in profile and without the distracting light of her brown eyes, whiter too than its wont, struck him newly by its unusual refinement of lines and features.
“Where have those girls got their looks from?” he said to himself. “Alys was right that day that I was so cross to her in Paris, poor child; these Western girls might, as far as looks go, be anybody, to speak like a dressmaker! And where, too, have they learned such perfect self-possession and power of expressing themselves, brought up in the wilds of Hathercourt?”
“The fire looks as if it were bewitched,” said Mary, glancing up at last. “When we were children we always believed when it darted and crackled and laughed, as it were – just as it is now – we always thought fairies were playing at hide and seek in the flames.”
“Was it your own idea?” said Mr Cheviott.
“Not mine,” said Mary. “My fairies were all out-of-doors ones. Wood fairies were my favourites. Oh, dear! how dreadful it would be to live in a town?”
“Alys doesn’t think so,” observed her brother. “She often complains of the country being dreadfully dull.”
“Ah, yes – in her case I could fancy so,” said Mary, complacently. “No brothers or sisters, and a huge empty house. To enjoy the country thoroughly, it seems to me one must be one of a good large family.”
A faint remembrance flitted across Mr Cheviott’s mind of the half-contemptuous pity with which he had alluded to Mrs Brabazon to the overflowing numbers in Hathercourt Rectory. Now, Mary’s allusion slightly nettled him.
“Alys is not quite alone in the world,” he said, stiffly, hardly realising the fact that Miss Cheviott of Romary could be an object of commiseration to one of the poor clergyman’s numerous daughters. “She has a brother.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” allowed Mary. “But so much older than herself, you see. I can fancy her being dull sometimes.”
Mr Cheviott gave a slight sigh. Mary’s quick conscience pricked her.
“I should not have said that,” she thought. “Poor man, it would be dreadful for him just now, when she is lying ill, to think he has not made her life as happy as possible.”
She leaned her head on her hand and tried to think of some safe topic of conversation. These enforced tête-à-têtes she felt to be far the most trying part of her life at the farm. Mr Cheviott, looking up, observed her attitude.
“You are very tired, I fear, Miss Western,” he said, with the unconstrained kindliness in his voice which so softened and mellowed its tones.
Mary roused herself at once.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I am really not very tired. I am waiting rather anxiously for Mr Brandreth. I thought he would have been here before this. I must get something to do,” she went on, looking round. “I wish I had asked Lilias to send a few books.”
“Please don’t get anything to do,” said Mr Cheviott, eagerly. “You don’t know what a satisfaction it is to me to see you resting, and how glad I should be to do anything for you. Would you like – might I,” he went on, with a sort of timidity which made Mary smile inwardly at the idea of the unapproachable Mr Cheviott feeling any want of assurance in addressing her! “might I read aloud to you? I sent home for some books to-day. Alys is rather fond of my reading aloud,” he added, with a smile.
“I should like it very much indeed, thank you,” said Mary. “And if – just supposing the sound of your voice sent me sleep, you would not be very much offended, would you?”
Mr Cheviott laughed – he was already looking over some magazines which Mary had not before observed on the dresser.
“What will you have?” he said. “Poetry, science, fiction? Stay, here is a good review of H.’s last novel that I wanted to see. The German author, you know. Have you read it?”
He made the inquiry rather gingerly, being not without remembrance of the snub he had received à propos of the Misses Western’s knowledge of French.
“No,” said Mary, “I have not. But I have heard a good deal about it, and should like to hear more, so please read that review.”
It was a well written notice, and the subject of it one worthy of such writing. Mr Cheviott grew interested, and so did Mary. He read well, and she listened well; till some remark of the writer’s drawing forth from Mr Cheviott an expression of disagreement, Mary took up the argument, and they were both in the midst of an amicably eager discussion when the door opened and Mr Brandreth appeared on the threshold.
An amused smile stole over his face.
“Good news awaits me, I see,” he said, with some pomposity. “Miss Cheviott must be better, or her faithful nurse would not be chattering so merrily – eh, Miss Western?”
Mary looked up with a glimmer of fun in her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “she is better. That is to say, she is fast asleep, and has been for two hours. She is sleeping as quietly as a baby, quite differently from last night, and, as far as I could judge before she fell asleep, the feverish symptoms had subsided wonderfully.”
Mr Brandreth rubbed his hands and came nearer the fire, where Mr Cheviott, having risen from his chair, was standing in an attitude of some slight constraint.
“I expected you earlier,” he said, in a low voice not intended for Mary’s quick ears, which, as might naturally be expected, it reached with marvellous celerity.
“Ah, yes – sorry to have disappointed you,” said Mr Brandreth, still rubbing his hands, but by this time with less energy and more enjoyment, as they gradually thawed in front of the blazing fire. “I could not help it, however, and my mind felt more at ease about things here after I had seen Mrs Western. But I am sorry to have kept you here waiting for me all day, Mr Cheviott. It must be very tiresome for you.”
“I did not intend returning to Romary to-day,” said Mr Cheviott, speaking now in his ordinary voice. “Of course it would have been impossible.”
“I don’t know that,” replied Mr Brandreth. “There is not much that you can do for your sister, and it must be dreadfully wearisome work for you hanging about here all day, particularly in the evenings,” he added, in a tone of special commiseration, “when you cannot even get out for a stroll.”
Mary glanced up quickly.
“How I wish he would go back to Romary?” she had been thinking to herself while Mr Brandreth was speaking. “I would not mind staying here at all, in that case.”
But something indefinable in Mr Brandreth’s voice just now roused her suspicions. Was he laughing at Mr Cheviott? If so, he was, in a sense, laughing at her too. Mary began to feel rather indignant. Lilias was right; there was a touch of coarseness about Mr Brandreth notwithstanding his real goodness and kindness, which hitherto had always prevailed with Mary to take his friendly bantering in good part. Something, she knew not what, she was on the verge of replying, when Mr Cheviott anticipated her.
“The evenings?” he said, simply, yet with a sort of dignity not lost upon either of his hearers – “this evening, at least, has been anything but wearisome, as Miss Western has kindly allowed me to read to her, and I fortunately lighted upon an article which interested us both. I may ride over to Romary to-morrow to see if I am wanted for anything; but I could not feel content to leave this, with Alys still in so critical a state. I have not been very troublesome, I hope, have I, Miss Western?” he added, turning to Mary with a smile. There was not a shade of constraint in his manner now, yet no “Clara Vere de Vere” could have desired to be addressed with more absolute deference and respect.
For the first time Mary experienced a sensation of real friendliness towards her host for the time being. Hitherto her most cordial feeling with regard to him had been a sort of pity – a slightly pleasurable consciousness of meriting his gratitude; and in such one-sided sentiments, no root of actual friendliness– of which the “give and take” element is the very essence – could exist. Now, for the first time, a flash of something like gratitude to him, of quick appreciation of his instinctive chivalry, lent a softness to her voice and a light to her eyes which Mr Cheviott, without taking credit to himself for the change, was agreeably conscious of, as she replied, gravely:
“You have been very considerate indeed, Mr Cheviott. And it seems to me that till your sister is decidedly better, it would not be well for you to go away.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Cheviott, simply, while in his own mind Mr Brandreth whistled. How the wind lay was beginning to puzzle him.
“You saw mamma?” said Mary, interrogatively, turning to Mr Brandreth. “I had a note from her this afternoon, telling me not to go home to-day, and that you would see me again.”
Mr Cheviott heard her with some surprise. This, then, supplied the key of her quietly remaining at the farm all day with no talk of quitting her post. What a more and more interestingly unusual study this girl’s character was becoming to him! So brave, yet so shrinkingly sensitive, so wise, yet so unsophisticated, so self-reliant and coolly determined, yet yielding in an instant to the slightest expression of parental authority!
“Yes,” said Mr Brandreth, oracularly, “I saw your mamma, Miss Mary, and explained the whole to her. Her views of the situation, as I felt sure would be the case, entirely coincide with mine. She will not hear of your leaving Miss Cheviott at any risk to her, for I fully explained that your remaining might do what we doctors seldom are called in time enough for – it may save your patient an illness instead of curing her of one. The greatest triumph of the two, in my opinion! Furthermore, your mother desires you not to worry about things at home. Miss Alexa and Master Josephine,” (reverting to a very threadbare joke on poor Josey’s hobbledehoyism) “are developing undreamed-of capabilities – Josey was very nearly packing herself into your sister’s box in her anxiety to take your place as her assistant – yes, you are not to worry about things at home, and – let me see – oh, yes, you are to take good care of yourself and not get knocked up, and – and – Miss Lilias will be here in the morning and tell you all that has happened since you left home – let me see, how many hours ago?”
Mary laughed cordially. This kind of banter she could take in the best part. And she really was glad to hear all about home. How well she could fancy poor Josey’s ineffectual attempts at helping Lilias to pack, and Lilias’s good-humoured despair at the results! – it seemed ages since she had seen them all.
“Then I am to wait here till further orders,” said Mary, “and those orders, in the first place, I suppose, will be yours, Mr Brandreth?”
“Probably,” the doctor replied.
“And I? Whose orders am I to be under?” inquired Mr Cheviott.
“Miss Western’s,” said Mr Brandreth. “In my absence Miss Western is commander-in-chief.”
But his little pleasantry fell harmless this time. Mr Cheviott and Mary only smiled. And then Mary took the doctor into the next room to see unconscious Alys sleeping, as her friend had said, as sweetly as a baby.
Chapter Twenty One
Pledged
“Love, when ’tis true, needs not the aid
Of sighs, or oaths, to make it known.”
Sir C. Sedley.
“To-morrow” was a fine day at last. And Lilias was up betimes. It was the day before that of her leaving home, and, notwithstanding the great preliminary preparations, there were still innumerable last packings to do, arrangements to be made, and directions given – all complicated by Mary’s absence. Then there was Mary to see, and not wishing to be hurried in the long talk with her, without which Lilias felt it would really be impossible to start on her journey, she set off pretty early for the farm.
It was a great bore certainly, as Josey expressed it, that Mary should be away just at this particular juncture. Lilias missed her at every turn, and felt far from happy at leaving her mother without either of her “capable” daughters at hand, especially as Mr Brandreth had plainly given Mrs Western to understand that Mary’s stay at the Edge, if it were to do real and lasting good, might have to be prolonged over two or three weeks.
“That poor girl will not know how she is till she gets over the first shock of her accident,” he had said; “and if, as I much fear, there is any actual injury, she may be thrown back into a brain fever if there is no sensible, cheerful person beside her to help her over the first brunt of such a discovery.”
“But do you think her badly hurt – crippled, perhaps, for life?” Lilias had asked, with infinite sympathy in her face. “What a fate!” she was saying to herself; “far better, in my opinion, to have been killed outright than to live to be an object of pity, and even, perhaps, shrinking, on the part of others. Fancy such a thing befalling me, and my being afraid of Arthur ever seeing me again!”
She gave an involuntary shiver as she made her inquiry of Mr Brandreth, who looked surprised.
“Why, Miss Lilias,” he said, “you’ve not half your sister’s nerve! What have you been doing to yourself, you don’t look half so strong and vigorous as you used to.”
“That is why she is going away,” said her mother, quietly. “She has not been well lately. But tell us about poor Miss Cheviott, please.”
“I do not think she will be crippled for life – nothing so bad as that – but she will probably have to lie and rest for a long time. The great point is to get her well over the first of it, and that is why I am so anxious for Mary to stay.”
And so it had been decided, and somehow, in spite of her regret at its happening just at this time, Lilias could not bring herself to feel altogether distressed at Mary’s remaining at the farm; and though she did not exactly express this to her sister, Mary did not remain unconscious of it.
“I wish I were not going away, then it would be all right,” she said, when they were sitting together in the farm-house kitchen.
“I am most particularly glad you are going away,” Mary replied. “I hardly know that I could have agreed to stay here, had you not been going away.”
“Why?” asked Lilias, opening wide her blue eyes. “Because – because – oh! I can’t exactly put it into words,” replied Mary. “You might understand without my saying.” But seeing that Lilias still looked inquiringly, she went on: “Don’t you see – I don’t want these people —him, I mean,” (Mr Cheviott had ridden over to Romary), – “to think we would take advantage of this accident – this wholly fortuitous circumstance, not of their seeking, and assuredly not of ours, of my being thrown into their society, to bring about any intimacy, any possible endeavour to recall – you know whom I mean – to – to what we had begun to think might be.”
“Your powers of expressing yourself are certainly not increasing, my dear Mary,” said Lilias, with a smile, though the quick colour mounted to her cheeks. “I really do think you worry yourself quite unnecessarily about what Mr Cheviott thinks or doesn’t think. I cannot believe, as I have always said – I cannot believe he has been to blame as much as you imagine. Don’t you like him any better now that you have seen more of him?”
“I don’t want to like him better,” said Mary, honestly. “He is, of course, most courteous and civil to me – more than that, he is really considerate and kind, and certainly he is a cultivated and intelligent man, and not, in some ways, so narrow-minded as might have been expected. But I don’t want to like him, or think better of him; whenever I seem to be tempted to do so it all rises before me – selfish, cold, cruel man, to interfere with your happiness, my Lily.”
Mary gave herself a sort of shake of indignation.
“You are a queer girl, Mary,” said Lilias, putting a hand on each of her sister’s shoulders, and looking down – Lilias was the taller of the two – deep down into her eyes – blue into brown. The brown eyes were unfathomable in their mingled expression – into the blue ones there crept slowly two or three tears. But Lilias dashed them away before they fell, and soon after the sisters kissed each other and said good-bye.
“I wonder,” said Lilias to herself, as she stood still for a moment at the juncture of the two ways home, debating whether or not she might indulge herself by choosing the pleasanter but more circuitous path through the woods.
“I wonder if anything will have happened – anything of consequence, I mean – before I see Mary again, six weeks or so hence.”
An idle, childish sort of speculation, but one not without its charm for even the wiser ones among us sometimes, when the prize that would make life so perfect a thing is tantalisingly withheld from us, or, alas! when, in darker, less hopeful days, there is no break in the clouds about our path, and in the weariness of long-continued gloom we would almost cry to Fate itself to help us! – Fate which, in those seasons, we dare not call God, for no way of deliverance that our human judgment can call Divine seems open to us. Will nothing happen? – something we dare not wish for, to deliver us from the ruggedness of the appointed road from which, in faint-hearted cowardice, we shrink, short-sightedly forgetting that, to the brave and faithful, “strength as their days” shall be given.
But in no such weariness of spirit did Lilias Western “wonder” to herself; she was young and vigorous; there was a definite goal for her hopefulness; her visions of the future could take actual shape and clothing – and how much of human happiness does such an admission not involve? She “wondered” only because, notwithstanding the disappointment and trial she had to bear, life was still to her so full of joyful possibilities, of golden pictures, in the ultimate realisation of which she could not as yet but believe.
“Yes,” she repeated, as, deciding that a delay of ten minutes was the worst risk involved, she climbed the narrow stile into the wood – “yes, I wonder how things will be when dear Mary and I are together again? Such queer things have happened already among us. Who could have imagined such a thing as Mary’s being ‘domesticated’ with the Cheviotts? I wonder if Arthur Beverley will hear of it? Oh, I do, do wish I was not going away to-morrow!”
She stopped short again for a moment, and looked about her. How well she remembered the spot where she was standing! It was not far from the place where she and her sisters had met Captain Beverley that day when he had walked back with them to the Rectory. How they had all laughed and chattered! – how very long ago it seemed now! Lilias gazed all round her, and then hastened on again, and as she did so, somewhat to her surprise, far in front of her, at the end apparently of the wood alley which she was facing, she distinguished a figure approaching her. It was at some distance off when she first saw it, but the leafless branches intercepted but little of the light, which to-day was clear and undeceptive.
“It must be papa,” she said to herself, when she was able to distinguish that the figure was that of a man – “papa coming to meet me, or possibly he may be going on to see Mary at the farm.”
She hurried on eagerly, but when nearer the approaching intruder, again she suddenly relaxed her pace. Were her eyes deceiving her? Had her fancy played her false, and conjured up some extraordinary illusion to mislead her, or was it – could it be Arthur Beverley himself who was hastening towards her? Hastening? – yes, hastening so quickly that in another moment there was no possibility of any longer doubting that it was indeed he, and that he recognised her. But no smile lit up his face as he drew near; he looked strangely pale and anxious, and a vague misgiving seized Lilias; her heart began to beat so fast that she could scarcely hear the first words he addressed to her – she hardly noticed that he did not make any attempt to shake hands with her.
“Miss Western,” he said, in a low, constrained, and yet agitated tone, “I do not know whether I am glad or sorry to meet you. I do not know whether I dare say I am glad to meet you.” He glanced up at her for an instant with such appeal and wistfulness in his eyes that Lilias turned her face away to prevent his seeing the quick rush of tears that would come. “What you must have thought of me, I cannot let myself think,” he went on, speaking more hurriedly and nervously. “But you will let me ask you something, will you not? You seem to be coming from the farm – tell me, I implore you, have you by any chance heard how my poor cousin is? Is she still alive? She cannot – she must not be dead!”
His wildness startled Lilias. A rush of mingled feelings for an instant made it impossible for her to reply. What could be the meaning of it all? Why this exaggerated anxiety about Alys Cheviott, and at the same time this tone of almost abject self-blame? Lilias felt giddy, and almost sick with apprehension – was her faith about to be uprooted? her trust flung back into her face? Were Mary’s misgivings about to be realised? Was it true that Arthur, influenced by motives she could but guess at, had deserted her for his cousin?
Captain Beverley misinterpreted her silence. His face grew still paler.
“I see what you mean,” he said, excitedly. “She is dead, and you shrink from telling me. Good God, what an ending to it all!”