CHAPTER XXVIII.

Agnes sat down to the breakfast-table as if nothing had occurred, and Clare helped her to some fish, and put a portion on her own plate, and actually ate it with some appearance of appetite. Agnes tried to follow her example, but utterly failed. She could eat nothing. She thought she would be able, however, to drink her coffee, so she filled the cups, and, as usual, placed one before Clare. But Clare shook her head, saying:

“I don't like coffee to-day. I somehow feel that I cannot have anything to-day that I have had on other days. I cannot touch coffee.”

“Then I will take it away, and get you”—

There was a little crash. Clare had let her knife and fork fall upon her plate.

“Those were the words,” she cried. “'Take her away—take her away!' And I fancied that he spoke them—he—Claude—shuddering all the time and shrinking away from me.” Then she turned suddenly to Agnes, saying:

“Tell me the truth—surely I may as well know it sooner as later. Did he say those words when I entered the room?”

“Yes,” replied Agnes, judging rightly that Clare would be less affected by hearing the worst than if she were left in suspense. “Yes. Claude Westwood said those words—then you”—

“Yes, but why—why—why?” cried the girl. “Why should he say such words, when only a couple of hours before—I don't think it could have been more than a couple of hours before, though if you were to tell me that it was days before I would believe you—at any rate, hours or days, he told me that he loved me—yes, and that we must get married at once. And yet he said those words?”

“Dearest child,” said Agnes, “you must think no more about him. He should never have entered into your life. Have you never heard of the inconstancy of man?”

“I have heard more about the inconstancy of woman,” said the girl. “But even if I had heard that all men are inconstant in love I would not believe that Claude Westwood was inconstant. You must tell me some better story than that if you wish me to believe you.”

“Inconstant? Inconstant? Ah, if you but knew, Clare.”

“I do know. I know that it is a lie. He is a true man. I love him and he loves me. It is you who are not constant in your friendships. You profess to care for me”—

“It is because I do care for you that”——-

“That you tell me what is false?”

Agnes burst into tears.

Clare for a moment was rebellious. The effect of the anger, under the impulse of which she had made use of those bitter words, supported her; but in another moment she was on her knees beside her friend, with an arm round her waist, while she covered her hand with kisses.

“Forgive me, forgive me for my cruelty, my dearest Agnes,” she whispered. “Ah, my dearest, you are the only friend I have in the world, and what have I said to you? You will forgive me—you know that I am not myself to-day—that I do not know what I say!”

Agnes put down her face to the girl's and kissed her. It was some time, however, before she could speak, and in the meantime Clare was sobbing in her arms.

What was Agnes to say to comfort her? What words could she speak in her ears that would soothe her? She could only express the thought which was nestling in her own heart and seemed to give her some consolation in the midst of all the bitterness of life:

“My Clare—my Clare—we shall always be together. Whatever may happen, nothing can sunder us.”

And the girl was comforted. She was comforted, for she wept on Agnes's shoulder for a long time, and Agnes knew the consolation that comes through tears.

When she lifted up her head from its resting-place she was able to say:

“I will ask for nothing more, my dear Agnes. I will ask for nothing better to come to me than this—to be with you always—to feel that you will be ever near. You will not turn from me, dear—you will not cry out for some one to take me away?”

She could actually say the words now with a smile. She had, indeed, been comforted.

“I will take care of you,” said Agnes. “I will take care that no one shall come between us. We shall go away from here to-morrow, if you wish—anywhere you please. I know of some beautiful places along the shores of the Mediterranean. You and I shall go to one of them and stay there just as long as we please. Then we can cross to Africa. You have never been in Algiers. I was there once with my father. Everything you see there is strange. That is the place which we must seek. Sunshine in January—sunshine and warmth when the east wind is making every one miserable in England.”

“I was hoping to see an English spring,” said Clare, wistfully. “But I will go with you,” she cried, with suddenly brightening eyes. “Oh yes; I feel that I must go somewhere—somewhere—anywhere, so long as it is away from here.”

Agnes pressed her hand tenderly, saying:

“You may trust in me.”

Clare left the room shortly afterwards, and Agnes came upon her later on in the room that she had made her studio. She was standing in front of the easel on which her last half-finished drawing rested. On the small table beside her were a number of memoranda and suggestions for the pictures that were to illustrate the book.

“Who will finish them now?” she said, as Agnes came near and looked at the sketch on the easel. “Will they ever be finished?”

After a long pause she turned away with a sigh.

“I wonder if it is possible that he heard something bad about me,” she said. “I have heard of stories being told by unscrupulous persons—girls—about other girls. Is it possible, do you think, that some one has poisoned his mind by falsehoods about me?”

“No, no; do not fancy for a moment that anything like that happened,” said Agnes. “I am afraid—no—I should say that I hope—I hope with all my soul that you may never know the reason for his estrangement. It is a valid reason—I can give you that assurance; but I dare tell you no more. Now come away, my dear child. Whatever has occurred be sure that no blame attaches to you. Claude Westwood himself would never think for a moment that you are to blame. Oh, my Clare, you are only to be pitied.”

The girl stood irresolute for a few minutes, then she said:

“It is all a mystery—a terrible mystery! But God is above us—I will trust in God.”

In the afternoon Clare went to her room to lie down, and before she had been gone many minutes Sir Percival Hope called at The Knoll.

When he took Agnes's hand he looked inquiringly at her. His expression seemed to say:

“Is the time come yet?”

He did not let her hand go. She did not withdraw it. He could not fail to see the little flush that had come to her face.

“What you have suffered!” he said. “What you are suffering still! You did not sleep last night. My poor Agnes! I know now that I did not give you the right advice. You should not have been patient with him. You should not have hoped that he would be brought to you again. If I had given you the advice which my heart prompted me to give I would have said otherwise to you; but I wanted to see you made happy, and I thought that your happiness lay in patience.”

“You were wrong,” she said, with a wan smile. “I was patient, but no happiness came to me.”

“And you still love him?” said he in a low voice.

She snatched her hand away.

“I—love him—him?” she cried. “Oh no, no; he is not the man I loved. The moment he came before me with the look of a savage on his face and the words of a savage thirsting for blood on his lips, I knew that he was not the man I loved. The man whom I had promised to love—the man for whom I was waiting, was quite another one. The Claude Westwood who entered this room had, I perceived, nothing in common with the Claude Westwood who had parted from me in this same room, saying, 'I shall make a name that will be in some measure worthy of your acceptance.' Listen to me while I tell you that that very night, when I went to my room, I took the miniature of the man whom I had loved and trampled upon it. And yet—ah, I tried to force myself to believe that I was sorry. I tried to force myself to believe that I loved the man who had come to me telling me that his name was Claude Westwood. I knew in my heart that I did not love him. Ah, what he said to me was true. He said—a smile was on his face all the time—' Every seven years a man changes utterly: no particle of him remains to-day as it was seven years ago.' And then he went on to demonstrate, quite plausibly, quite convincingly, for indeed he convinced me at once, that it was ridiculous for a woman to hope that, after seven years, the same man whom she had once loved should return to her; it was physically impossible, he explained, and this system he termed, very aptly, 'Nature's Statute of Limitations.'”

“My poor Agnes!”

“Then it was I knew that, so far from being sorry that that man did not love me, I felt glad. I knew that there remained no particle of love for him in my heart when you told me that he loved Clare Tristram, for I felt no pang of jealousy. Poor girl—poor girl!”

“Let us talk no more about him. Agnes, has my time come yet? I have been wondering for some days past if I should tell you—if I should tell you what I told you on that morning long ago. You know that it was true then; you know that it is true now.”

“Not to-day—I implore of you not to ask me to say the words that you think will make you happy—the words which I know will make me happy.”

“I will not ask you to say one word beyond that, my beloved.”

He had caught her hand and was holding it in both his own, smiling.

She shook her head.

“Do not assume too much,” she cried. “I cannot be happy to-day—oh, it would be heartless for me to be happy while that girl is wretched!”

“Wretched? It cannot be possible that he has turned away from her within a month?” said Sir Percival. “Seven years, not weeks, was the space of time named by him.”

“It was impossible that anything but misery could come of his love for her,” said Agnes. “The misery has come. Poor child! I should be inhuman if I thought of my own happiness to-day while the waters have closed over her head.”

“I do not want another word from you, believe me,” said he. “I am content—more than content—with what you have said to me. There is in my heart nothing but hope. Good-bye.”

He remembered that on the morning when he had told her that he loved her, she had given him her face to kiss. But he made no attempt to kiss her forehead now. He did not even kiss her hand. The curious pathos of her words, “I cannot be happy to-day,” had appealed strongly to him. He was a man who had become accustomed to selfsacrifice. He left the house, having only touched her hand.

She heard his footsteps passing away on the hard gravel of the drive. She recollected how, on that morning when they had been together on the lawn, and he had left her with an abruptness that startled her, she had hurried to intercept him on the road. The impulse was now upon her to do as she had done that morning—to open the window and run across the lawn into his arms. She checked herself, however; she felt that it would be heartless for her to have so much happiness while Clare was overwhelmed with the misery that had fallen on her.

She turned away from the temptation of the window and seated herself in the dim light before the fire, giving herself up to her thoughts.

She had not quite recovered from the surprise that her own confession to Sir Percival had caused her. She had been amazed at the impulse under the force of which she had told him so much. Until that moment she had had no idea what was in her heart—what had been in her heart since the day of Claude Westwood's return. She knew, however, that she had confessed the truth to her friend: she had been deceiving herself when she thought she still loved Claude Westwood—when she thought she was sorry that she had flung his portrait on the floor of her room.

She had found it amazingly easy to be patient in regard to his returning to his old love for her; but it was only when she stood in front of Sir Percival that she knew how it was that she had neither been impatient for Claude's return to the old love which he had borne for her, nor jealous when she had come to learn that he loved Clare Tristram. She now knew that the Claude Westwood who had come back from Africa was not, in her eyes, the Claude Westwood whom she had promised to love.

Her awaking had come in a moment—the moment that Sir Percival had taken her hand. The scales fell from her eyes in a second, and her own heart was revealed to her, and what she saw in its depths amazed her. She felt amazed as the confession was forced from her in the presence of the man whom she trusted, and she had not recovered from that amazement when it was time for her to go to bed. She lay awake, thinking over all that had been revealed to her, and wondering how it was that she had been blind so long. It never occurred to her now to ask herself if what she had said to Sir Percival was true or false. When people see plainly the things before their eyes they do not need to puzzle over the question of the reality of those things.

The next day Clare was much more tranquil than she had been before. There was a certain brightness in her eyes that gave Agnes great hope that her future would not be so clouded, but that a glimpse ot sunshine would touch it. She made no allusion to Claude Westwood or his book; and after breakfast Agnes saw with pleasure that she had gone outside to feed the pigeons. She stood among them, calling them about her with that musical croon which acted like magic upon them; and they alighted upon her shoulders and whirled about her head, just as they had done on the afternoon she had arrived, when Claude had looked out at her.

Agnes was once again overcome with self-reproach as she thought how it might have been possible for her to prevent the misery that had entered the girl's life.

“If I had only known—if I had only considered the possibility which every one else but myself would have regarded as not merely possible—not merely probable—but absolutely inevitable, I would have taken her away the next day,” she moaned.

She turned away from the window with tears in her eyes, and when she looked out again, hearing footsteps on the drive, Clare was not to be seen. It was the postman who was coming up to the house.

Three letters were brought to Agnes. Two of them were ordinary business communications: the third was in the handwriting of Cyril. She had received two letters from her brother since he had arrived in Australia, and both were written in the most hopeful spirit. He had, he said, found the life that suited him.

She cut open the envelope, and began to read the letter. But before she had finished the first page, a puzzled look came to her face. She laid the letter down for a moment and put her hand to her forehead. In another second she had sprung to her feet with a short cry—not loud, but agonising—

“Oh, my God! my God! the thought of it—he—he—my brother!”