"The old man must leave her at least half of what he has, and every one in Lawford says he is well off, so that it will be a pleasant little bit of revenge to spend the old hunks's money for the way in which he abused me. Then there is poor mamma's money. That must come to me, so that we shall be pretty well off. Bah! it will all come right in time. But I hope Frank is not playing the fool about little Rue."

After the stern encounter with the Churchwarden, and the angry words with his father, Cyril thought it prudent to keep away from Kilby Farm, and ceased to watch for Sage as she was going to or leaving school; but he rearranged his seat in the rectory pew, so that he could see her where she sat in church, became more regular than ever in his attendance, and sat through his father's sermons gazing pensively at the young schoolmistress.

People said he was growing pale and thin, which was a fact easily explicable, for he smoked from morning to night, and the healthy brown of the last sea voyage was fading away consequent upon his indoor life.

"If I kick up a row I shall do no good," he argued, "so I may as well wait. I could persuade her to run away with me, but then we should be confoundedly short of money till the old folks forgave us, and I'm sick of that sort of thing. No, I think the injured dodge is best, for it pays all round."

He was quite right; and while he shut himself up with his brother in the room devoted to their personal use, read _Bell's Life in London_, and sent communications to one or two betting men in town whenever he had the necessary funds at his disposal, everything was working steadily to the end he sought to gain.

His quiet acceptance, as it seemed to the Rector and Portlock, of the commands which he had received, gave him, in the eyes of the other interested parties, an injured, martyrlike air, and, though she did not meet him now, Sage's thoughts were none the less busy about him. His every word had impressed her deeply, and day by day, in spite of her efforts to be true to her promise, she felt that she was falling more and more away.

This was plainly shown in her letters to Luke Ross, to whom she wrote weekly, hearing from him regularly in return. But he noted the gradual change in her communications. They grew shorter by degrees; less full of chatty little paragraphs about herself and her daily life. Still she did not fail to send to him once. It had become a habit--a duty--and while she did this she told herself that she was making a brave fight against her weak heart, and hiding the truth from Luke, little thinking that her notes laid her heart quite bare to the reader.

For it is a very strange thing how the feelings of a writer at the time of writing infuse themselves in the words. A note may contain only a thousand, and those thousand words relate certain matters, but from one writer they will seem to flow with affection, from another be calm, cool, and simply matter-of-fact. The sentences shall be almost the same, the words be very little varied, and yet, even without endearing expressions, one letter shall breathe and emanate affection, the other be friendliness alone.

So, by slow degrees, it was with Sage's letters to her lover; and at first, as the idea stole upon him that she was growing colder, Luke Ross fought back the cruel thought, telling himself that he was wrong, and that hard study was souring his disposition, making him exacting and strange.

But as time went on he was obliged to realise the truth, and he wrote reproachful letters, but only tore them up again, to write others in his old, simple, confiding strain.

He longed to go down and see her more often, but kept putting it off till she should express a wish for him to come, hinting at it, and expecting that some such invitation would be contained in the next letter; but he hoped against hope.

Then a week pa.s.sed without any communication from Lawford, and Luke packed up a few things in a bag, and started for his old home, but only to return directly to his chambers.

"She is not ill," he said to himself. "If she had been some one would have written to tell me. I'll wait."

He waited, and at the appointed time--at the end of another week--a letter came, very similar to the last, and in which she said that she would have written as usual, only that she was very busy.

"Very busy," said Luke to himself, as he sat in his dingy room, gazing straight before him, through the dull window, at the smoky chimney-pots, but seeing, as in a picture, the interior of Lawford Girls' School, with its mistress moving from cla.s.s to cla.s.s. "Very busy."

He sighed deeply, and went on with his reading.

From that time Sage's letters came fortnightly, Luke sending two for one, but he made no complaint, keeping rigidly to his old stern determination.

"I said I would place myself in a worthy position to win her," he said.

"That I will do. What is more, I will be faithful, come what may-- faithful, even in my belief in her."

He sat, hot of eye and weary of brain, thinking whether he ought not to go down and see why this gradual change was taking place, but in his stern repression of self he felt that to go down unexpectedly would be like mistrusting the woman he hoped to make his wife, and this he could not bear.

Study--hard study--was Luke Ross's medicine for a mind diseased, and whenever doubting thoughts and mistrust came hand in hand to torture him he forced himself to attend to his studies, making, by prodigious efforts, great advances in the learned treatises he was striving to master, but only at the expense of his health.

"It is for Sage," he said, by way of encouragement, and when doubts became very strong he held up the shield of his faith.

"No," he would say aloud, "writing is, perhaps, irksome to one who has so much to do, but her heart is mine, and save from her own lips I would never believe that she could let it stray."

In his stern determination to master the profession for which he was reading, Luke Ross only allowed himself a very rare visit home; and though he had felt frequent urgings of late he fought them down, setting his teeth, and vowing that he would not go before the appointed time.

It was a terrible fight when once the dire attacks of doubt were made, and repeated from day to day, for during the weeks of the past month Sage's letters had grown more irregular still, as if she felt emboldened to be more careless from that absence of reproach. But the truth was that every letter from London was read by Sage with bitter misery and reproach, and her replies were often so blotted with tears that they were destroyed instead of being posted, and it was only those which escaped the fire which he received.

It only wanted a week of the time he had settled in his own mind, and in spite of his efforts to be calm, it was almost more than he could do to keep on with his task. A strong feeling was urging him to go down at once, see Sage, and learn the worst, for a fortnight had again pa.s.sed and no letter.

Twenty times over he threw his books aside and started up to go, but upon each occasion the indomitable power of will that helped him to make the great efforts to master his profession--a power of will that had already stood him in such good stead during his stay at Saint Chrysostom's--came to his aid, and he fought out the miseries of that last week and won. "I will--not--show--mistrust," he said, sternly, as if addressing an unseen accuser of Sage; "I gave--her--my--love--and-- I--will--never--take--it--from--her. If--she--cast--it--away--then-- the--act--is--hers--not--mine."

This, slowly repeated, with a pause between the words, became, as it were, a formula impressed in his mind, and it seemed to him that he had become Sage's advocate, bound to defend her against unseen accusers.

At last, having no longer any conscientious reasons for deferring his visit, he hastily packed his bag and closed up his dreary little chambers, feeling, as he went out into busy roaring Fleet-street, that the rest was absolutely necessary, for his head throbbed and seemed confused, troubled as it had been with conflicting emotions.

It was winter once more, but one of those mild seasons when balmy winds from the west tempt the wild flowers into a belief that it is spring, and sweetly-scented violets make the air redolent of their homely, heart-appealing fragrance, when from amongst the dark dead leaves the tender green of the crinkled primrose roots could be seen surrounding here and there a pale sulphur blossom.

It was such a change from the smoke-haunted, soot-dotted city region of the law, that fifteen-mile coach ride, after the run down by fast train, that as Luke gazed over the flat landscape illumined by the mellow glow of the wintry sun, and noted the silvery bronze of the young oak stems, and the ruddy birch and ashes grey, he felt a joyous elasticity of frame; his pulses throbbed with pleasure, and before they reached the town he determined to alight and follow the mossy lane to the left, two miles of whose windings would take him within a hundred yards of Kilby, the time fitting so well that he knew he should intercept Sage as she left the school, which would not break up for the holidays until the following day.

Home again, after many months' absence--months of stern self-denial; and as he leaped down from his seat on the coach, leaving his portmanteau for delivery at the inn, he felt so boyish and light-hearted that he began to run along the lane.

"What nonsense!" he said, half aloud. "One shuts oneself up in that little hole and reads and reads till one's brain gets clogged, and full of unwholesome fancies. What a brute I am to let such thoughts creep in, when I'll wager anything that my darling is longing to see me back."

He stopped to pick a primrose, then another, and a violet. Walked rapidly on again, but paused to select a couple of bramble-leaves of a most glorious deep green bronze. Then there was a beautiful privet spray, and another primrose or two, and by degrees, as he hurried on with little pauses, a goodly wild bouquet had been culled, and he smiled as he saw in imagination Sage's delight at his present.

"Heaven bless her!" he said, half aloud, and, all unpleasant suspicions gone, he walked on with his eyes half closed, revelling in a kind of day-dream full of delights, the only jarring thought being that he was coming to see Sage before paying his duty to his father at home.

"He'll forgive me," he said. "He knows how I love her. Why, what a boy I feel to-day! It's this delicious air that has not been breathed by two million sets of lungs."

"There's the farm," he said. "How clean the windows must be to reflect the setting sun like that. Different to mine. I wonder how Mrs Portlock is, and what the old lady will say?"

He hurried on, eager to reach the narrow cross where the Kilby lane and the one he was in intersected, and, once there, he meant to mount the high bank, and wait by the old mossy oak pollard, watching for Sage's steps, so as to give her a surprise by throwing the bouquet of wild flowers at her feet, and then--

And then?--Alas! how pleasant is that habit of castle-building in the air. How brightly the edifices are raised, how quickly, how dismally they fall! Luke had planned all so well, and hurried on along the soft, mossy border of the lane, heedless of the winter's dirt, till he reached the cross, turned sharply, and then stopped short, uttering a low moan as he reeled against the hedge, clutching at the thorns for a support.

PART ONE, CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

AN INVITATION.

Cyril Mallow's plan of playing what he called a waiting game had the effect he antic.i.p.ated, and when he thought that the time was ripe he sent a very tenderly-worded letter, full of gentle reproach, to Sage, telling her that he had fought, no one knew how hard, to master his feelings, but that it was all in vain; that he could not bear his existence there, and that he was going abroad--anywhere, he said--and he wished it was out of the world.

It was just at a time when the Rector was in high glee, for there had been no parish troubles for some time. He was beginning to make the people understand him, he told the curate, who bowed and said nothing, though he did think about his efforts to preserve peace. Julia and Cynthia were staying in town with Claudine and Faustine Perry-Morton, an act of kindness those ladies said, while their dear brother was forced to be in Rome, where the new art society had invited him to be president and inaugurate their proceedings. Then, although Frank was still at home, leading a life that, if he had been a poor man's son, would have been called "loafing," there was hope for Cyril, and a chance for weaning him from this attachment for Sage Portlock. In fact, jumping at a hint from the Rector, Lord Artingale had gone to Magnus and asked his advice, which was freely given, with a good idea or two how to set about it, and the result was that he had the pleasure of writing down to the Rector that the Duke of Borwick had given him an excellent post for his friend.

"It is only five hundred a year," wrote Lord Artingale, "but I dare say something better will come."

The Rector took the letter into Mrs Mallow's room after reading it in the grape house, where he had been busy tr.i.m.m.i.n.g special bunches intended for the invalid's use.

"He's a good fellow, Artingale, a thoroughly good fellow," he said.

"Sunshine at last for that unhappy boy."

"Our son, Eli," said Mrs Mallow, reproachfully. "If he is unhappy, may not we be to blame?"

The Rector's delight was of short duration, for Cyril's next move was to tell his father flatly that he had not been consulted, and that he should decline the post.

"But you must take it, Cyril," said his father. "Why, my boy, I have been so full of hope that since our last quarrel you had seen the folly of your ways, and were becoming obedient, and willing to take your place in the duties of the world."