--I think that perhaps I may have expressed myself badly so as to warrant you in understanding more than I have meant. If so, I am sure the fault has been mine, and I am very sorry for it. Things have turned up with which I need not perhaps trouble you, and compel me to go for a while to a very distant country. I shall be off almost before I can receive a reply to this letter. Indeed, I may be gone before an answer can reach me. But I have thought it right not to let a post go by without informing you of my decision.

I have seen that article in the Exeter newspaper respecting your family in Italy, and think that it must be very gratifying to you. I did understand, however, that not a word was to have been spoken as to the matter.

Nothing had escaped from me, at any rate. I fear that some of your intimate friends at Exeter must have been indiscreet.

Believe me yours, With the most sincere admiration,

FRANCIS GERALDINE.

He was not able to start for America immediately after writing this, but he quitted his Lodge in Scotland, leaving no immediate address, and hid himself for a while among his London clubs, where he trusted that the lady might not find him. In a week's time he would be off to the United States.

Who shall picture the rage of Miss Altifiorla when she received this letter? This was the very danger which she had feared, but had hardly thought it worth her while to fear. It was the one possible break-down in her triumph; but had been, she thought, so unlikely as to be hardly possible. But now on reading the letter she felt that no redress was within her reach. To whom should she go for succour?

Though her ancestors had been so n.o.ble, she had no one near her to take up the cudgels on her behalf. With her friends in Exeter she had become a little proud of late, so that she had turned from her those who might have a.s.sisted her. "The coward!" she said to herself, "the base coward! He dares to treat me in this way because he knows that I am alone." Then she became angry in her heart against Cecilia, who she felt had set a dangerous example in this practice of jilting. Had Cecilia not treated Sir Francis so unceremoniously he certainly would not have dared so to treat her. There was truth in this, as in that case Sir Francis would at this moment have been the husband of Mrs.

Western.

But what should she do? She took out every sc.r.a.p of letter that she had received from the man, and read each sc.r.a.p with the greatest care. In the one letter there certainly was an offer very plainly made, as he had intended it; but she doubted whether she could depend upon it in a court of law. "Don't you think that you and I know each other well enough to make a match of it?" It was certainly written as an offer, and her two answers to him would make it plain that it was so. But she had an idea that she would not be allowed to use her own letters against him. And then to have her gushing words read as a reply to so cold a proposition would be death to her. There was not another syllable in the whole correspondence written by him to signify that he had in truth intended to become her husband. She felt sure that he had been wickedly crafty in the whole matter, and had lured her on to expose herself in her innocence.

But what should she do? Should she write to him an epistle full of tenderness? She felt sure that it would be altogether ineffectual.

Should she fill sheets with indignation? It would be of no use unless she could follow up her indignation by strong measures. Should she let the thing pa.s.s by in silence, as though she and Sir Francis had never known each other? She would certainly do so, but that she had allowed her matrimonial prospects to become common through all Exeter. She must also let Exeter know how badly Sir Francis intended to treat her. To her, too, the idea of a prolonged sojourn in the United States presented itself. In former days there had come upon her a great longing to lecture at Chicago, at Saint Paul's, and Omaha, on the distinctive duties of the female s.e.x. Now again the idea returned to her. She thought that in one of those large Western halls, full of gas and intelligence, she could rise to the height of her subject with a tremendous eloquence. But then would not the name of Sir Francis travel with her and crush her?

She did resolve upon informing Mrs. Green. She took three days to think of it, and then she sent for Mrs. Green. "Of all human beings,"

she said, "you, I think, are the truest to me." Mrs. Green of course expressed herself as much flattered. "And therefore I will tell you.

No false pride shall operate with me to make me hold my tongue. Of all the false deceivers that have ever broken a woman's heart, that man is the basest and the falsest."

In this way she let all Exeter know that she was not to be married to Sir Francis Geraldine; and another paragraph appeared in the "Western Telegraph," declaring that after all Sir Francis Geraldine was not to be allied to the Fiascos and Disgrazias of Rome.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CONCLUSION.

Though the news of Miss Altifiorla's broken engagement did reach Mrs.

Western at St. David's, she was in a state of mind which prevented her almost from recognising the fact. It was the very day on which her husband was to come to her. And her joy was so extreme as almost to have become painful. "Mamma," she said, "I shall not know what to say to him."

"Just let him come and receive him quietly."

"Receive him quietly! How can I be quiet when he will have come back to me? I think you do not realise the condition I have been in during the last three months."

"Yes, my dear, I do. You have been deserted, and it has been very bad."

But Mrs. Western did not approve of the word used, as it carried a strong reproach against her husband. She was anxious now to take upon herself the whole weight of the fault which had produced their separation, and to hold him to have been altogether sinless. And as yet she was not quite sure that he would again take her to his home. All she knew was that he would be that day in Exeter, and that then so much might depend on her own conduct. Of this she was quite sure,--that were he to reject her she must die. In her present condition, and with the memory present to her of the dreams she had dreamed, she could not live alone at Exeter, divided from him, and there give birth to her child. But he must surely intend to take her into his arms when he should arrive. It could not be possible that he should again reject her when he had once seen her.

Then she became fidgety about her personal appearance,--a female frailty which had never much prevailed with her,--and was anxious even about her ribbons and her dress. "He does think so much about a woman being neat," she said to her mother.

"I never perceived it in him, my dear."

"Because you have not known him as I have done. He does not say much, but no one's eye is so accurate and so severe." All this arose from a certain pa.s.sage which dwelt in her remembrance, when he had praised the fit of her gown, and had told her with a kiss that no woman ever dressed so well as she did.

"I think, my dear," continued Mrs. Holt, "that if you wear your black silk just simply, it will do very well."

Simply! Yes; she must certainly be simple. But it is so hard to be simple in such a way as to please a man's eye. And yet, even when the time came near, she did not dare to remain long in her bedroom lest her own maid should know the source of her anxiety. At one time she had declared that she would go down to the station to meet him, but that idea had been soon abandoned. The first kiss she would give him should not be seen by strangers.

But if she were perplexed as to how she would bear herself on the coming occasion he was much more so. It may be said of him, that through his whole journey home from Dresden he was disturbed, unhappy, and silent. And that when his sister left him in London, and that he had nothing immediately before him but the journey down to Exeter, he was almost overwhelmed by the difficulties of the situation. His case as a man was so much worse than hers as a woman.

The speaking must all be done by him, and what was there that he could say? There was still present to him a keen sense of the wrong that he had endured; though he owned to himself that the punishment which at the spur of the moment he had resolved upon inflicting was too severe,--both upon her and upon himself. And though he felt that he had been injured, he did gradually acknowledge that he had believed something worse than the truth. How to read the riddle he did not know, but there was a riddle which he had not read aright. If Cecilia should still be silent, he must still be left in the dark.

But he did understand that he was to expect no confession of a fault, and that he was to exact no show of repentance.

When the train arrived at Exeter he determined to be driven at once to the Hotel. It made him unhappy to think that everyone around him should be aware that he was occupying rooms at an inn while his wife was living in the town; but he did not dare to take his portmanteau to Mrs. Holt's house and hang up his hat in her hall as though nothing had been the matter. "Put it into a cab," he said to a porter as the door was opened, "and bid him drive to the Clarence."

But a man whose face he remembered had laid his hand upon his valise before it was well out of the railway carriage. "Please, Sir," said the man, "you are to go up to the house, and I'm to carry your things. I am Sam Barnet, the gardener."

"Very well, Sam," said Mr. Western. "Go on and I'll follow you." Now, as he well knew, the house at St. David's was less than half a mile from the railway station.

He felt that his misery would be over in ten minutes, and yet for ten minutes how miserable a man he was! Whilst she was trembling with joy, a joy that was only dashed by a vague fear of his possible sternness, he was blaming his fate as it shortened by every step the distance between him and his wife. At last he had entered the path of the little garden, and the door of the house was open before him.

He ventured to look, but did not see her. He was in the hall, but yet he did not see her. "Cecilia is in the breakfast parlour," said the voice of Mrs. Holt, whom in his confusion he did not notice. The breakfast parlour was in the back part of the house, looking out into the garden, and thither he went. The door was just ajar and he pa.s.sed in. In a second the whole trouble was over. She was in his arms at once, kissing his face, stroking his hair, leaning on his bosom, holding his arm round her own waist as though to make sure that he should not leave her; crying and laughing at the same moment. "Oh, George, my own George! It has all been my doing; but you will forgive me! Say that one word that I am 'forgiven.'" Then there came another storm of kisses which frustrated the possibility of his speaking to her.

What a wife she was to possess! How graceful, how gracious, how precious were her charms,--charms in which no other woman surely ever approached her! How warm and yet how cool was the touch of her lips; how absolutely symmetrical was the sweet curve of her bust; what a fragrance came from her breath! And the light of her eyes, made more bright by her tears, shone into his with a heavenly brightness. Her soft hair as he touched it filled him with joy. And once more she was all his own. Let the secret be what it might, he was quite sure that she was his own. As he bent down over her she pressed her cheek against his and again drew his arm tighter round her waist. "George, if you wished to know how I love you, you have taken the right step.

I have been sick for you, but now I shall be sick no longer. Oh, George, it was my fault; but say that you have forgiven me."

He could not bring himself to speak so much of an accusation as would be contained in that word "forgive." How was he to pardon one whose present treatment to him was so perfect, so loving, and so lovely?

"Sit down, George, and let me tell you how it was. Of course I was wrong, but I did not mean to be wrong."

"No, no," he said. "There shall be no wrong." And yet why had not his sister told him that it would be like this? Why had she so stoutly maintained that Cecilia would confess nothing. Here she was acknowledging everything with most profuse confession. What could any man desire more? "Do not speak of it;--at any rate now. Let me be happy as I have got you."

Then there was another storm of kisses, but she was not to be put off from her purpose. "You must know it all. Sit down;--there, like that." And she seated herself, leaning back upon him on the sofa.

"Before we had been abroad I had been engaged to that man."

"Yes;--I understand that."

"I had been engaged to him,--without knowing him. Then when I found that he was not what I thought him, I made up my mind that it would be better to throw him over than make us both miserable for life."

"Certainly."

"And I did so. I made a struggle and did it. From that time to this I have had nothing to say to him,--nor he to me. You may say that I treated him badly."

"I don't say so. I, at any rate, do not say so."

"My own, own man. Then we went abroad, and as good fortune would have it you came in our way. It was not long before you made me love you.

That was not my fault, George. I loved you so dearly when you were telling me that story about the other girl;--but, somehow, I could not tell you then a similar story about myself. It seemed at first so odd that my story should be the same, and then it looked almost as though I were mocking you. Had you had no story to tell, you would have known all my own before I had allowed myself to be made happy by your love. Do you not perceive that it was so?"

"Yes," he said, slowly, "I can understand what you mean."

"But it was a mistake; for from day to day the difficulty grew upon me, and when once there was a difficulty, I was not strong enough to overcome it. There never came the moment in which I was willing to mar my own happiness by telling you that which I thought would wound yours. I had not dreamed beforehand how much more difficult it would become when I should once be absolutely your wife. Then your sister came and she told me. She is better than anybody in the world except yourself."

"All women are better than I am," he said. "It is their nature to be so."

Some half-ludicrous idea of Miss Altifiorla and her present difficulties came across her mind, as she contradicted his a.s.sertion with another shower of kisses. "She told me," continued Cecilia, "that I was bound to let you know all the truth. Of course I knew that; of course I intended it. But that odious woman was in the house, and I could not tell you till she was gone. Then he came."