"Ah!" said Lettice, sadly, "it is the first time you have ever spoken sharply to me, and that is part of my punishment!"

Mrs. Hartley sank back in her chair, and looked as though she was about to take refuge in a quiet fit of weeping.

"I can't comprehend it," she said; "I thought we were going to be so happy; and I am sure you and Brooke would suit each other exactly."

"Oh no, indeed; there are thousands of women who will make him a better wife than I could ever have done."

"Now, do listen to me, and give yourself at least a week to think it over, before you say all this to Brooke! That cannot make things worse, either for him or for yourself. Why should you be so rash about it?"

"I wish I could see any other way out of it--but I cannot; and I have been thinking and thinking all the night long. It is a case of conscience with me now."

"You cannot expect me to see it, dear," said Mrs. Hartley, rising from her chair. "It is simply incomprehensible, that you should first agree to wait a month, and then, after a few hours, insist on giving such a pointed refusal. Think, think, my darling!" she went on, laying a caressing hand on Lettice's shoulder. "Suppose that Brooke should feel himself insulted by such treatment. Could you be surprised if he did?"

Lettice buried her face in her hands, mutely despairing. Her punishment was very hard to bear, and the tears which trickled through her fingers showed how much she felt it. With an effort she controlled herself, and looked up again.

"I will tell him all," she said. "He shall be the judge. If he still wishes to renew his question in a month, I will hold myself to that arrangement. I shall claim nothing and refuse nothing; but if he voluntarily withdraws his offer, then, dear, you will see that there could be no alternative."

Mrs. Hartley bent to kiss her.

"I suppose that is all that can be done, Lettice. I am very sorry that my darling is in trouble; but if I could help you, you would tell me more."

Then she left the room, and Lettice went to her desk and wrote her letter.

"DEAR MR. DALTON,--When you asked me yesterday if there was any one to whom I had given my love, I said there was no one. I ought to have thought at the time that this was a question which I could not fairly answer. I am obliged now to confess that my answer was not sincere. You cannot think worse of me than I think of myself; but I should be still more to blame if I allowed the mistake to continue after I have realized how impossible it is for me to give you the answer that you desire. I can only hope that you will forgive me for apparently deceiving you, and believe that I could not have done it if I had not deceived myself. Sincerely yours,

"LETTICE CAMPION."

It was written; and without waiting to criticize her own phrases, she sent it to the Palazzo Serafini by a special messenger.

Brooke Dalton knew that he did not excel in letter writing. He could indite a good, clear, sensible business epistle easily enough; but to express love or sorrow or any of the more subtle emotions on paper would have been impossible to him. Therefore he did not attempt the task. He at once walked over to Mrs. Hartley's villa and asked to see Miss Campion.

He was almost sorry that he had done so when Lettice came down to him in the little shaded _salon_ where Mrs. Hartley generally received visitors, and he saw her face. It was white, and her eyes were red with weeping. Evidently that letter had cost her dear, and Brooke Dalton gathered a little courage from the sight.

She came up to him and tried to speak, but the words would not come.

Brooke was not a man of very quick intuitions, as a rule; but in this case love gave him sharpness of sight. He took her hand in both his own and held it tenderly while he spoke.

"There is no need for you to say anything," he said; "no need for you to distress yourself in this way. I have only come to say one thing to you, because I felt that I could say it better than I could write it. Of course, I was grieved by your note this morning--terribly grieved and--and--disappointed; but I don't think that it leaves me quite without hope, after all."

"Oh," Lettice was beginning in protest; but he hushed her with a pressure of his hand.

"Listen to me one moment. My last question yesterday was unwarrantable.

I never ought to have asked it; and I beg you to consider it and your answer unspoken. Of course, I should be filled with despair if I believed--but I don't believe--I don't conclude anything from the little you have said. I shall still come to you at the end of the month and ask for my answer then."

"It will be of no use," she said, sadly, with averted face and downcast eyes.

"Don't say so. Don't deprive me of every hope. Let me beg of you to say nothing more just now. In a month's time I will come to you, wherever you are, and ask for your _final_ decision."

He saw that Lettice was about to speak, and so he went on hastily, "I don't know if I am doing right, or wrong in handing you this letter from your brother. He gave it me before I left England, and bade me deliver it or hold it back as I saw fit."

"He knew?" said Lettice, trembling a little as the thought of her brother's general att.i.tude towards her wishes for independence and her friendship for Alan Walcott. "You had told him?"

"Yes, he knew when he wrote it that I meant to ask you to be my wife. I do not know what is in it; but I should imagine from the circ.u.mstances that it might convey his good wishes for our joint happiness, if such a thing could ever be! I did not make up my mind to give it to you until I had spoken for myself."

Lettice took the letter and looked at it helplessly, the color flushing high in her cheeks. Dalton saw her embarra.s.sment, and divined that she would not like to open the letter when he was there.

"I am going now," he said. "Edith and I leave Florence this afternoon.

We are going to Rome--I shall not go back to England until I have your answer. For the present, good-bye."

Lettice gave him her hand again. He pressed it warmly, and left her without another word. She was fain to acknowledge that he could not have behaved with more delicacy or more generosity. But what should she say to him when the month was at an end?

She sat for some time with Sydney's letter in her lap, wishing it were possible for her to give Brooke Dalton the answer that he desired. But she knew that she could not do it. It was reserved for some other woman to make Brooke Dalton happy. She, probably, could not have done it if she had tried; and she consoled herself by thinking that he would live to see this himself.

Sydney's handwriting on the sealed envelope (she noticed that it was Dalton's seal) caught her eye. What could he have to say to her in his friend's behalf? What was there that might be said or left unsaid at Mr.

Dalton's pleasure? She had not much in common with Sydney now-a-days; but she knew that he was just married, and that he loved his wife, and she thought that he might perhaps have only kindly words in store for her--words written perhaps when his heart was soft with a new sort of tenderness. Lettice was hungering for a word of love and sympathy. She opened, the letter and read:

"ANGLEFORD, Easter Tuesday.

"MY DEAR LETTICE,

"I am writing this at the close of a short country holiday at Brooke Dalton's place. You know that Brooke has always been a good friend to me, and I owe him a debt of grat.i.tude which I cannot easily repay.

"It would be impossible to express the pleasure with which I heard from him that he had become attached to my only sister, and that he was about to make her an offer of marriage. You would properly resent anything I might say to you in the way of recommendation (and I am sure that he would resent it also), on the ground of his wealth, his excellent worldly position, and his ability to surround his wife with all the luxuries which a woman can desire. I will not suggest any considerations of that kind, but it is only right that I should speak of my friend as I know him. The woman who secures Brooke Dalton for a husband will have the love and care of one of the best men in the world, as well as the consideration of society.

"I look forward, therefore, to a very happy time when you will be settled down in a home of your own, where I can visit you from time to time, and where you will be free from the hara.s.s and anxieties of your present existence. My own anxieties of late have been heavy enough, for the wear and tear of Parliamentary life, in addition to the ordinary labors of my profession, are by no means inconsiderable. And I have recently had some worrying cases. In one of these I was called upon to prosecute a man with whom you were at one time unfortunately brought into contact--Walcott by name. He was accused of wounding his wife with intent to do her grievous bodily harm, and it was proved that he almost murdered her by a savage blow with a dagger. There could not be a doubt of his guilt, and he was sentenced (very mercifully) to six months' hard labor.

That ill.u.s.trates the strange vicissitudes of life, for, of course, he is absolutely ruined in the eyes of all right-minded persons.

"Brooke Dalton will probably give you this when you meet, and I shall no doubt hear from you before long. Meanwhile I need not do any more than wish you every possible happiness.

"Believe me, your affectionate brother,

"SYDNEY."

Mrs. Hartley was busy in the next room, arranging and numbering a large collection of pictures which she had bought since she came to Florence, and thinking how very useful they would be at her Sunday afternoon and evening receptions, when she went back to London in October. That was the uppermost thought in her mind when she began her work, but Brooke's visit had excited her curiosity, and she was longing to know whether it would succeed in removing her friend's incomprehensible scruples.

Suddenly she was startled by a cry from the other room. It was like a cry of pain, sharp at the beginning, but stifled immediately. Mrs.

Hartley ran to the door and looked in. Lettice, with an open letter in her hand, was lying back in her chair, half unconscious, and as white in the face as the letter itself. A glance showed Mrs. Hartley that this letter was not from Brooke; but her only concern at the moment was for her friend.

Poor Lettice had been stunned by Sydney's blundering missive; and yet it was not altogether Sydney's fault that the statement of facts came upon her with crushing force. It was Mrs. Hartley herself who was mainly responsible for the concealment of what had happened to Alan; and she no doubt, had done her part with the best intentions. But the result was disastrous so far as her intrigue and wishes were concerned.

With a little care and soothing, Lettice presently recovered from the shock, at any rate sufficiently to stand up and speak.

"Read this," she said faintly to Mrs. Hartley, steadying herself against the table. "Is it true? Is Alan Walcott in prison? Did you know it?"

"Yes, my darling, I knew it!"

"And never told me? When was it?"

Lettice looked at her friend reproachfully, yet without a trace of anger.