But then, why had he so suddenly hurried away from that pleasant life beside the still waters?

This was the question which was on her mind as the train ran into the station at Paddington. She got out of the carriage, and while her maid went to look after the luggage, she glanced down the platform for the footman. He came up to her in a moment and took her dressing-bag and jewel-case.

"The brougham is here, I suppose?" she said, as she walked down the platform.

It was at the entrance to the station, he told her.

She paused for a moment, and glanced back to see if there had been much luggage in the train which she had left--if her maid would be likely to be kept waiting for long. At that instant a porter, with a portmanteau on his shoulder and a Gladstone bag in his hand, hurrying up by the side of the train which was ready to depart from the next platform, shouted to a group of Eton boys who were blocking the way:

"By your leave, gents!"

She started and took a step to one side, and that instant was sufficient to make her aware of the fact that the portmanteau carried by the porter to the train which was about to leave for Maidenhead was Herbert Courtland's. There was no mistaking it. It bore on one end his initials and his private sign.

She took a few steps nearer the train by which she had come, and followed the porter with her eyes.

He put the portmanteau into the luggage van, and then returned with the Gladstone bag to the side of a compartment. She saw him place it in the network, and touch his cap as he received his _douceur_ from the pa.s.senger who sat at the door with an evening paper in his hand.

She saw that that pa.s.senger was Herbert Courtland.

She told the footman who stood beside her to take her bag and case to the brougham and then return to help her maid with the rest of the luggage. He followed her down the platform.

In a short time she was being driven home, her maid following with the luggage in another vehicle.

She did not begin to change her traveling dress immediately on retiring to her room. She did not even take off her hat. She stood at the window looking out over a scene very different from that which had been before her eyes every day during the previous week. After a quarter of an hour's listlessness at the window, she spent another quarter of an hour sitting motionless in a chair. Then she rose and looked at herself in a mirror that showed her herself from head to foot. She examined her feet with curious deliberation, and then looked with a critical side glance at the reflection of her face. (She could not fail to have noticed that it was unusually pale.) She removed her hat, surveyed herself once more, then, turning away with an exclamation of impatience, she crumpled up her hat with both her hands and flung it, just as a wicked child would have flung it, across the room.

"Let them both go together to perdition--to perdition--to perdition!"

she said with a bitterness that had never previously been in her voice.

"Let them go together. I have done my best for them--for her--for her. I give them up now for evermore."

After a minute or two of statuesque pa.s.sion she went across the room and picked up her bruised hat. She looked at it, turning it round in her hands. Then she dropped it suddenly, and flung herself upon the sofa, crying out in a whirlwind of tears:

"Oh, Ella, Ella, I would have saved you--I meant to save you, indeed! I would have done everything to save you--everything!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

I WONDER IF I EVER LOVED YOU UNTIL THIS MOMENT.

It was a rather tedious evening for Ella Linton after Phyllis had taken her departure. Why on earth, she asked herself, had she been such a fool as to lay out her plans to have this lonely evening? Then she remembered that two of her guests had meant to stay until Wednesday morning, but had received a letter necessitating their departure for town on Monday night. But this fact should not have condemned her to a solitary evening, Ella reflected. She should have been thoughtful enough to change her own plans to correspond with the change in the plans of her guests. A nice, quiet, contemplative evening beside the still waters may suit the requirements of some temperaments, but it was not just what Ella regarded as most satisfying to her mood of the hour. It was a long time since she had spent a lonely evening, and although she had now rather more food for contemplation than at any other period of her life, she did not feel contemplative.

Then it suddenly occurred to her to ask herself why, after all, should she be condemned to a contemplative evening? What was there to hinder her taking a train to town after she had dined? Once in town she knew that all prospect of contemplation would be at an end.

She rang her bell and told her maid that she had changed her mind in regard to staying another night at The Mooring; she would leave after dinner; wasn't there a train about nine from Maidenhead?

It was when she was about to go down to dinner that she heard the sound of wheels upon the gravel walk. Was it possible that her newly made plans might also be deranged? Was this a fresh visitor arriving by a fly from Maidenhead--she saw that the vehicle was a fly.

There was no one in the room to hear the cry of delight that she gave when she saw Herbert at the porch of the house, the driver having deposited his portmanteau and Gladstone bag at his feet.

He had returned to her--he, whom she fancied to be far away; he who had forsaken her, as she thought, as she feared, as she (at times) hoped, forever. He had returned to her. There was no one now to stand between them. He was all her own.

She flung off the dress which she was wearing,--it was her plainest evening gown,--and had actually got on another, a lovely one that she had never yet worn, before her maid arrived at her dressing room.

"Louise," she said, "send a message downstairs to show Mr. Courtland to his room, and mention that he will dine with me. Come back at once. I have got so far in my dressing without you; I can't go much further, however."

In a quarter of an hour she was surveying herself in her mirror just as Phyllis had been doing an hour sooner; only on her face was a very different expression from that which Phyllis had worn. Her eyes were brilliant as they never had been before, except once; her face was not pale, but full of soft color, as if she were standing beneath the shadow of a mighty rose-leaf with the sunlight above. Her neck and arms were of the same delicate tinge. Her smile she gave as she surveyed herself was a smile of triumph, very different from the expression on poor Phyllis'

features as she flung her hat across the room.

"Mine, mine, mine!" she whispered, nodding with a smile at the lovely thing so full of warm life that faced her with a smile. "He is mine--he has come back to me, I will keep him. I shall be able to keep him, I think."

She had scarcely entered the drawing room before he was beside her, and he had scarcely entered before a servant announced that dinner was served. They were seated at the dinner table before they had exchanged half a dozen words--before she had time to ask him why he had returned.

And at the table, with a servant at each end, what could they say?

Well, she gave in detail, with the accuracy of a railway time-table, the hours of the departure of the various guests, down to the last departed guest, who chanced to be Miss Ayrton. Yes, she was obliged to go up to town to be present at that important function which was to be given in the presence of Royalty, though, she, Mrs. Linton, was convinced that Phyllis would much prefer remaining in the midst of that exquisite quietude which seemed to be found only up the river. She had wanted her dear Phyllis to stay until the morrow, but poor Phyllis' sense of duty had been, as unfortunately it always was, too great for her inclination.

"Unfortunately?" said Herbert.

"Did I say unfortunately?" she cried. "How funny! I meant of course, unfortunately for her friends--for myself in this particular case.

But, after all, we had a delightful week together. It has done us all good--even you."

"Why the 'even'?" he asked, with a laugh.

"Oh, well, because you are not expected to feel the fatigues of a London season. And then you must remember that you had a yachting cruise which must have done you a world of good," she added, with a smile born of the mood which was on her--a mood of joy and laughter and daring. She felt that she could say anything she pleased to say to him now; she could have referred with a laugh to his running away on that strange cruise of his.

"Yes," he said, "it did me a great deal of good."

He spoke slowly, and her quick ear detected a tone of gravity in his voice. What could he mean? Oh, yes.

"I hope that that last phase of the mine will soon be settled," said she. "It was that which curtailed your cruise, you will remember."

"I certainly do remember."

"I hope the business will soon be settled one way or another. I don't think this running to Paris so frequently is good for Stephen. Haven't you noticed how poorly he has been looking of late?"

"He didn't seem to me to be particularly robust. But I think that he pulled himself together while he was here. Oh, yes! another week will see us free from this business."

"And with an extra million or so in your pockets."

"Well, something in that way."

That was how they talked while the servants were present--about business and money and matters that may be discussed in the presence of servants.

Then they went together into the drawing room. It was not yet dark enough for the candles to be lighted. The exquisite summer twilight was hanging over the river and the banks opposite, wooded from the water's edge to the summit. It was the hour of delicate blue touched with pink about the borders. The hour of purple and silver stars had not yet come.

She threw open one of the windows on its hinges, and in a moment the room was flooded with the perfume of the roses of the garden. She stood in the opening of the window and seemed to drink in the garden scents before they floated into the room. Then from some secret nestling place in the dark depths of the clipped hedge there came the even-song of a blackbird. It was replied to from the distance; and the silence that followed only seemed to be silence. It was a silence made vocal by the bending of a thousand notes--all musical. The blackbirds, the thrushes, the robins made up a chorus of harmony as soothing to the soul as silence. Then came the cooings of the wood pigeons. The occasional shriek of a peac.o.c.k was the only note out of harmony with the feeling breathed by the twilight.

She stood at the open window, her back turned to him, for some time.