"It was dreadful to listen," sighed the mother. "First, she was repeating: 'I am not afraid--I am not afraid of you any more!' Then she was begging him not to make her try to walk, because she could not stand. I can't think what he can have been doing to her, but I have made up my mind that, by hook or by crook, she must not go back to him.

The thing is: How to prevent it?"

The drops were standing upon the young man's forehead. He had had hints before, but this was the first time he had succeeded in being alone with Mrs. Mynors long enough to hear all.

"How could you--how could you have permitted it?" he broke out violently. "Such an inhuman sacrifice!"

"My dear Gerald, does the modern mother control her children? Oh, don't think I am saying a word to disparage my darling. I know she is a martyr; I know she sacrificed herself for us. But I implored her not to do so. If only----" She broke off. He waited, feverishly eager, and as she did not continue, broke out:

"Well, if only what?"

"If only she had never gone to London," murmured the mother in a low voice. "Then he would never have seen her, and she would never have seen--you!"

"Never have seen me?"

"Oh, I know it was not the first time you had met. But it was the fatal time. Poor innocent child! she gave you her heart, and you handed it back with a polite thank you. Did you not, dear boy?"

"Great heavens, Mrs. Mynors, do you know what you are saying? You are suggesting that Virgie loves me."

"But surely that is not news to you?" she said, with lifted brows, as one astonished at unlooked-for density of perception.

He turned impulsively away from her, leaning his arms upon the grey stone wall and gazing away into the dusk. Some moments pa.s.sed in a wild kind of silence. Then the castle warder called to them that he was closing the doors. Without a word the young man moved, walking at his companion's side through the little door in the wall, under the arch, out upon the ramp which descends past St. George's Chapel to the large gate. He was as white as a sheet.

Not a soul was in sight. They paused, gazing down upon the sunk garden which now blooms in the dry moat of the Round Tower. Suddenly Gerald burst into speech. Forgetting for the moment all that his father had told him of this woman, he poured out the story of how he had been overpersuaded, how his father--urging upon him the imprudence of such a match--had coaxed him away that last night of Virgie's stay, when the confession of his feeling was trembling on the tip of his tongue.

"That was what I did," he said. "I was just waiting. I knew of no danger to her. If I had had a hint, if you had sent me a line to tell me that she was being hunted. But all the same," he broke off, his eyes burning in his head, "all the same, to me it is inconceivable that any man, however sunk, could have been cruel to her! Afterwards he might--later, but not at first--not when he had but just acquired that perfect thing for his own! Oh, it makes me mad! I daren't think of it!

It's too incredibly ugly--too wild. Are you sure? You don't think those cries of hers that you overheard can have been delirium? It seems altogether outside the pale of possibility that he should have done anything but grovel at her feet!"

Mrs. Mynors had her lovely face averted. She sighed. "There is more in it than that, Gerald," she murmured in a low voice. "I fear it is worse than you think. Have you ever heard of such a thing as a secret maniac?

Do you know that there are men, outwardly sane, who go about the world like other people, but who have one single streak of insanity--a bee in the bonnet, as the vulgar saying has it?"

He looked sick with horror. "Do you mean that she is bound for life to a man who isn't sane?"

"Gaunt has had a sad life. I know his story. He thought himself badly used by a woman. It made a profound impression upon him. It is his fixed idea. When I heard my child's broken ravings, the awful thought flashed through my mind--has he some horrible idea of making Virginia pay for another woman's sins?"

"If so, he must be mad, raving mad. We could get him put into an asylum," hissed Gerald.

"Not so easily as you think. Such men are very cunning. You see, he has allowed her to come away from him. He is acting, as every one would say, a most magnanimous part. I and my orphan children are the creatures of his bounty. It would be difficult, indeed, to bring home to him what he may make her endure in private."

"Unbearable," muttered Gerald. "I hardly dare let my mind dwell upon it. But you are going merely upon what you overheard. She has said nothing to you of his being unkind?"

"She is far too proud. I judge by what she does not say. Her reticence to me, her mother, can have but one explanation. He has forbidden her, on pain of certain punishment, to say anything. I know that it is so. I am certain of it."

His burning eyes, searching through the twilight which gathered thickly about them, saw the dim figures of Tony and his sister advancing through the gateway. "There they are," he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. "We must drop this now, but mind, we must speak of it again. Something must be done. If all this is true, I swear she shall never go back to him. I'll see to that. She loves me! Oh, what a gigantic blunder life is!"

CHAPTER XXI

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

"_Take back the love you gave, I claim Only a memory of the same; With this beside, if you will not blame, Your leave for one more last ride with me._"--Browning.

For ten days more Virginia's life floated upon a summer sea. She had Tony, she had Pansy, she had Gerald. She was away from Gaunt, and his letters made no demand upon her. He never mentioned the date, or even alluded to the fact, of her return. She had, however, set herself a limit. When Pansy went to the seaside she must go back to her prison.

The nurse who was now in charge of the case would be permitted to accompany the child, so that there would be no valid reason for Virginia to go too. Mrs. Mynors, who was having the time of her life in London, though she grumbled incessantly at the need to keep her expenditure so rigorously within bounds, was not anxious for the move.

Her daughter, however, was scrupulously determined that it should take place at the earliest date which Dr. Danby would sanction. She was very grateful to her husband. Her grat.i.tude had taken the edge off the bitterness with which she regarded him. Her fear remained, but his present generosity could not but do something to salve the wound his cruelty had made. To take undue advantage of his kindness was what she would never suffer herself to do.

Yet, when the time of parting drew near, it became evident to every one that Pansy would fret so much at her sister's departure as to make it likely that her grief might react disastrously upon her frail returning health.

This distressed Virginia terribly. She hardly knew which way her duty lay. It seemed almost as if she must stay with the child until she was strong enough to be reasoned with. At least Gaunt's health would not suffer from her absence. Yet the situation galled her. Here they all were, living upon his bounty, while he waited alone in Derbyshire bereft of his newly made wife. Had she loved him, all would have been otherwise, she would have felt it natural that he should help her, and she would not have hesitated to choose the path of duty, even if absence from him had been a misery to her. As things stood, she was uncomfortably aware that, so far, she had not fulfilled her share of the contract. He had paid her price, but she was devoted, body and soul, to Pansy and not to him.

That night she cried bitterly when alone in bed, while the conflict raged in her heart; and strangely, that night, at Omberleigh, Gaunt had the illusion that he heard her sobbing, as he had heard her upon the night when she received the news of Pansy's danger. So vivid was the impression that he got up, opened the door of her room, and stood a long moment, in the moonlight, gazing at the smooth, empty bed and the dim outlines of the furniture, before he could realise that she was not there.

Next morning she wrote to him:

_I am in a difficulty. Pansy is making herself unhappy about going to the sea without me. She has fretted so that Dr. Danby spoke seriously to me yesterday, asking if I could not manage to stay a few days longer just to settle her into her new surroundings. We have found rooms very near the sea, not at Cliftonville, but at Worthing. The roads there are so nice and flat that she can be wheeled out upon the Parade every day, and the doctor says as soon as she is a little stronger she will lose this silly fancy about my leaving her. I am ashamed to mention it to you, when you have done and are doing so much. I will be guided by what you wish. I had arranged definitely to go back to Omberleigh on Monday.

If you think I had better keep to that date I will do so. If I may instead take Pansy to Worthing, and stay there with her till the following Friday, returning to you on Sat.u.r.day, I shall be most grateful, but I feel guilty in asking for it, when I have already made such large demands upon your patience._

The answer to this letter came by telegram:

_Stay as long as advisable.--Gaunt._

Tony brought this message round to the Home from Margaret Street in the course of the morning, and great, indeed, was the joy it caused. Pansy was a different creature when she learned that "that dear old trump of an Osbert was going to let Virgie come to Worthing."

There was a tea-party in the little invalid's room that afternoon to celebrate the occasion. Gerald Rosenberg was present. The journey was to be made in his car, and he thought he would take a week's holiday at Worthing, and have a run round the country thereabout.

It was a delightful plan, and in Virginia's eyes it had no drawbacks.

She was now wholly at ease with Gerald. Since that first day, he had asked no awkward questions, trenched on no dangerous ground. He had been the best of friends, and was apparently quite content to talk to her mother for long periods during which she and Tony roamed together.

Under his auspices the removal to Worthing took place most satisfactorily. The day was dull and chilly, but there was no rain, and Pansy's spirits never flagged.

For the first day or two following their arrival, there was so much to be done, the elder sister's time was so fully occupied in making all the arrangements that were necessary, that she hardly realised how time was flying. It was on Thursday morning that she awoke with a terrible sensation of depression, amounting to horror. She had dreamed of Gaunt.

This had happened to her twice, and only twice, before. Once, upon the night following their first wordless encounter at Hertford House. It had been an oddly vivid dream, producing a feeling of excitement which persisted after she awoke. The second occasion was at Omberleigh. It occurred--though she naturally was unaware of the fact--on the night during which her husband wandered through the park in an agony of remorse. That dream too had left an impression which seemed disproportionate. This last was, however, the most haunting of all.

In it she found herself searching through the house at Omberleigh, looking for Gaunt, who could not be found. She went upstairs to the garrets, where Mrs. Wells had once taken her, but the rooms seemed to have been altered. In her dream she said: "If I come to the room with the Sheraton furniture in it, I shall know where I am." She could not find it, however, and after descending stairs which were the stairs of the Hertford House Gallery, she ran along a pa.s.sage in search of the sitting-room she had been told she might call her own. That, too, had vanished; in its place was something pale, dim, and shapeless. All empty--Gaunt was not to be seen, and she had been made aware that it was most important that she should find him. She pa.s.sed out into the garden, in a wet mist which hid everything from her sight, and she dare not hasten for fear of stepping upon his dead body. Terror took her, and she tried, as one tries in dreams, to run. Her feet were rooted to the ground, she was incapable of movement; and out of the fog came Gaunt, with his eyes closed. He was repeating words, but in so low a tone that she could not immediately hear. She listened, first attentively, then eagerly, because she knew that it was so tremendously urgent that she should understand; and at last something reached her consciousness. "Are you coming? No. I said you would not come. I never dared to think you would. But you promised--you promised----"

She tried to say: "Here I am, do you not see me?" But she failed to articulate, and awoke with the sound of his muttered words ringing in her ears.

The morning scene upon which she looked out was gay. The sun shone lazily over a calm sea, there was no wind, and the seafront was already lively with the pa.s.sing figures of those who had been out for an early dip. When she went into Pansy's room she found that the child had slept without awakening the whole night through; and was greeted with a smile of content and freedom from pain which made her heart swell with joy and grat.i.tude.

This was Gaunt's doing! Without him, this marvellous recovery would have been impossible. It was he who had not only furnished the funds, but who had sent her to Dr. Danby, perhaps the one man in the world who could have achieved so wonderful a result. For the authorities, at first so grave, now began to talk of a cure. Lameness there would always be, but the nurse was certain that the power of locomotion would be recovered. Virgie knelt by the bed, her whole mind flooded with the poignant memory of her pitiful dream. "Oh, Pansy blossom," said she, "isn't it wonderful? What do we not owe to Osbert?"