"Yes," said Pansy, turning her head eagerly, "do you know, Virgie, I was just thinking about that. Nurse talked to me a bit yesterday. She said I must not be selfish. She said how good you had been to sacrifice so much of your time to me; and how miserable it is for Osbert all alone at Omberleigh. I feel rather ashamed of myself, darling, and I can see quite plainly that I must let you go."

"Oh, Pansy!" cried Virginia brokenly, seeing her way thus unexpectedly made clear. Was she glad or sorry? Her imagination took a peep into the future, and for a minute sheer fright paralysed her. Then her dream floated before her, and she almost heard the words: "Are you coming?

You promised! You promised!"

Yes, she was coming. She would keep her promise, as she had always intended; but now, for the first time, she faced the terror of it. Once away from her gaoler, in the insistence of the present moment, she had been able to forget. Other things had filled her heart. Apprehension for Pansy's safety had blotted out apprehension for Virginia's happiness. Now with vehemence her panic fear resurged.

Down in the sitting-room, Mrs. Mynors, daintily attired in seaside raiment and white shoes, had just rung for breakfast. Tony and Gerald, who had been together for a swim, walked past under the window. Gerald stopped and called up that he was going along to his hotel for breakfast, and would be back in an hour, decently attired.

"Come in and have some breakfast with us, just as you are," urged Mrs.

Mynors, leaning from the open cas.e.m.e.nt.

"Yes, yes," cried Tony, gripping his arm joyfully.

"Don't mind if I do," answered Gerald, and ascended the stairs leisurely, while the boy dashed up to a higher floor, to put down his towels. "Tony met a pal down on the sands," remarked Rosenberg, as he shook hands with Virginia's mother. "I have taken two tickets on the _char-a-banc_ for them to go to Arundel. If you will stay with Pansy the arrangements are quite complete."

"That's a splendid idea," replied Mrs. Mynors with satisfaction. "You are a good general, Gerald."

He looked somewhat doubtful, as though a cloud pa.s.sed over his mood.

"I hate it," he said, "but I must do something. If I don't, she will go back to that crazy beast to-morrow as sure as the sun rises, and what can we do then?"

"My dear Gerald, why do you say that you hate it? You are not going to do anything to which anybody could take exception!"

"No, but I am going to trick her with a put-up job. If she ever found that out she would dislike it. I have seen so much of her lately, and her sincerity and simplicity are almost terrible."

Virgie's mother smiled rather superciliously. "Yet she can keep her own counsel," she remarked incisively. "I have done all that I knew to secure her confidence, and never one word has she let slip. But for the fact that she never mentions him and will not let me see letters from him, I should hardly suspect----"

"You are sure?" He turned from the window with intent expression.

"Remember, I am going almost entirely upon what you tell me----"

"Gerald, it seemed to me that I must have some certainty, and I did a thing which you will probably condemn. I looked at a letter from him to her, which was accidentally left accessible. I made a copy of it to show you. This is it, word for word. There was no more."

He grew scarlet. The pretty woman was approaching him with the bit of paper. Was it taking an unfair advantage of Virgie to steal a march upon her loyalty thus? He told himself that the end justified the means. He was too deep in love now. He could not draw back. He took the paper and read:

Omberleigh.

Tuesday.

_Yours of 5th duly recd. Glad journey satisfactorily accomplished.

Rooms seem reasonable. Suppose Mrs. M. will go back to Wayhurst in a few days, leaving child in charge of nurse. Trust you have done as I ordered you with regard to m.c. This is important.--O. G._"

"That is all--absolutely all--that was written on the sheet of paper,"

murmured Mrs. Mynors, watching him read.

"What is m.c., do you know?"

"Have no idea. A nice letter for a man to write to his few weeks'

bride, is it not?"

"It shows them to be on very peculiar terms," he admitted, with knit brows. "Yes, you must be right. The man is a bit cracked. Was there no beginning to the letter?"

"Nothing."

"Yet you think there is no chance of our being able to get him certified as of unsound mind?"

"Not the least; because he is very sane, except on this point. Have you asked Mr. Ferris what he thinks of him?"

"Ferris thinks him most able. Says he is the best magistrate in the district. They all down there seem to suppose that he is quite devoted to his wife. They laugh at him as an old bachelor hopelessly in love."

"That letter is the letter of a man in love, is it not?"

Gerald shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, I have been extremely careful to keep off the subject with her," he said. "There is one thing, however, which makes me horribly suspicious that you may be right--that he is being actually unkind to her. I mean this. She seems to believe that, when she leaves here, it is final. Now and then, when she is off her guard, she seems to a.s.sume that she will never see any of us again. I did what amounted to some pretty open fishing for an invitation to Omberleigh the other day. She was wholly unresponsive."

"She did admit to me, in one letter, that she did very wrong to marry him," slowly said Mrs. Mynors.

"She did?" he cried quickly.

"She practically admitted that her marriage was a failure as far as she was concerned. I will show you that bit of the letter, though most of it is private. I have it here."

Upon his eager a.s.sent she produced that letter from Virginia, which Gaunt had intercepted, and read a paragraph to him:

_... What I have done is wrong. I know that now. I half knew it all the time. But what else was there for me to do? I believe G.o.d knows I did it for the best. I was at the end of my own strength; I was at the end of all our money. I had you all dependent upon me, and I knew I was going to break down._

_I felt I had to save you, and, Oh, mother, you can't, you simply must not deny that I have done that!..._

Mrs. Mynors glanced at the young man's face. It was set and hard.

"You should have shown me that before. I think it conclusive," said he.

"Only a most unhappy woman could have written so." He broke off with a catch in his breath. "And to think that I had failed her, that she was in those desperate straits and I never knew! Oh, ye G.o.ds, how blind we are! But you see, don't you, that the fact of my deserting her then makes it more inc.u.mbent upon me to save her now, if I can? Mad or sane, there can be no doubt that the brute must be desperately jealous. We only want suspicious circ.u.mstances and somebody who will be sure to mention them to him. If I mistake not, Mr. Ferris is the very man for our purpose. The fact that he himself admires Virgie to the point of fatuity will give the necessary edge to his malice."

"Have you heard from him? He is coming to-day?"

"Yes, that's all right," replied Gerald hastily. "No more now; I hear her on the stairs."

Virginia came in. Happiness and returning health together had made her radiant. She wore to-day a pale mauve frock, and a hat trimmed with a garland of mauve and faint blue flowers. Like Mr. Bent on another occasion, Gerald found himself distracted with the wonder as to which of the two colours matched her eyes.

"What a day!" she said. "Oh, what a heavenly blue day, isn't it? Have you come to breakfast, Gerald? How nice!"

"Gerald is afraid he may be obliged to go back to town to-morrow,"

remarked her mother, as they sat down to table. "He wants to have one good day's motoring for the last, and as the driving does you so much good, I have arranged to stay with Pansy and leave you free to go with him."

"Tony and I! Oh, how splendid!" cried Virgie, sparkling. "I, too, must leave to-morrow, and I want to have a really delightful day for the last." She broke off a little abruptly, afraid lest what she said might be by implication uncomplimentary to her husband. Both her hearers remarked it, and they exchanged glances.