"Indeed it does. It affects me so far, that it alters the whole course of my life. In spite of everything that has seemed to come between us, I have never allowed myself to think of our engagement as at an end.

The parcel you sent me the other day is unopened; if you do not open it yourself no one ever shall. Whatever _you_ may do, I cannot break faith. You ought to know me better than to misinterpret a few foolish and hasty words, and appearances that had a meaning you should have understood. The time has come now for putting an end to those misconceptions."

"They no longer concern me. Please to speak of something else."

"You must, at all events, understand my position before we part. This morning I was as firmly resolved as ever to risk everything, to renounce the aid of my relatives if it must be and face poverty for the sake of art. Now all is changed. I shall accept my step-father's offer, and all its results becoming, if it can't be helped, a mere man of business. I do this because of my sacred duties to _you_. As an artist, there's no telling how long it might be before I could ask you again to be my wife; as a man of business, I may soon be in a position to do so.

Don't interrupt me, I entreat! It is no matter to me if you repulse me now, in your anger. I consider the engagement as still existing between us, and, such being the ease, it is plainly my duty to take such steps as will enable me to offer you a home. By remaining an artist, I should satisfy one part of my conscience, but at the expense of all my better feelings; it might even be supposed--though, I trust, not by you--that I made my helplessness an excuse for forgetting you when most you needed kindness. I shall go back to England, and devote myself with energy to the new task, however repulsive it may prove. Whether you think of me or not, I do it for your sake; you cannot rob me of that satisfaction. Some day I shall again stand before you, and ask you for what you once promised. If then you refuse--well, I must bear the loss of all my hopes."

"You may direct your life as you choose," Madeline replied scornfully, "but you will please to understand that I give you no encouragement to hope anything from me. I almost believe you capable of saying, some day, that you took this step because I urged you to it. I have no interest whatever in your future; our paths are separate. Let this be the end of it."

But it was very far from the end of it. When the carriage stopped at Mrs. Gluck's, mutual reproaches were at their height.

"You shall not leave me yet, Madeline," said Clifford, as he alighted.

"Come to the other side of the road, and let us walk along for a few minutes. You shall not go in, if I have to hold you by force."

Madeline yielded, and in the light of the moon they walked side by side, continuing their dialogue.

"You are heartless! You have played with me from the first."

"If so, I only treated you as you thought to treat me."

"That you can attribute such baseness to me proves how incapable you are of distinguishing between truth and falsehood. How wretchedly I have been deceived in you!"

From upbraiding, he fell to lamentation. His life was wrecked; he had lost his ideals; and all through her unworthiness. Then, as Madeline was still unrelenting, he began to humble himself. He confessed his levity; he had not considered the risk he ran of losing her respect; all he had done was in pique at her treatment of him. And in the end he implored her forgiveness, besought her to restore him to life by accepting his unqualified submission. To part from her on such terms as these meant despair; the consequences would be tragic. And when he could go no further in amorous supplication, when she felt that her injured pride had exacted the uttermost from his penitence, Madeline at length relented.

"Still," she said, after his outburst of grat.i.tude, "don't think that I ask you to become a man of business. You shall never charge me with that. It is your nature to reproach other people when anything goes wrong with you; I know you only too well. You must decide for yourself; I will take no responsibility."

Yes, he accepted that; it was purely his own choice. Rather than lose her, he would toil at any most ign.o.ble pursuit, amply repaid by the hope she granted him.

They had walked some distance, and were out of sight of the Mergellina, on the ascending road of Posillipo, all the moonlit glory of the bay before them.

"It will be long before we see it again," said Madeline, sadly.

"We will spend our honeymoon here," was Clifford's hopeful reply.

CHAPTER XVI

LETTERS

On the thirteenth day after the flight from Capri, Edward Spence, leaving the villa for his afternoon walk, encountered the postman and received from him three letters. One was addressed to Ross Mallard, Esq., care of Edward Spence, Esq.; another, to Mrs. Spence; the third, to Mrs. Baske. As he reascended the stairs, somewhat more quickly than his wont, Spence gave narrow attention to the handwriting on the envelopes. He found Eleanor where he had left her a few minutes before, at the piano, busy with a difficult pa.s.sage of Brahms. She looked round in surprise, and on seeing the letters started up eagerly.

"Do you know Elgar's hand?" Spence asked. "These two from London are his, I should imagine. This for you is from Mrs. Lessingham, isn't it?"

"Yes; I think this is the news, at last," said Eleanor, inspecting Mrs.

Baske's letter, not without feminine emotion. "I'll take it to her.

Shall you go over with the other?"

"He'll be here after dinner; the likelihood is that I shouldn't find him."

"Occasionally--very occasionally--you lack tact, my husband. He would hardly care to open this and read it in our presence."

"More than occasionally, my dear girl, you remind me of the woman whose price is above rubies. I'll go over and leave it for him at once. Just to show the male superiority, however, I shall be careful to make my walk a few minutes longer than usual--a thing of which you would be quite incapable whilst the contents of Miriam's letter were unknown to you."

Alone again, Eleanor sent the letter to Miriam's room by a servant, and with uncertain fingers broke the envelope of that addressed to herself.

Already she had heard once from Mrs. Lessingham, who ten days ago left Naples to join certain friends in Rome; the first hurried glance over the present missive showed that it contained no intelligence. She had scarcely begun to read it attentively, when the door opened and Miriam came in.

Her face was pale with agitation, and her eyes had the strangest light in them; to one who knew nothing of the circ.u.mstances, she would have appeared exultant. Eleanor could not but gaze at her intently.

"From Reuben!"

"Yes." Miriam suppressed her voice, and held out the sheet of note-paper, which fluttered. "Read it."

The body of the letter was as follows:--

"I hope we have caused you no anxiety; from the first moment when our departure was known, you must have understood that we had resolved to put an end to useless delay. We travelled to London as brother and sister, and to-day have become man and wife. The above will be our address for a short time; we have not yet decided where we shall ultimately live.

"By this same post I write to Mallard, addressed to him at the villa. I hope he has had the good sense to wait quietly for news.

"Cecily sends her love to you--though she half fears that you will reject it. I cannot see why you should. We have done the only sensible thing, and of course in a month or two it will be just the same, to everybody concerned, as if we had been married in the most foolish way that respectability can contrive. Let us hear from you very soon, dear sister. We talk much of you, and hope to have many a bright day with you yet--more genuinely happy than that we spent in tracking out old Tiberius."

Eleanor looked up, and again was struck with the singular light in her cousin's eyes.

"Well, it only tells us what we antic.i.p.ated. Of course he made false declarations. If Mr. Mallard were really as grim as he sometimes looks, the result to both of them might be unpleasant."

"But the marriage could not be undone?" Miriam asked quickly.

"Oh no. Scarcely desirable that it should be."

Miriam took the letter, and in a few minutes went back again to her room.

At nine o'clock in the evening, the Spences, who sat alone, received the foreseen visit from Mallard. They welcomed him silently. As he sat down, he had a smile on his face; he drew a letter deliberately from his pocket, and, without preface, began to read it aloud, still in a deliberate manner.

"Let me first of all make a formal announcement. We have this morning been married by registrar's licence. We intend to live for a few weeks at this present address, where we have taken some furnished rooms until better arrangements can be made. I lose no time in writing to you, for of course there is business between us that you will desire to transact as soon as may be.

"In obtaining the licence, I naturally gave false information regarding Cecily's age; this was an inevitable consequence of the step we had taken. You know my opinions on laws and customs: for the mult.i.tude they are necessary, and an infraction of them by the average man is, logically enough, called a sin against society; for Cecily and myself, in relation to such a matter as our becoming man and wife, the law is idle form. Personally, I could have wished to dispense with the absurdity altogether, but, as things are, this involves an injustice to a woman. I told my falsehoods placidly, for they were meaningless in my eyes. I have the satisfaction of knowing that you cannot, without inconsistency, find fault with me.

"And now I speak as one who would gladly be on terms of kindness with you. You know me, Mallard; you must be aware how impossible it was for me to wait two years. As for Cecily, her one word, again and again repeated on the journey, was, 'How unkind I shall seem to them!' and I know that it was the seeming disrespect to you which most of all distressed her. For her sake, I make it my pet.i.tion that you will let the past be past. She cannot yet write to you, but is sad in the thought of having incurred your displeasure. Whatever you say to me, let it be said privately; do not hurt Cecily. I mentioned 'business; the word and the thing are equally hateful to me. I most sincerely wish Cecily had nothing, that the vile question of money might never arise.

Herein, at all events, you will do me justice; I am no fortune-hunter.

"If you come to London, send a line and appoint a place of meeting. But could not everything be done through lawyers? You must judge; but, again I ask it, do not give Cecily more pain."

The listeners were smiling gravely. After a silence, the letter was discussed, especially its second paragraph. Mallard was informed of the note which Miriam had received.

"I shall go to-morrow," he said, "and 'transact my business.' On the whole, it might as well be done through lawyers, but I had better be in London."