"I will not reproach you for deserting me. Life is too brief for reproaches--when one longs to fill it with pleasanter things. But be kind to me! Give me the opportunity of finishing that broken sentence. I shall smoke a cigar on the terrace at eleven to-night.

If you are generous, wrap yourself up, and keep me company for ten minutes. I shall wait--and hope.

"DEEREHURST."

She read to the end, and stood for a s.p.a.ce staring at the large, straggling writing; at last, as if suddenly imbued with the power of action, she tore the letter across--tearing and retearing it into little strips; then, throwing the fragments on the ground, she turned and fled out of the room.

Milbanke's bedroom was on the same floor as her own, though separated from it by half the length of the corridor. Leaving her own apartment, she hurried towards it; and pausing outside the door, knocked softly and insistently. A delay followed her imperative summons; then Milbanke's voice came faint and nervous, demanding the intruder's name.

She answered; and a moment later the door was opened with a confused sound of shooting bolts.

Milbanke's appearance was slightly grotesque, as the opened door disclosed him, silhouetted against the lighted room. He was garbed in a loose dressing-gown; his scanty hair was disarranged; and there was an expression of alarm on his puckered face. But for once Clodagh was blind to these things. With a swift movement she entered the room, and closing the door, stood leaning against it.

"James," she said breathlessly, "you finished your business with Mr.

Barnard to-day, didn't you?"

Milbanke, suddenly conscious of her white face, began to stammer.

"Clodagh! my dear--my dear----"

But Clodagh waved his anxiety aside.

"Tell me!" she said. "It's finished, isn't it?"

"Yes!--yes! But, my dear----"

She threw out her hands in a sudden, vehement gesture.

"Then take me away!" she cried--"take me away! Let us go in the morning, by the very first train--before any one is up."

Milbanke paled.

"But, my dear," he said helplessly, "I thought--I believed----"

Clodagh turned to him again.

"So did I!" she cried--"so did I! I thought I loved it. I thought I loved it all--the music and the gaiety and--and the people. But I don't. I hate it!--I hate it!--I hate it!"

In a strangled sob, her voice gave way; and, with it, her strength and her self-control. She took a few steps forward; then, like a mechanical figure in which the mechanism has suddenly been suspended, she stopped, swayed a little and, dropping into the nearest chair, broke into a flood of tears--such tears as had shaken her four years ago, when she drove out of Carrigmore on the day of her wedding.

_PART IV_

CHAPTER I

The penetrating Florentine sunshine was enveloping the villa that stood upon the hill above San Domenico; but it was not the full, warm sunshine of late April that had opened the roses in the garden and deepened the shadows of the cypress trees nearly two years earlier, when Clodagh had dreamed of her visit to Venice. It was the cool sunlight of February, and it fell across the polished floors, and threw into prominence the many antique and curious objects that filled the rooms, with a searching clearness that almost seemed like a human scrutiny.

In a small salon that opened upon the terrace Clodagh sat at a bureau.

In front of her was a formidable array of letters and business papers, neatly bound into packets by elastic bands, and under her hand was spread a sheaf of unused, black-bordered note-paper.

Whether it was the mult.i.tude of her own thoughts that r.e.t.a.r.ded the task she had in hand, or a certain air of absolute stillness that seemed to brood over the villa, one could not say; but certain it is that for nearly half an hour she sat in an att.i.tude of abstraction, her fingers poised above the note-paper, the tip of her pen held against her lips.

At last, however, a new idea seemed born in her mind, for she laid down her pen, rose suddenly to her feet, and moving across the room, paused beside the window.

For a long, silent s.p.a.ce she stood at this closed window, her gaze wandering over the scene that custom had rendered so familiar,--the hillside, cut into characteristic tiers of earth, until it sloped downwards almost like a flight of steps, from which the grey olive trees and the black cypresses rose sharply defined in the brilliant atmosphere; at its foot, Florence, with its suggestion of dark-roofed houses and cl.u.s.tering spires; and beyond all, encircling all, the low chain of mountains, blue and purple in the sun. Quite suddenly, with a swift, impulsive movement, she unfastened the latch and threw the window open.

In the added radiance that poured into the room, she stood more distinctly revealed, and the slight changes that even two years can make became visible in her face and figure. The pose of her body and the carriage of her head were precisely as they had been, but her cheeks were a little thinner, and some of her brilliant colouring was gone; but the fact that would most speedily have appealed to one who had not seen her for the two years was the circ.u.mstance that she wore deep mourning--a mourning that lent an unfamiliar, almost a fragile air to her whole appearance.

That would have been the first impression; and then, as one studied her more closely, it would have been borne in upon one that these were mere outward signs--that the true, the real alteration lay not in dress, not in the thinness of her face nor in the unwonted pallor of her skin, but in the very curious expression with which she gazed out over the distant hills; the look of kinship--of comprehension--of that illusive, subtle sentiment that we call antic.i.p.ation, with which her eyes met the far-off sky line.

For many moments she stood as if fascinated by the sense of promise that breathed and vibrated in the spring air; then, at last, with a quickly taken breath, she turned away from the open window, and, recrossing the room, seated herself again at the bureau, picked up her pen, and with new inspiration began to write.

"LARRY--DEAR COUSIN,--

"I, the worst correspondent in all the world, am going to write you a long letter--because my heart is so full of thoughts that I must unburden it to some one who will listen. Who better than my friend--my brother--of the old dear, dear days?

"It was good of you and Aunt Fan to write me those two long affectionate letters; and I needed them. For though there was no horror in James's death, death itself is--and always must be--terrible to me. Terrible--but also very, very wonderful!

Wonderful beyond words, when one realises that somebody one has known as good and kind and unselfish--but ordinary, Larry, ordinary as oneself--is suddenly transformed into something infinitely wise and mysterious, with a mystery one can only think about and fear.

"One month ago, James was in his usual health, going about his little daily tasks, losing himself in his little daily interests.

And now he understands the million things that puzzle you and me and the rest of the world of living people!

"His death--as I told you in my first short note--was painless and quiet, and unselfish like his life. He held my hand and knew me to the very end, and spoke to me quite lucidly of his affairs half an hour before he died. And, Larry--I think he was happy! You cannot imagine what it is to be able to say that! Death brings so many regrets. It frightens me when I look back now over the years, and think of our marriage. It was so terribly, cruelly unwise. A man of his age, a girl of mine! And, knowing what I know now, the first years must have been very bitter for him. Since then, things have been better--and worse. Two years ago we were perilously near disaster--he and I--when something--it does not matter what--saved us both.

"How sincerely I thank G.o.d, now, that it was so. At the time I suffered horribly; but it was good for me. It made me see that duty is not merely a negative thing. And now it is all over--all over, like a dream that is past. I am as I was. I am free!

"I seem heartless to say that. I could not say it to any one except you--or Nance. And I even wonder if Nance could quite understand. I feel that she must be so very much younger than myself. But you will not misunderstand, Larry, will you? You will see that it isn't want of heart, but just the knowledge that there is a future--a future for me, who had ceased to believe in one!

"Just before I began this letter I stood for a long time at an open window, looking out over Florence, lying below me in the wonderful sunshine that comes to Italy in the spring; and quite suddenly, Larry, I thought of England in May. England in May! It seems to suggest a hundred, thousand things. Don't say I am disloyal! For, of course, I want to go home to Orristown; but not just yet--not just yet. I feel--I cannot quite explain it to you--just a little afraid of going back to Ireland. Just at the moment it is too full of memories. But I want to see England. I want to live in England.

"Yes; I _shall_ live in England--for the present at least. And you and Aunt Fan must come and stay with me; and then you will report on your stewardship! For, of course, you are still to manage Orristown--as well and capably as you have managed it during the last three years. I always think it was one of James's kindest actions to me to give that management to you, though I shall always regret that you and Aunt Fan will not make use of that big empty house. But what is the good of talking! The a.s.shlins are all disgustingly proud.

"I can see you smile as you read this, and perhaps I can hear you say: 'How like Clo!' I hope--oh, Larry, I hope I can!

"Give them all my love--Hannah, Burke, the dogs, and Polly. Dear, pretty Polly! How I crave sometimes for just one long, wild gallop.

She must be eight years old by now; and yet she looks as fit as ever--you said so in your letter of a month ago. Dear, pretty Polly!

"I can do very much as I like now, Larry, in every way. James has been more than generous. I am to have the interest on sixty thousand pounds, although I may not touch the capital. A wise precaution. Was there ever an a.s.shlin who could keep money? But, as it is, I shall be rich. Two thousand pounds a year! Why, it is wealth. And then again there is another thing in which James has been good to us. He has placed a thousand pounds to my credit, apart from my own money, which I am to give to Nance on her twenty-first birthday, or on her engagement, should she marry with my consent before she comes of age. Was it not a kindly, thoughtful act? But does it not seem incredible to talk about Nance--little Nance--being of an age when she might think of marrying? I often long to see her--and sometimes I feel ridiculously shy and a little bit afraid; it is so strange that we have never in all these years visited England, and that some plan of poor James's should always have prevented her spending her holidays with us--though, so far as that goes, Carrigmore was a more homelike place than Italy to spend them in.

"What is she really like? You say she has grown very pretty, but you never say more than that. Men don't realise how women crave for details. But I shall see her for myself in a few weeks. She leaves school next month, you know, and will join me at once. Before James's death she had been asked on a visit to America by the mother of a school friend of hers--a girl named Estcoit, who is leaving school on the same day as Nance. But now that is all changed. She writes begging me to let her come to me directly; and her letter has made me know that, beneath all the silly feelings of shyness and uncertainty, I too want her.

"So now I have said all. Now you see me as I am, Larry--more the old Clodagh than I have been for years. The Clodagh who remembers and loves you always, as her dear cousin--her dear, dear brother."

The letter ended unconventionally, without a signature; but the writing of the last lines was strong and bold, with a vigorous upward curve.