"You've done your part," he said. "Now hear me do mine. I swear to you--before G.o.d--that I will never marry you unless you ask me to."

He bent with the words, and solemnly, reverently, he pressed his lips upon the hand he held.

Muriel waited, half-frightened still, and wholly awestruck. She did not know Nick in this mood.

But when he straightened himself again, the old whimsical smile was on his face, and she breathed a sigh of relief. With a quick, caressing movement he took her by the shoulders.

"That's over then," he said lightly. "Turn over and start another page. Go back to England, go back to school; and let them teach you to be young again."

They were his last words to her. Yet an instant longer he waited, and very deep down in her heart something that was hidden there stirred and quivered as a blind creature moves at the touch of the sun. It awoke a vague pain within her, that was all.

The next moment Nick had turned upon his heel and was departing.

She heard him humming a waltz tune under his breath as he went away with his free British swagger. And she knew with no sense of elation that she had gained her point.

For good or ill he had left her, and he would not return.

PART III

CHAPTER XVII

AN OLD FRIEND

"There!" said Daisy, standing back from the table to review her handiwork with her head on one side. "I may be outrageously childish, but if Blake fails to appreciate this masterpiece of mine, I shall feel inclined to turn him out-of-doors, and leave him to spend the night on the step."

Muriel, curled up in the old-fashioned window-seat, looked round with her low laugh. "It's snowing hard," she remarked.

Daisy did not heed her. "Come and look at it," she said.

The masterpiece in question consisted of an enormous red scroll bearing in white letters the words: "Welcome to the Brave."

"It never before occurred to me that Blake was brave," observed Daisy.

"He is so shy and soft and retiring. I can't somehow feel as if I am going to entertain a lion. He ought to be here by this time. Let's go and hang my work of art in the hall."

She slipped her hand through Muriel's arm, and glanced at her sharply when she felt it tremble.

"It will be good to see him again, won't it?" she said.

"Yes," Muriel agreed, but there was a little tremor in her voice as well.

Very vividly were the circ.u.mstances under which she had last seen this man in her mind that night. Eight months that were like as many years stretched between that tragic time and the present, but the old wild horror had still the power to make her blood turn cold, the old wound had not lost its ache. These things had made a woman of her before her time, but yet she was not as other women. It seemed that she was destined all her life to live apart, and only to look on at the joys of others. They did not attract her, and she had no heart for gaiety.

Yet she was not cold, or Daisy had not found in her so congenial a companion. But even Daisy seldom penetrated behind the deep reserve that had grown over the girl's sad young heart. They were close friends, but their friendship lay mainly in what they left unsaid.

For all her quick warmth, Daisy too had her inner shrine--a place so secret that she herself never entered it save as it were by stealth.

But something of Muriel's mood she understood on that bitter night in January on which they awaited the coming of Blake Grange, and her close hand-pressure conveyed as much as they pa.s.sed out together into the little hall that glowed so snugly in the firelight.

"He is sure to be frozen, poor boy," she said. "I hope Jim Ratcliffe won't forget to send the motor to the station as he promised."

"I am quite sure he never forgets anything," Muriel declared, with rea.s.suring confidence.

Daisy laughed lightly. "Yes, he's very dependable, deliciously solid, isn't he? A trifle domineering perhaps, but all doctors are. They rule us weak women with a rod of iron. I am a little afraid of Dr. Jim myself, and most unfortunately he knows it."

Muriel's silence expressed a certain scepticism that provoked another laugh from Daisy. She was almost frivolously light-hearted that night.

"It's a fact, I a.s.sure you. Have you never noticed how docile I am in his presence? I always feel as if I want to confess all my sins to him. I should like intensely to have his opinion upon some of them. I think it would do me good."

"Then why not ask for it?" suggested Muriel.

"For the reason aforementioned--a slavish timidity." Daisy broke off to carol a few bars of a song. "I've known the Ratcliffe family ever since I became engaged to Will," she said presently. "Jim Ratcliffe, you know, was left his guardian, and he was always very good to him.

Will made his home with them and he and Nick are great pals, just like brothers. I should think Dr. Jim had his hands full with the two of them." Again Daisy stopped to sing. Muriel was stooping over the fire.

It was seldom that Nick's name was mentioned between them, though the fact that Daisy had placed herself and her baby in the hands of his half-brother formed a connecting link which could not always be ignored. She always dropped into silence when a reference was made to him. Not in the most casual conversation had Daisy ever heard her utter his name.

Having successfully fixed her message of welcome in a prominent position, she joined the girl in front of the fire. Her face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling. Muriel thought that she had never seen her look so well or so happy.

"You're quite excited," she said.

Daisy put up a hand to her hot cheek. "Yes, isn't it absurd? I hope Dr. Jim won't come with him, or he will be cross. But I can't help it.

Blake and I have been chums all our lives, and of course I am glad to see him after all this while. So nice, too, not to have Lady Ba.s.sett looking on."

There was a spice of venom in this, over which Muriel smiled in her sad way.

"Does she disapprove?" she asked.

Daisy nodded impatiently. "She chose altogether to overlook the fact that we are first cousins. It was intolerable. But--" again came her light laugh--"everything is intolerable till you learn to shrug your shoulders and laugh. Hark! Surely I heard something!"

Both listened intently. Footsteps were approaching the door. Daisy sprang to open it.

But it was only the evening post, and she came back holding a letter with a very unwonted expression of disappointment.

"From Will," she said. "I forgot it was mail night. I don't suppose there is anything very exciting in it."

She pushed the flimsy envelope into the front of her dress and fell again to listening.

"Can he have missed the train? Surely it's getting very late. A fog on the line perhaps. No! What's that? Ah! It really is this time. That's the horn, and, yes, Jim Ratcliffe's voice."

In a moment she had the door open again, and was out upon the step crying welcome to her guest.

Muriel crouched a little lower over the fire. Her hands were fast gripped together. It was more of an ordeal than she had thought it possibly could be.

An icy blast blew in through the open door, and she heard Dr.

Ratcliffe's voice, sharp and curt, ordering Daisy back into the house. Then came another voice, slow and soft as a woman's, and for an instant Muriel covered her face, overwhelmed by bitter memory.