"I can't take you now, child. But if Daisy should ask for you, or if there is anything under the sun that you can do for her, I will promise to let you know."

It was final, but she would not have it so. A sudden gust of anger caught her, anger against the man for whose sake she had one night shed so many bitter tears, whom now she so fierily hated. She still clung to Jim. She was shaking all over.

"What does it matter what Nick says?" she urged pantingly. "Why give in to him at every turn? I won't be left behind--just because he wishes it!"

She would have said more. Her self-control was tottering; but Dr. Jim restrained her. "My dear, it is not for Nick's sake," he said. "Come, you are going to be sensible. Sit down and get your breath. There's no time for hysterics. I must go across and speak to my wife before I go."

He looked at Nick who instantly responded. "Yes, you be off! I'll look after her. Be quick, man, be quick!"

But when Dr. Jim was gone, his impatience fell away from him. He moved round the table and stood before her. He was steady enough now, steadier far than she.

"Don't take it too hard," he said. "At least he died like a man."

She did not draw away from him. There was no room for fear in her heart just then. It held only hatred--a fierce, consuming flame--that enabled her to face him as she had never faced him before.

"Why did you let him go?" she demanded of him, her voice deep and pa.s.sionate, her eyes unwaveringly upon him. "There must have been others. You were there. Why didn't you stop him?"

"I stop him!" said Nick, and a flash of something that was almost humour crossed his face. "You seem to think I am omnipotent."

Her eyes continued to challenge him. "You always manage to get your own way somehow," she said very bitterly, "by fair means or foul. Are you going to deny that it was you who made him write that letter?"

He did not ask her what she meant. "No," he said with a prompt.i.tude that took her by surprise. "I plead guilty to that. As you are aware, I never approved of your engagement."

His effrontery stung her into what was almost a state of frenzy. Her eyes blazed their utmost scorn. She had never been less afraid of him than at that moment. She had never hated him more intensely.

"You could make him do a thing like that," she said. "And yet you couldn't hold him back from certain death!"

He answered her without heat, in a tone she deemed most hideously callous. "It was not my business to hold him back. He was wanted.

There would have been no rescue but for him. They needed a man to lead them, or they wouldn't have gone at all."

His composure goaded her beyond all endurance. She scarcely waited for him to finish, nor was she wholly responsible for what she said.

"Was there only one man among you, then?" she asked, with headlong contempt.

He made her a curious, jerky bow. "One man--yes," he said. "The rest were mere sheep, with the exception of one--who was a cripple."

Her heart contracted suddenly with a pain that was physical. She felt as if he had struck her, and it goaded her to a fiercer cruelty.

"You knew he would never come back!" she declared her voice quivering uncontrollably with the pa.s.sion that shook her. "You--you never meant him to come back!"

He opened his eyes wide for a single instant, and she fancied that she had touched him. It was the first time in her memory that she had ever seen them fully. Instinctively she avoided them, as she would have avoided a flash of lightning.

And then he spoke, and she knew at once that her wild accusation had in no way hurt him. "You think that, do you?" he said, and his tone sounded to her as though he barely repressed a laugh. "Awfully nice of you! I wonder what exactly you take me for."

She did not keep him in suspense on that point. If she had never had the strength to tell him before, she could tell him now.

"I take you for a fiend!" she cried hysterically. "I take you for a fiend!"

He turned sharply from her, so sharply that she was conscious of a moment's fear overmastering her madness. But instantly, with his back to her, he spoke, and her brief misgiving was gone.

"It doesn't matter much now what you take me for," he said, and again in the cracked notes of his voice she seemed to hear the echo of a laugh. "You won't need to seek any more protectors so far as I am concerned. You will never see me again unless the G.o.ds ordain that you should come and find me. It isn't the way of an eagle to swoop twice--particularly an eagle with only one wing."

The laugh was quite audible now, and she never saw how that one hand of his was clenched and pressed against his side. He had reached the door while he was speaking. Turning swiftly, he cast one flickering, inscrutable glance towards her, and then with no gesture of farewell was gone. She heard his receding footsteps die away while she struggled dumbly to quell the tumult of her heart.

CHAPTER XLIV

LOVE'S PRISONER

Late that evening a scribbled note reached Muriel from Dr. Jim.

"You can do nothing whatever," he wrote. "Daisy is suffering from a sharp attack of brain fever, caused by the shock of her cousin's death, and I think it advisable that no one whom she knows should be near her. You may rest a.s.sured that all that can be done for her will be done. And, Muriel, I think you will be wise to go to Mrs. Langdale as you originally intended. It will be better for you, as I think you will probably realise. You shall be kept informed of Daisy's condition, but I do not antic.i.p.ate any immediate change."

She was glad of those few words of advice. Her anxiety regarding Daisy notwithstanding, she knew it would be a relief to her to go. The strain of many days was telling upon her. She felt herself to be on the verge of a break-down, and she longed unspeakably to escape.

She went to her room early on her last night at Weir, but not in order to rest the longer. She had something to do, something from which she shrank with a strange reluctance, yet which for her peace of mind she dared not leave neglected.

It was thus she expressed it to herself as with trembling fingers she opened the box that contained all her sacred personal treasures.

It lay beneath them all, wrapped in tissue-paper, as it had pa.s.sed from his hand to hers, and for long she strove to bring herself to slip the tiny packet unopened into an envelope and seal it down--yet could not.

At last--it was towards midnight--she yielded to the force that compelled. Against her will she unfolded the shielding paper and held that which it contained upon the palm of her hand. Burning rubies, red as heart's blood, ardent as flame, flashed and glinted in the lamp-light. "OMNIA VINCIT AMOR"--how the words scorched her memory!

And she had wondered once if they were true!

She knew now! She knew now! He had forced her to realise it. He had captured her, had kindled within her--by what magic she knew not--the undying Against her will, in spite of her utmost resistance, he had done this thing. Above and beyond and through her fiercest hatred, he had conquered her quivering heart. He had let her go again, but not till he had blasted her happiness for ever. None other could ever dominate her as this man dominated. None other could ever kindle in her--or ever quench--the torch that this man's hand had lighted.

And this was Love--this hunger that could never be satisfied, this craving which would not be stifled or ignored--Love triumphant, invincible, immortal--the thing she had striven to slay at its birth, but which had lived on in spite of her, growing, spreading, enveloping, till she was lost, till she was suffocated, in its immensity. There could never be any escape for her again. She was fettered hand and foot. It was useless any longer to strive. She stood and faced the truth.

She did not ask herself how it was she had ever come to care. She only numbly realised that she had always cared. And she knew now that to no woman is it given so to hate as she had hated without the spur of Love goading her thereto. Ah, but Love was cruel!

Love was merciless! For she had never known--nor ever could know now--the ecstasy of Love. Truly, it conquered; but it left its prisoners to perish of starvation in the wilderness.

A slight sound in the midnight silence! A timid hand softly trying the door-handle! She sprang up, dropping the ring upon her table, and turned to see Olga in her nightdress, standing in the doorway.

"I was awake," the child explained tremulously. "And I heard you moving. And I wondered, dear Muriel, if perhaps I could do anything to help you. You--you don't mind?"

Muriel opened her arms impulsively. She felt as if Olga had been sent to lighten her darkest hour.

For a while she held her close, not speaking at all; and it was Olga who at last broke the silence.

"Darling, are you crying for Captain Grange?"

She raised her head then to meet the child's gaze of tearful sympathy.

"I am not crying, dear," she said. "And--it wouldn't be for him if I were. I don't want to cry for him. I just envy him, that's all."