His anxiety led him one day to stroll with a friend into the office of a shipowner who had some connection with the _Arizona_. Here he found an old sailor telling a story to which the clerks and the chief himself were listening with evident interest. Vivian inquired who he was. The answer made him start. John Mason, of the good ship _Arizona_, which I saw with my own eyes go down in eight fathoms o' water off Rocas reef.

Me and the mate got off in the boat, by a miracle, as you may say. All lost but us.

And forthwith he told the story of the wreck--as far as he knew it.

Vivian listened with painful eagerness, and sat for some little time in silence when the story was finished, with his hand shading his eyes.

Then he rose up and addressed the man.

"I want you to go with me to Scotland," he said, abruptly. "I want you to tell this story to a lady. She was to have been married to the Mr.

Heron of whom you speak as soon as he returned. Poor girl! if anything can make it easier for her, it will be to hear of poor Heron's courage in the hour of death."

He set out that night, taking John Mason with him, and gleaning from him many details concerning Percival's popularity on board ship, details which he knew would be precious to the ears of his family by-and-bye.

Mason was an honest fellow, and did not exaggerate, even when he saw that exaggeration would be welcome: but Percival had made himself remarked, as he generally did wherever he went, by his ready tongue and flow of animal spirits. Mason had many stories to tell of Mr. Heron's exploits, and he told them well.

Vivian was anxious to see the Herons before any newspaper report should reach them; and he therefore hurried the seaman up to Strathleckie after a hasty breakfast at the hotel. But at Strathleckie, disappointment awaited him. Everybody was out--except the baby and the servants. The whole party had gone to spend a long day at the house of a friend: they would not be back till evening.

Rupert was forced to resign himself to the delay. The man, Mason, was regaled in the servants' hall, and was there regarded as a kind of hero; but Vivian had no such distraction of mind. He had nothing to do: he had reasons of his own for neither walking out nor trying to read. He leaned back in an arm-chair, with his back to the light, and closed his eyes.

From time to time he sighed heavily.

He felt himself quite sufficiently at home to ask for anything that he wanted; and the glass of wine and biscuit which formed his luncheon were brought to him in the study, the room that seemed to him best fitted for the communication that he would have to make. He had been there for two or three hours, and the short winter day was already beginning to grow dim, when the door opened, and a footstep made itself heard upon the threshold.

It was a woman's step. It paused, advanced, then paused again as if in doubt. Vivian rose from his chair, and held out both hands. "Kitty," he said. "Kitty, is it you?"

"Yes, it is I," she said. Her voice had lost its ring; there was a tonelessness about it which convinced Rupert that she had already heard what he had come to tell.

"I thought you had gone with the others," he said, "but I am glad to find you here. I can tell you first--alone. I have sad news, Kitty. Why don't you come and shake hands with me, dear, as you always do? I want to have your little hand in mine while I tell you the story."

He was standing near the arm-chair, from which he had risen, with his hand extended still. There was a look of appeal, almost a look of helplessness, about him, which Kitty did not altogether understand. She came forward and touched his hand very lightly, and then would have withdrawn it had his fingers not closed upon it with a firm, yet gentle grasp.

"I think I know what you have come to say," she answered, not struggling to draw her hand away, but surrendering it as if it were not worth while to consider such a trifle. "I read it all in the newspapers this morning. The others do not know."

"You did not tell them?" said Rupert, a little surprised.

"I came to tell them now."

"You have been away? Ah, yes, I heard you talking about a visit to Edinburgh some time ago: you have been there, perhaps? I came to see your father--to see you all, so that you should not learn the story first from the newspapers, but I was too late to shield you, Kitty."

"Yes," she said, with a weary sigh; "too late."

"I have brought the man Mason with me. He will tell you a great deal more than you can read in the newspapers. Would you like to see him now?

Or will you wait until your father comes?"

"I will wait, I think," said Kitty, very gently. "They will not be long now. Sit down, Mr. Vivian. I hope you have had all that you want."

"What is the matter, Kitty?" asked Vivian, with (for him) extraordinary abruptness. "Why have you taken away your hand, child? What have I done?"

She made no answer.

"You are in trouble, Kitty. Can I not comfort you a little? I would give a great deal to be able to do it. But the day for that is gone by."

"Yes, it is gone by," echoed Kitty once more in the tones that never used to be so sad.

"It is selfish to talk about myself when you have this great loss to bear," he pursued; "and yet I must tell you what has happened to me lately, so that you may understand what perhaps seems strange to you. Am I altered, Kitty? Do I look changed to your eyes in any way?"

"No," she answered, hesitatingly; "I think not. But people do not change very easily in appearance, do they? Whatever happens, they are the same.

I am not at all altered, they tell me, since--since you were here."

"Why should you be?" said Rupert, vaguely touched, he knew not why, by the pathetic quality that had crept into her voice. "Even a great sorrow, like this one, does not change us in a single day. But I have had some weeks in which to think of my loss; small and personal though it may seem to you."

"What loss?" said Kitty.

"Is it no loss to think that I shall never see your face again, Kitty? I am blind."

"Blind!" She said the word again, with a strange thrill in her voice.

"Blind!"

"Not quite, just yet," said Rupert, quietly, but with a resolute cheerfulness. "I know that you are standing there, and I can still grope my way amongst the tables and chairs in a room, without making many mistakes: but I cannot see your sweet eyes and mouth, Kitty, and I shall never look upon the purple hills again. Do you remember that we planned to climb Craig Vohr next summer for the sake of the fine view? Not much use my attempting it now, I am afraid--unless you went with me, and told me what you saw."

She did not say a word. He waited a moment, but none came; and he could not see the tears that were in her eyes. Perhaps he divined that they were there.

"It has been coming on for some time," he said, still in the cheerful tone which he had made himself adopt. "I was nearly certain of it when I was here in January; and since then I have seen some famous oculists, and spent a good deal of time in a dark room--with no very good result.

Nothing can be done."

"Nothing? Absolutely nothing?"

"Nothing at all. I must bear it as other men have done. I am rather old to frame my life anew, and I shall never equal Mr. Fawcett in energy and power, though I think I shall take him as my model," said Rupert, with a rather sad smile, "but I must do my best, and I dare say I shall get used to it in time. Kitty, I thought--somehow--that I should like to hear you say that you were sorry.... And you have not said it yet."

"I am sorry," said Kitty, in a low voice.

The tears were falling over her pale cheeks, but she did not turn away her head--why should she? He could not see.

"I have been a fool," said Vivian, with the unusual energy of utterance which struck her as something new in him. "I am thirty-eight--twenty years older than you, Kitty--and I have missed half the happiness that I might have got out of my life, and squandered the other half. I will tell you what happened when I was a lad of one-and-twenty--before you were a year old, Kitty: think of that!--I fell in love with a woman some years older than myself. She was a barmaid. Can you fancy me now in love with a barmaid? I find it hard to imagine, myself. I married her, Kitty.

Before we had been married six weeks I discovered that she drank. I was tied to a drunken, brawling, foul-mouthed woman of the lower class--for life. At least I thought it was for life."

He paused, and asked with peculiar gentleness:--

"Am I telling you this at a wrong time? Shall I leave my story for another day? You are thinking of him, perhaps: I am not without thoughts of him, too, even in the story that I tell. Shall I stop, or shall I go on?"

"Go on, please. I want to hear. Yes, as well now as any other time. You married. What then?"

Could it be Kitty who was speaking? Rupert scarcely recognised those broken, uneven tones. He went on slowly.

"She left me at last. We agreed to separate. I saw her from time to time, and made her an allowance. She lived in one place: I in another.

She died last year."

"Last year?"

"Yes, in the autumn. You heard that I had gone into Wales to see a relation who was dying: that was my wife."

"Did Percival know?" asked Kitty, in a low voice.