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‘When did you p-p-part from him?’ she asked, her nether lip starting off quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her speech. She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her eyes out.

‘Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.’

‘What! he has actually gone past my gates?’

‘Yes. When we got to them–handsome gates they are, too, the finest bit of modern wrought-iron work I have seen–when we came to them we stopped, talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-bye and went on. The truth is, he’s a little bit depressed just now, and doesn’t want to see anybody. He’s a very good fellow, and a warm friend, but a little uncertain and gloomy sometimes; he thinks too much of things. His poetry is rather too erotic and passionate, you know, for some tastes; and he has just come in for a terrible slating from the — Review that was published yesterday; he saw a copy of it at the station by accident. Perhaps you’ve read it?’

‘No.’

‘So much the better. O, it is not worth thinking of; just one of those articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of subscribers upon whom the circulation depends. But he’s upset by it. He says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can stand a fair attack, he can’t stand lies that he’s powerless to refute and stop from spreading. That’s just Trewe’s weak point. He lives so much by himself that these things affect him much more than they would if he were in the bustle of fashionable or commercial life. So he wouldn’t come here, making the excuse that it all looked so new and monied–if you’ll pardon–‘

‘But–he must have known–there was sympathy here! Has he never said anything about getting letters from this address?’

‘Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy–perhaps a relative of yours, he thought, visiting here at the time?’

‘Did he–like Ivy, did he say?’

‘Well, I don’t know that he took any great interest in Ivy.’

‘Or in his poems?’

‘Or in his poems–so far as I know, that is.’

Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in their writer. As soon as she could get away she went into the nursery and tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing the children, till she had a sudden sense of disgust at being reminded how plain-looking they were, like their father.

The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived from her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not himself. He made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the society of Ella’s husband, who also took a great fancy to him, and showed him everywhere about the neighbourhood, neither of them noticing Ella’s mood.

The painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sitting upstairs alone one morning, she glanced over the London paper just arrived, and read the following paragraph:-

‘SUICIDE OF A POET

‘Mr. Robert Trewe, who has been favourably known for
some years as one of our rising lyrists, committed
suicide at his lodgings at Solentsea on Saturday evening
last by shooting himself in the right temple with a
revolver. Readers hardly need to be reminded that
Mr. Trewe has recently attracted the attention of a
much wider public than had hitherto known him, by his
new volume of verse, mostly of an impassioned kind,
entitled “Lyrics to a Woman Unknown,” which has been
already favourably noticed in these pages for the
extraordinary gamut of feeling it traverses, and
which has been made the subject of a severe, if not
ferocious, criticism in the — Review. It is
supposed, though not certainly known, that the article
may have partially conduced to the sad act, as a copy
of the review in question was found on his writing-table;
and he has been observed to be in a somewhat depressed
state of mind since the critique appeared.’