FullReads

She willfully misconstrued his question. She took the torn pieces of envelope from her pocket and handed them to him. “These are yours,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Thank you again. But I do not see their value. One could almost think you were a detective, you are so armed.”

“Who is he? What is he to you?” she asked.

“He is an unlucky man, like myself, and my best friend. He helped me out of battle, murder and sudden death more than once, and we shared the same blanket times without number.”

“Where is he now?” she said in a whisper, not daring to look at him lest she should show how disturbed she was.

“He is in a hospital in New York.”

“Has he no friends?”

“Do I count as nothing at all?”

“I mean no others–no wife or family?”

“He has a wife, and she has a daughter. That is all I know. They have been parted through some cause. Why do you ask? Do you know him?”

“No, I do not know him.”

Do you know the wife? Please tell me, for at his request I am trying to find her, and I have failed.”

“Yes, I know her,” she said painfully and slowly. “You need search no longer. She will be at your hotel to-night.”

He started. Then he said: “I’m glad of that. How did you come to know? Are you friends?”

Though her face was turned from him resolutely, he saw a flush creep up her neck to her hair.

“We are not friends,” she said vaguely. “But I know that she is coming to see her daughter.”

“Who is her daughter?”

She raised her parasol toward the spot where Mildred Margrave stood and said, “That is her daughter.”

“Miss Margrave? Why has she a different name?”

“Let Mrs. Gladney explain that to you. Do not make yourself known to the daughter till you see her mother. Believe me, it will be better for the daughter’s sake.”

She now turned and looked at him with a pity through which trembled something like a troubled fear. “You asked me to forgive you,” she said. “Good-bye. Mark Telford, I do forgive you.” She held out her hand. He took it, shaking his head a little over it, but said no word.

“We had better part here and meet no more,” she added.

“Pardon, but banishment,” he said as he let her hand go.

“There is nothing else possible in this world,” she rejoined in a muffled voice.

“Nothing in this world,” he replied. “Good-bye till we meet again–somewhere.”

So saying, he turned and walked rapidly away. Her eyes followed him, a look of misery, horror and sorrow upon her. When he had disappeared in the trees, she sat down on the bench. “It is dreadful,” she whispered, awestricken. “His friend her husband! His daughter there, and he does not know her! What will the end of it be?”

She was glad she had forgiven him and glad he had the ring. She had something in her life now that helped to wipe out the past–still, a something of which she dared not think freely. The night before she had sat in her room thinking of the man who was giving her what she had lost many years past, and, as she thought, she felt his arm steal round her and his lips on her cheek, but at that a mocking voice said in her ear: “You are my wife. I am not dead.” And her happy dream was gone.

George Hagar, looking up from below, saw her sitting alone and slowly made his way toward her. The result of the meeting between these two seemed evident. The man had gone. Never in his life had Hagar suffered more than in the past half hour. That this woman whom he loved–the only woman he had ever loved as a mature man loves–should be alone with the man who had made shipwreck of her best days set his veins on fire. She had once loved Mark Telford. Was it impossible that she should love him again? He tried to put the thought from him as ungenerous, unmanly, but there is a maggot which gets into men’s brains at times, and it works its will in spite of them. He reasoned with himself. He recalled the look of perfect confidence and honesty with which she regarded him before they parted just now. He talked gayly to Baron and Mildred Margrave, told them to what different periods of architecture the ruins belonged, and by sheer force of will drove away a suspicion–a fear–as unreasonable as it was foolish. Yet, as he talked, the remembrance of the news he had to tell Mrs. Detlor, which might–probably would–be shipwreck to his hopes of marriage, came upon him, and presently made him silent, so that he wandered away from the others. He was concerned as to whether he should tell Mrs. Detlor at once what Baron had told him or hold it till next day, when she might, perhaps, be better prepared to hear it, though he could not help a smile at this, for would not any woman–ought not any woman to–be glad that her husband was alive? He would wait. He would see how she had borne the interview with Telford.