"That's the one point unexplained. I forgot to ask. She did not refer to it. She stood here breathing hard and quick, you say, before she entered the room--with all that appearance of surprise--she stood here! Mere remorse does not account for that, does not account for her manner. On her own showing it cannot account, since the remorse was only felt this afternoon. There is something more." He was talking enigmas to Miss Holt, who went into the parlour and left him in the patio to talk to himself if he would. She was not greatly interested in his relationship towards Miranda. However, Charnock was not the only person to talk enigmas to her that afternoon. She found Miranda standing just as Charnock had left her. Miranda remained standing, with any absent answer to Jane Holt's remarks, until the big outer-doors clanged to, and made the house tremble.
Then she started violently. The sound of those doors shook her as no word or look of Charnock's had done. Her ears magnified it. It seemed to her that the doors swung to from the east and from the west, clean across the world, shutting Charnock upon the one side, and herself upon the other. It seemed to her too that as they clanged together, her heart was caught and broken between them.
"You were wrong, Jane," she said. "There are men who would be friends if we would only let them. Possibly we always find it out too late; I only found it out this afternoon." The clock struck the hour as she was speaking. "Four o'clock; the train for Algeciras leaves at six-fifteen," she said.
CHAPTER XV
[IN WHICH THE MAJOR LOSES HIS TEMPER AND RECOVERS IT]
All that evening Miranda's imagination followed the 6.15 train from Ronda to Algeciras. She looked at the clock at half-past ten. The ferry would be crossing from Algeciras to Gibraltar, and no doubt Charnock was crossing upon it. She felt a loneliness of which she had never had experience. And when she woke up in the morning from a troubled sleep, it was only to picture some stately mail steamer marching out from Algeciras Bay. She was conscious to the full of the irony of the situation. If she had only met this man years ago, seven years ago--that regret was a continual cry at her heart, and not the least part of her loneliness was made up from her clear remembrance of the picture of herself which she had given him to carry away.
She ordered her horse to be brought round early that morning, and rode out past the hotel a few minutes before nine. Major Wilbraham saw her pass. He was down betimes as a rule when he stayed in a hotel, since it was his habit, as often as possible, to look over the letters which came for the different visitors. The mere postmark he had known upon occasion to give him quite valuable hints. There was only, however, a telegram for Charnock, which he genially offered to deliver himself and did deliver, running into Charnock's bedroom for that purpose. Charnock thanked him and read the telegram. It seemed to raise his spirits.
"Good news, old friend?" asked the Major.
"Well--interesting news," replied Charnock, as he lathered his face.
"Well, you shall give me it another time," said the Major, as he saw Charnock put the telegram in his pocket. "So long!"