"I will."
She looked at the clock.
"It is four o'clock," she said. "Two hours and a quarter before the train leaves for Algeciras. Will you meet me on the platform? I had thought to spare myself--this. But you shall have the proof. I will not tell you of it, but I will show it to you to-morrow at Gibraltar."
She spoke now with great calmness. She had hit upon the means to persuade. She was convinced that she had, and he was afraid that she had.
"Very well," said he. "The 6.15 for Algeciras."
They travelled to Gibraltar that night. Miranda stayed at the Bristol, Charnock at the Albion; they met the next morning, and walked through the long main street. Here and there an officer looked at her with a start of surprise and respectfully raised his hat, and perhaps took a step or two towards her. But she did not stop to speak with anyone. It was two years since she had set foot within the gates of Gibraltar, and no doubt the stones upon which she walked had many memories wherewith to bruise her. Charnock respected her silence, and kept pace with her unobtrusively. They passed into the square with Government House upon the one side and the mess-rooms upon the other. Charnock sketched a picture of her in his fancies, the picture of a young girl newly-come from the brown solitudes of Suffolk into this crowded and picturesque fortress with the wonder of a new world in her eyes, and contrasted it with the woman who walked beside him, and inferred the increasing misery of her years. He was touched to greater depths of sympathy than he had ever felt before even when she had lain with her head upon her arms in an abandonment of distress; so that now the uncomplaining uprightness of her figure made his heart ache, and the sound of her footsteps was a pain. But of the most intolerable of all her memories he had still to learn. She led him into the little cemetery, guided him between the graves, and stopped before a headstone on which Charnock read:--
RUPERT WARRINER,
Aged 2 Years.
and the date of his birth and death.
The headstone was of marble, and had been sculptured with a poetic fancy; a boy, in whose face Charnock could trace a likeness to Miranda, looked out and laughed between the open lattices of a window.
They both watched the grave silently for a while. Then Miranda said gently, "Now do you understand? When Rupert was born, it seemed to me that here was a blossom on the thorn bush of the world. But you see the blossom never flowered. He died of diphtheria. It was hard when he died;" and Charnock suddenly started at her side.