"Miss Adair was blooming: fair, serene, self-possessed as ever. She did not show any sign of embarrassment, I can tell you. She did not even blush. She looked at me once or twice with the faint, well-bred indifference with which the well-brought-up young lady usually eyes a perfect stranger. It was Mr. Adair who did all the embarrassment for us. He turned purple when he saw me, and wanted his daughter to come away from the table. My ears are quick, and I heard what he said to her, and I heard also her reply. 'Why should I go away, dear papa! I don't mind in the least.' Kind of her not to mind, wasn't it? And do you think I was going to 'mind,' after that? I lifted up my head, which I had hitherto bent studiously over my soup, and began to talk to my neighbor on the other side, a stalwart English clergyman with a blue ribbon at his button-hole.
"But presently, to my surprise, Lady Caroline addressed me. 'I hope you have not forgotten me, Mr. Brand,' she said, quite graciously. I must confess, Janetta, that I stared at her. The calm audacity of the woman took me by surprise. She looked as amiable as if we were close friends meeting after a long absence. I hope you won't be very angry with me when I tell you how I answered her. 'Pardon me,' I said, 'my name is Wyvis—not Brand.' And then I went on talking to my muscular Christian on the left.
"She looked just a little bit disconcerted. Not much, you know. It would take a great deal to disconcert Lady Caroline very much. But she did not try to talk to me again! I choked her off that time, anyhow.
"And, now, let me make a confession. I don't admire Margaret Adair in the very least. I did, I know: and I made a fool of myself, and worse, perhaps, about her: but she does, not move one fibre of my heart now, she does not make it beat a bit faster, and she does not give my eye more pleasure than a wax doll would give me. She is fair and sweet and tranquil, I know: but what has she done with her heart and her brain? I suppose her mother has them in her keeping, and will make them over to her husband when she marries?... I know a woman who is worth a dozen Margarets....
"But I have made up my mind to live single, so long as Julian's mother is alive. Legally, I am not bound; morally, I can scarcely feel myself free. And I know that you feel with me, Janet. The world may call us over-scrupulous; but I set your judgment higher than that of the world. And all I can say about Margaret is that I fell into a passing fit of madness, and cared for nothing but what my fancy dictated; and that now I am sane—clothed in my right mind, so to speak—I am disgusted with myself for my folly. Lady Caroline and her daughter should have taken higher ground. They were right to send me away—but not right to act on unworthy motives. In the long nights that I have spent camping out under the quiet stars, far away from the dwellings of men, I have argued the thing out with myself, and I say unreservedly that they were right and I was wrong—wrong from beginning to end, wrong to my mother, wrong to my wife (as she once was), wrong to Margaret, wrong to myself. Your influence has always been on the side of right and truth, Janetta, and you more than once told me that I was wrong.
"So I make my confession. I do not think that I shall come back to England just yet. I am going to America next week. You will not leave the Red House, will you? While you are there I can feel at ease about my mother and my boy. I trust you with them entirely, Janetta; and I want you to trust me. Wherever I may go, and whatever I may do, I will henceforward be worthy of your trust and of your friendship."
This was the letter that Janetta read under the beech trees; and as she read it tears gathered in her eyes and fell upon the pages. But they were not tears of sadness—rather tears of joy and thankfulness. For Wyvis Brand's aberration of mind—so it had always appeared to her—had given her much pain and sorrow. And he seemed now to have placed his foot upon the road to better things.
She was still holding the letter in her hand when she reached the end of the beech-tree shaded walk along which she had been slowly walking. The tears were wet upon her cheeks, but a smile played on her lips. She did not notice for some time that she was watched from the gate that led into the pasture-land, at the end of the beech-tree walk, by a woman, who seemed uncertain whether to speak, to enter, or to go away.
Janetta saw her at last, and wondered what she was doing there. She put the letter into her pocket, dashed the tears from her eyes, and advanced towards the gate.
"Can I do anything for you?" she said.