I had been in the garden, and when I came in mother sat with it in her lap. There was a shade more trouble than before on her worn white face, whence the dainty tints had all fled in these hard weeks. Directly I came into the room I knew what the letter was. I had never had a letter from him—no, not a line. I don't remember that I had even seen his handwriting, but I knew whose the rugged uncompromising capitals were the moment I looked at them. I took the letter up and read it, and when I had read it I found some means of slipping it into my pocket; I wanted to keep it—it was the only letter I could ever have from him, but a strange love-letter truly. It was written in his curtest, most uncompromising style, saying what it had to say and no more. Somehow I was glad that father had never seen it; it did my friend such grave injustice. It made no sort of excuse for quitting the place as he did, it merely said that as he felt he was useless there, he had decided to accept a post in Australia, which would, however, oblige him to leave Knellestone without the usual warning. It enclosed the sum of three months' salary, which he would have been supposed to forfeit for leaving without notice. It gave no address, and left no message; that was all.
"It's very odd," said mother, looking at me as I read it, and slowly opening and shutting her spectacles in a nervous manner. "I don't at all understand it. But I suppose he had something better in view—and the farm is not what it was. It shows how one can be deceived in folk."
And that was my punishment. I was obliged to let people think that they had been deceived in him. It was on my tongue to tell mother what I could. Was it cowardice that kept me back, or was it that I scarcely knew what to tell? There seemed so little that was not bred of my own fancy—only I knew well enough that my fancy was right.
And as the time passed, I knew more surely than ever that my fancy was right. He had said in his letter that there was nothing to keep him in the old country, but if he had seen Joyce as I saw her, surely he would have guessed at my lie—he would have known that there was something to keep him!
Two days after the discovery of Trayton Harrod's letter my sister told me that she had broken off her engagement with Frank Forrester.
There had never been quite the same understanding as of yore between us two since that horrible scene of passion, when I had been so cruelly unjust to my poor Joyce. She would have forgiven me, no doubt, but I was too proud to invite it. That day, however, she told me quite simply that she had broken off her engagement.
"I ought never to have made it, Meg," said she. "I did not think it was wicked then; I liked him to love me; but now I think it was wicked. It may be wrong to depart from one's word, but—I can't marry him."
She spoke in a half-apologetic kind of way—as she had, no doubt, written to him. She had not seen those two figures pass along under the wall in the twilight, as I now remembered for the first time that I had seen them. But I said nothing; I was dumb. I think from that time forward I was dumb for a long time—dumb with remorse and the sense of my own utter helplessness—standing alone to see the river run by, which I had once fancied I could set in motion or stem at will.
But her face, though stained with tears, which mine was not, was calm, her blue eyes were serene and trustful as ever. Yet, ah me! how guiltily did I creep about her, how hungrily watch for every piece of news—for her!
But he was gone, and it was through my fault.