"Worse," said Cecily, "if you mean that then he might——"
"Yes, worse," moaned Mina. "It's hopeless every way. And I believe he's fond of you."
A scornful smile was Cecily's only but sufficient answer.
"And you love him!" Mina's sorrow made her forget all fear. She said in this moment what she had never before dared to say. "Oh, of course you do, or you'd never have told him he mustn't come to Blent. But he won't understand that—and it would make no difference if he did, I suppose! Oh, you Tristrams!" Again her old despairing cry of revolt and bewilderment was wrung from her by the ways of the family with whose fate she had become so concerned. Southend had felt much the same thing over the matter of Harry and the viscounty. "So it all ends, it all ends—and we've got to go back to Blent!"
"Yes, I love him," said Cecily. "That evening in the Long Gallery—the evening when he gave me Blent—do you know what I thought?" She spoke low and quickly, lying back quite still in the attitude that Addie Tristram had once made her own. "I watched him, and I saw that he had something to say, and yet wouldn't say it. I saw he was struggling. And
I watched, how I watched! He was engaged to Janie Iver—he had told me that. But he didn't love her—yes, he told me that too. But there was something else. I saw it. I had come to love him then already—oh, I think as soon as I saw him at Blent. And I waited for it. Did you ever do that, Mina—do you remember?"
Mina was silent; her memories gave her no such thing as that. Her sobs had ceased; she sat listening in tense excitement to the history of the scene that she had descried, dim and far off, from the terrace of Merrion on the hill.
"I waited, waited. I couldn't believe—Ah, yes, but I did believe. I thought he felt bound in honor and I hoped—yes, I hoped—he would break his word and throw away his honor. I saw it coming, and my heart seemed to burst as I waited for it. You'd know, if it had ever happened to you like that. And at last I saw he would speak—I saw he must speak. He came and stood by me. Suddenly he cried, 'I can't do it.' Then my heart leapt, because I thought he meant he couldn't marry Janie Iver. I looked up at him and I suppose I said something. He caught me by the arm. I thought he was going to kiss me, Mina. And then—then he told me that Blent was mine—not himself but Blent—that I was Lady Tristram, and he—Harry Nothing—he said, Harry Nothing-at-all."
"Oh, if you'd tell him that!" cried Mina.
"Tell him!" She smiled in superb scorn. "I'd die before I'd tell him. I could go and offer myself to him just because he didn't know. And he'll never know now. Only now you can understand that Blent is—Ah, that it's all bitterness to me! And you know now why he must never come. Yes, as you say, it all ends now."