It was still early in the afternoon when the inquiry terminated, and the sunshine lay upon all things external with so lavish a touch and so tropical a force, that the dark corridors and dim halls of the gloomy building appeared most grateful to Miss Hildreth's tired brain and eyes.
She entered her room, the scene of so many conflicts between her love and pride, and sank wearily down upon the chair before the table, on which the yellow roses in their tall glass vase made a single spot of golden colour. Resting her elbows on the open portfolio, she buried her face in her hands and remained motionless, wrapt in a long desultory retrospect of the week's events.
She was too weary even to remove her bonnet, or the light scarf of lace about her shoulders.
Now that the long strain was ended, the tension slackened, she felt her strength lapse from her, and an overpowering weakness take its place.
It was true she stood cleared in the eyes of the public, who now regarded her in the light of a heroine, concerning whose courage and chivalry they could not say enough. But was she cleared in her own eyes? It was well for her that the secret of her disguise had not been dragged ruthlessly out of its hiding-place. Had that been the case, would not this same public be gloating over it now; mouthing it and discussing it, with even greater avidity than they had displayed in the discussion of her late situation? She was spared such an humiliation; but was she spared the humiliation of her own thoughts, the scorn of her own accusing conscience? Must not the knowledge of her motives, in thus playing with the misery of another woman's crime, separate her for ever from the very one for whose sake she had entered on the path of deception? Could good ever come out of evil? Did the end ever justify the means?
All the suffering and anguish of those last seven days would seem as nothing, she told herself, could she but face Philip Tremain with unfaltering integrity; could she but look into his eyes and not feel her own fall beneath the honesty of his. Woman-like, she forgot his doubt of her, his half belief in her criminality, a criminality which, if proved, would have swept away all lesser indiscretions in its magnitude.
No; she gave no thought to the part he had borne. A woman is never so happy as when she forgives, with all her heart, some wrong-doing on the part of the man she loves. But with Patricia this active magnanimity was not called into requisition, for the simple reason that Philip's attitude during the past week was clean forgotten by her—swept away as were all lesser matters in the contemplation of her own moral obliquity.
How long she sat thus absorbed and motionless she could not have told; but it was long enough for the light in the room to wane, and for the dying rays of the sun to gleam aslant through the narrow window, casting long tremulous bars of tinted light upon the bare unlovely walls. Presently a slight noise aroused her, and, the chain of reflection thus broken, she raised her head and saw, standing some little way from her, with the tinted sun-rays resting on his stern face, the man of whom she thought.
For a moment she gazed at him without realising the actuality of his presence; and then, as her sad beautiful eyes sought his they faltered, while a rush of sudden colour dyed the pallor of her face.
"Philip!" she exclaimed, drawing in her breath with a half sob, "Philip!"