"Good-night, Eglah."
When Mr. Herriott went down the steps leading from the Kent apartments to the street, Mrs. Mitchell beckoned him into a niche between two stone pillars, and said, almost in a whisper:
"Excuse me, sir, but will you tell me what is behind this trouble between Eglah and her father?"
"She says it is the result of his refusal to re-enter politics."
"Exactly; but what is behind his refusal? She is fretting herself ill, because she cannot find out. Ever since our last day at Greyledge they have been estranged. This morning, when your letter arrived, something very unpleasant occurred; and you see Eglah is not like herself."
"My letter was a most innocent paper bomb—the mere announcement that I intended to stop here a few hours on my way to Messina. It contained absolutely nothing more, and you must have mistaken the cause of her annoyance. Perhaps you wish to intimate that you think my presence enhances the trouble, whatever it may be? I shall be glad to have you speak frankly."
For a moment she was silent, but she patted his coat sleeve approvingly.
"Mr. Herriott, she is all I have in this world, and I can't see the child breaking her heart over Judge Kent's selfish secretiveness. There is something about him I do not understand, and I thought you might be able to explain it to me."
"As you have known him so much longer and more intimately than I, it seems probable that you can estimate him accurately without my assistance. Mrs. Mitchell, it will be a long time before I see any of you again, and going so far away, I shall remember with great pleasure that our dear Eglah will have you always at her side, in dark and stormy as well as sunny hours. Good-bye; my very best wishes for you all."
He understood most thoroughly. Eglah's struggle to receive cordially an evidently unwelcome visitor had pained him inexpressibly, wounding his pride even more than his heart, and since his absence contributed to her peace, he resolved that henceforth she should know no disquietude. If, despite his efforts to surrender, he had cherished a faint, unacknowledged hope, he strangled it effectually now, and in after years he thought of Ætna only as a monument whose shadow lay ever across the acanthus-covered grave of his last beautiful illusion.