He rose as he spoke and went towards the door. Halfway he turned and came back to the girl again.
“I have no wish to be harsh with either of you,” he said gently. “Could I convince myself you were faithful to my interests, I could prove, I think, a generous master.”
He took her by the chin, looked in her eyes earnestly a moment, and went from the room.
She stood a full minute, upright and rigid as he had left her. Then suddenly the tears were rolling down her passive face.
She murmured some inaudible words, bent and, with a passionate forlorn gesture, kissed the back of the chair on which he had been seated; and so flung herself down against it, and, twisting her arms about her head, remained quite still.
In the meantime Mr. Tuke was ascending the stairs to a little room in the north wing. He moved pre-occupied, with a certain pulse of embarrassment fluttering in his breast; and tapped on the door he sought, when he reached it, half-apologetically.
There might have been an answer from within—the mere shadow of a broken murmur. Without more ado he turned the handle and entered.
A figure startled up on the truckle-bed and gazed at him with terrified eyes. It was ghastly with the pallor of tortured nerves; and of a sudden it turned, staring over its shoulder, and clutched frantically at the headboard.
“Oh, God!” it whispered. “Not again. I can’t bear it!”
The implied deadly reproach; the conviction driven home that he, a humane man by nature, had in one gust of passion caused this mortal wreck and disaster, pierced the intruder’s heart with a keen blade of remorse. He stood where he had stopped.