“Yes, and in your handwriting. I knew it at once.”
“There must have been foul play,” he said.
“But how, Ronald? You spoke of a letter from me; tell me of that.”
“It was an answer to mine; it came by post a day afterward. It was in your handwriting, I swear, and it—rejected me.”
“I cannot understand it,” she cried.
“Nor I. But if it takes the whole of my life to find it out, it shall not remain a mystery,” he said; and then he stood erect and silent before her.
CHAPTER XXIV.
FAREWELL.
While she lived Lady Hermione never forgot the look of anguish that he gave her; a long, lingering, steady gaze such as a dying man fixes at times on the face of a beloved wife or child. Then he came a step nearer to her.
“I did not know, Hermione,” he said, “that life could be harder than I have hitherto found it. It will be harder now.”
“Why?” she asked, gently.