Mona received the news as though semi-dazed with its ominous magnitude, and by some curious and subtle instinct believed it. Yet not quite—not quite the whole of it, that is. The motive was too horrible. In that she would not believe, unless he assured her to the contrary. Still, the other was bad enough, whichever way you looked at it. It was appalling. A gulf, a chasm, seemed to open under her feet, paralysing her faculties, deadening everything.
Such was the state of the family councils when Roden, resolved to know the worst, saddled up his horse and started for Quaggasfontein. It was Sunday morning, so he would have the whole day at his disposal, and as he cantered out along the familiar track—how many times had he been over it before?—it was with a very sure foreboding that he was travelling it now for the last time. And as he journeyed he called to his aid all the iron hardness of his now schooled nature; a hardness which he had suffered to be penetrated, though never dispelled, but which events of late had riveted once more in armour layers. Not upon any softening reminiscence would he allow his mind to dwell now, and the very first glance at Mona’s face would justify his resolve; justify it for all time, or—
He was prepared for the constraint with which the Suffields greeted him—so different to his former welcome—the more marked perhaps because of a certain laboured effusiveness in order to render it equally cordial; for even Grace, her first spirited defence of him notwithstanding, could not quite free her manner from the effect of the distilling canker-drop of suspicion. He was prepared for this, and at the moment thought but little of it as he entered with them.
It was a lovely, cloudless morning, and the scent of flowers with the hum of bees and the chirrup of the cicada wafted in at the open windows of the cool, half-darkened sitting-room. By one of these Mona was standing. She turned, as with an effort, jerkily, constrainedly, and her eyes met his.
All was over.
What her countenance expressed it would have been difficult to define. What it did not express was that loving, eager sympathy, that proud, fearless trust, which should range itself beside him in defiance of the whole world, such as he had scarcely expected, yet still owned a deep-down hope that he might find there.
All was over.
While this trial and verdict, swift as a lightning flash, was going on, Suffield had been bustling about the room with the blundering, ostentatious tactlessness of a not very clever man under awkward circumstances, who has more than half lost his head; under cover of which bustle Mona slipped away and was gone, but ere vanishing she left behind a whisper:
“Soon. At the willows.”