“Yes,” she answered sadly, and then there was silence for a few moments. The conversation was taking a decidedly dangerous turn, and Lilian began to feel embarrassed. Perhaps it was as well that Mrs Payne returned, having disposed of her offspring in their various couches, and almost immediately her lord entered from the stoep, bringing in a whiff of fresh night air not guiltless of tobacco smoke.
“Grand night!” he exclaimed, flinging down his hat in high good-humour. “We’ll have a ride over the place to-morrow, eh, Claverton?”
Claverton assented mechanically, thinking the while how he might be far enough away by that time. Then a little more conversation, and a move was made to retire. How narrowly he scanned Lilian’s face, while he held her fingers in ever so lingering a clasp as he bade her good-night! He could read nothing there. And then, mechanically again, he followed his host to the room prepared for him, and once more he was alone.
Then what a rush of recollections swept over his mind, as he sat at the open window looking out upon the still night! All the years of wandering, of peril, and of hardship, were bridged over as by a single night, and once more it seemed as if he had just heard his doom only a few hours since, in the garden at Seringa Vale. And now Fate had thrown him beneath the same roof with this woman, whom he had never expected nor dared hope to see again. He had once more looked into her eyes, and drank in the sound of her voice—once more had held her hand in his, and now the old wound, never even so much as cicatrised over, was lacerated afresh, and gaped open and bleeding. Could he have been brought here for the mere sport of circumstances, or was it with a purpose—a deeper import? And with the superstition in small things which often, and in spite of himself, clings to a man who has travelled much and in solitude, he grasped the idea. Yet he dared not hope. Hope and he had parted company long since, he told himself. But he made up his mind that, at any rate, he would not leave his friend’s hospitable roof the next day; and having arrived at that conclusion he fell asleep, and slept soundly.
Volume Two—Chapter Four.
“So the Face before her Lived, Dark-Splendid...”
And what of her to whom this long, weary period had been so many years and so many months of terrible self-reproach? To her, though Time had brought no solace, it had brought a certain amount of resignation; and she had been able to school herself to face the future as best she might. Then suddenly, without so much as a moment’s warning, this man whom she had mourned as dead, whom she had wept and prayed for, night and morning, as one whom she would never again behold here on earth, stood before her. She had looked up, expecting to see a stranger—and there he stood! No wonder the blood forsook her ashy face and her heart stood still.
And now, in the dark, silent hours, she can scarcely realise it. It must be a dream—such a one as she had many and many a time awakened from to find her pillow wet with tears. Would she now awaken to find herself once more the dupe of one of those cruel hallucinations? No, this was real, she told herself; and looking back upon that meeting, awful in its suddenness, she wondered how she had so preserved her calmness. And he—he had shrunk from her—stopped short as soon as he recognised her. No wonder. She had sent him away with bitter words, with hard, cruel words, as a last recollection. How could he tell the agonies of remorse, of repentance, of vain, passionate yearning, which her life had since undergone? Time had gone by—perhaps he had eradicated from his heart the image of her who had made a plaything of it, as it must seem to him; perhaps some other image had taken its place. Better she could have continued to mourn him as dead than that. She forgot, in her anguish, how he had been wandering ever since they two parted—wandering afar in the wild interior, among its wilder inhabitants, alone with his own thoughts and her memory. She forgot all this as, the night through, she lay and tortured herself with these and kindred reflections.