Lilian was the first to break the silence.
“Oh, Arthur, is this, too, a dream?” she murmured. “Shall I wake up in a moment and find you vanished, as I have so often done?”
“Have you, sweetest?” he replied in a tone of reverent tenderness, as if he could not speak too softly, or too gently, to her. “It is reality now—if ever anything was—sweet reality;” and at the picture which her words opened up before his mind he clasped her again to his heart as though he could never let her go.
“Let me have a look at you, darling,” she said, suddenly raising her head with a bright, lovely blush, and gazing into the firm, serious face bent over hers. “You have become so brown, and you are looking ever so much older, and—”
“And am quite a battered and hardened campaigner.”
“And are looking ever so much better—ever so much better than you used to. There, you don’t deserve that for interrupting me,” she added, with one of her most bewitching smiles.
“Let’s sit down here,” he suggested, as, with his arm still round her, he drew her towards a rustic seat which might be twin brother to the one under the pear-tree where that dread parting had taken place those years ago. “Now tell me all about yourself—about everything.”
She did so. She told him of her life since they parted, and previous to their first meeting; told him the story of that promise which had entailed such misery upon both of them. It was the old story—a former suitor—and the promise had been most solemnly given beside her mother’s deathbed. The man was worthless to the core, selfish, dissipated, and unprincipled, but he was fascinating both in manner and appearance; and Lilian, at any rate, fancied him genuine. Over her mother he had cast the spell of an extraordinary infatuation, and Mrs Dynevard had not a little to do with the bringing about of her daughter’s engagement. Certain it was that nothing else prevented that daughter from breaking it, for when—her stepfather dying shortly afterwards—Lilian could no longer make her home at Dynevard Chase, this fair-weather suitor kept aloof. He was obliged to leave England, he explained, in order to better his fortunes, which were in a very bad way. By this time, however, Lilian had gained some insight into his real character, and then the weight of that rash promise began to make itself felt. Once she appealed to him to release her from it, but met with a decided refusal, and, as though to rivet the bond still tighter, the man reminded her that her promise was not only given to him but also to her dead mother. So poor Lilian clung fast to her only hope, which was that he might not think it worth his while to claim its fulfilment. Meanwhile she sacrificed herself to sentiment—as men and women have so sacrificed themselves at the faggot pile, or helpless and defenceless before ravening beasts in the arena. Then, like a lightning flash, had come the consciousness of real love, but still she immolated herself to the sacredness of a rash promise.
Let us leave them there, those two, in the sunny garden, amid the unclouded glory of the new-born day. Their cup is full—full and brimming with such happiness as this world rarely affords. Let them revel in it while they may, for a dark cloud is rolling up, gathering as it rolls—a cloud whose edges are red with blood, and whose gruesome shadow is fraught with desolation, with ruin, and with Death.
“Payne,” quietly remarked Claverton, two hours later, as he and his host were standing at the gate of one of the sheep-kraals, the latter counting: “I wonder if I shall succeed in astonishing you directly—by what I’m going to tell you.”