His wife manifests no further interest in the stranger, but with ready tact begins to talk about other things. Poor Lilian’s agitation has not escaped the kind-hearted little woman, who would rather die than do anything to increase it, as they return home. And Lilian, if she had a doubt before, Payne’s words have mercilessly dispelled it; and now she understands the foreboding of evil which came over her at the sight of the spy following them at King Williamstown for an unerring instinct leads her to connect that incident with the one of to-day. Her heart seems made of lead within her, and daring the walk home she hardly speaks, and even then at random. Even good-natured Payne notices it, but puts it down to the remembrances called forth by the sight of a number of men going to the war; but the remembrances called forth are, in fact, of a very different nature. They go back to a time when she was light-hearted and happy, and without a care or anxiety in the world; then to a time of love and trust succeeded by blank, bitter disappointment; to a hard, uphill struggle for daily bread, alone, uncheered and unaided. Still her memory carries heron, over afresh start in a sunny new world, free, indeed, all but for one shackle which the captive herself had riveted. Then a period of brief, contraband happiness, and long years of a kind of living death; the fetter falls off and she is free, and then the cup of life is full—full to overflowing. These are some of the memories which the sight of that face in the crowd calls forth. Yet, why should she dread? What can harm her, secure as they are in each other’s love—a love which has been tried, as by fire, and has come out brighter and more beautiful from the flame? Yet an unaccountable foreboding is upon her—a dread, chill presentiment of evil to come.
The day is overwhelmingly hot, and Payne playfully chides her for running the risk of sunstroke by standing all the morning on that dusty road, in which event he would, by the first law of nature, be compelled to spend the rest of his days speeding about the habitable and uninhabitable globe, with Claverton six hours behind him, fiercely on his trail with pistols and coffee. It is not fair of her to risk the life of a respectable father of a family, he says, even if she is tired of her own. As it is she is let down easy with a headache, whereat no one can wonder.
Poor Lilian smiles, rather faintly. Yes, she has a bit of a headache, she says; nothing much, she will go and lie down for a little while. Once in her room, however, she does not lie down, but sits and thinks. Then she opens a writing-case and begins a long letter to her lover. She does not know when it may reach him, perhaps not for more than a week, the movements of the Colonial Forces are so uncertain; but still the very fact of writing it is a source of comfort to her just now. She will tell him all about her foolish fears and forebodings, and as she does so it almost seems as if the calm, tender presence on which she has learnt to lean is at her side now, and for two hours she writes on, feeling comforted and happy. She lays aside her pen at last, thinks awhile, and then begins to read over the letter. She will not send it; on second thoughts—no; she will not worry him with mere foolish and superstitious fancies such as these—why should she? Has he not enough to think about up there, without having his mind troubled by such chimeras, perhaps just at the time when it should be most undisturbed to attend to the more serious game of war? As it is, she looks back to the way in which she yielded to her imaginary fears before, and will not trouble him with them now, when perhaps his life is in hourly danger. So with a sigh, she tears up and burns the letter which has taken her hours to write. Still, the composition of it has done her good, and her spirits have in great measure returned as she goes downstairs. The house seems deserted, so quiet is it. Payne is lying fast asleep in a hammock which he has slang in the little garden at the back, and his wife is either in the same blissful state of oblivion, or has gone out; the children are at school, and, meanwhile, quiet reigns. Lilian reaches the passage just as a man stands in the front doorway, holding the knocker in his hand as if about to knock, and, seeing her, refrains, and advances into the hall. She stops short, seeming rooted to the ground. For the man to whom she made that fatal promise which has blighted some of the best years of her life, is standing before her.
“Why, Lilian,” he exclaims, taking the hand which she mechanically holds out. “You look as if you hardly knew me.”
“Do I? This is—rather sudden, you know. But, come in. I’ll tell Mrs Payne you’re here.”
“By no means,” says Truscott, quickly, placing himself between her and the door—they are in the drawing-room by now. “This is the most fortunate thing in the world. Couldn’t have been better if we had arranged it so. You don’t suppose I want a third party present the very first moment we are together again after all this time.”
This bracketing of them jars horribly on Lilian’s ear; but she only answers, somewhat irrelevantly:
“I thought you knew the Paynes. You do; don’t you?”
“Confound the Paynes. Here have I been searching the world for you these years and found you at last, and—hang it all, Lilian, you don’t seem in the least glad to see me.”
In fact, she is not. And the statement as to the comprehensiveness of his search she does not altogether believe. She cannot forget that when she was thrown upon the world, destitute almost, and alone, at a time when she most needed help, encouragement, protection, this man had held himself aloof from her, and now, when after years of desolation of spirit and of a struggle almost beyond her strength, the battle is won, and she has found happiness and rest and peace, he jauntily tells her that she doesn’t seem in the least glad to see him. Her heart hardens towards him; but she checks the impulse which arises to tell him in words of withering scorn that she is not. Yet she does not contradict him, for she remembers vividly with what relief she heard that news, and how thankfully she had accepted the restfulness it brought her—a restfulness undisturbed until that morning.