Poor Langdale! Few situations could have been more ironical in a quiet, unaggressive way than to sit listening to his mother while she calmly discussed the situation which was the very core of the keenest sorrows and interests in his life. So far nothing could have been gained by taking his mother or sister into his confidence as to the relations which had at one time existed between himself and Stella, and the treachery that had come between them. But he was prepared at any moment to tell them all, and to seek their help in somehow averting that darkest of all misfortunes which seemed stealthily creeping nearer. In the meantime he kept silence. He absented himself from home that evening. Next morning he saw Stella alone in the library which had witnessed their first strange meeting in the Old World.
CHAPTER LII.
She knew he had returned from Vienna some weeks previously, and she was in a manner prepared to see him in his mother's house. Yet, when they stood face to face, something akin to fear was visible in her manner. Otherwise, he was more agitated than she was. They touched each other's hands, and then they sat facing each other in a silence full of ghost-like memories. Stella was the first to speak.
'You have been away, I think,' she said, without looking at him.
He told her something of his journey, of his old friend Max, and his rising renown as an oculist. He noticed that her attention wandered, and that she kept nervously playing with her wedding-ring, which hung looser than ever on her finger. There was a pause.
'Yes, it must have been very interesting,' she said, looking up—a remark that had no direct relation to what he had last said.
Something clutched at his throat and gave him a horrible, choking sensation.
She looked into his face fixedly.
'Don't, Anselm—don't say anything. I cannot bear it. You do not know. I can bear to speak to you now, because everything is all over and done with. But there are times: you do not know——'
She spoke in a low, imploring voice, and then suddenly broke off.