He sat over the fire, close over it, as he had done in the backwoods many a night, smoking the old brier pipe that had cheered him in his hours of solitary watching, and thinking with a grim bitterness that it would have been better for him if he had been knocked on the head the night of the raid at Salisbury Plain. To be married to one woman, while he loved another with all his heart and soul: it was a cruel fate. But, cruel as it was, he had to bend to it. He would go straight to London and find Maude, redeem his promise, and save his honour.
Mr. Groves came into the room with a bottle of the port, and Stafford forced himself to show an interest in it and drink a glass or two.
"I suppose you'll be going up to the Villa to-morrow, sir?—I beg your pardon, I mean my lord; and I must apologise for not calling you so."
"Not 'my lord,'" said Stafford. "I have never used the title, Groves. Go up to the Villa? Why should I?" he asked, wearily. "It is closed, isn't it?"
Mr. Groves looked at him with surprise.
"No, sir. Didn't you know? Mr. Falconer bought it; and he and Miss
Falconer have been staying there. She is there now."
Stafford turned away. Chance was making his hard road straight. After a sleepless night, worse even than some of the worst he had spent in Australia, and after a pretence at breakfast, he went slowly up to the Villa. Last night, as he had held Ida in his arms, something of the old brightness had come back to his face, the old light to his eyes; but he looked haggard and wan now, like a man who had barely recovered from a long and trying illness. He turned on the slope of the terrace and looked down at the lake, lying dark and sullen under a cloudy sky; and it seemed to him typical of his own life, of his own future, in which there seemed not a streak of light. A servant came to meet him. "Yes," he said, "Miss Falconer is in." She was in the morning-room, he thought. Stafford followed him; the man opened the door, and Stafford entered.
Maude was seated at a table writing. She did not turn her head, and he stood looking at her and seeing the record the weary months had left upon her face; and, even in his own misery, he felt some pity for her.
"Maude!" he said in a low voice.
She did not move for a moment, but looked straight before her wistfully, as if she could not trust her ears; then she turned and came towards him, with something like fear on her face. The fear broke up, as it were, and, stretching out her arms, she spoke his name—the accents of love fighting with those of doubt and a joy that dreaded its own greatness.