"I have heard no word; I do not know whether he is alive or dead."
He sighed and his head dropped upon his breast.
"Let us go in," he said, then he started, for his ears, particularly sharp, had caught the sound of a well-known footstep.
"There is—Jasper," he said, with a pause before the name, and he drew his arm away and walked away from her. Stella turned with a strange set smile on her face, the set smile which she had learnt to greet him with.
He came up the path with his quick and peculiar suppressed step, his hand outstretched. He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her—if he had dared. But he could not. With all his determination and resolution he dared not. There was something, some mysterious halo about his victim which kept him almost at arm's length; it was as if she had surrounded herself by a magic circle which he could not pass.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it, his eyes drinking in her beauty and grace with a thirsty wistfulness.
"My darling," he murmured, in his soft, low voice, "out so late. Will you not catch cold?"
"No," she said, and like her smile her voice seemed set and tutored. "I shall not catch cold, I never do under any circumstance. But I have just sent Frank in, he has been coughing terribly—he does not seem at all strong."
He frowned with swift impatience.
"Frank is all right," he said, and there was a touch of jealousy in his voice. "Are you not unduly anxious about the boy—you alarm yourself without cause."