After their wretched parting on St. Brelade's Cliffs, Westenra had paced the beach all night. When he reached the farm dawn brightened the sky, but none of the freshness of morning was in his drawn face. Haidee and Val were up, the fire made, breakfast ready. They seemed to take it for granted that he still meant to leave by that morning's boat for England, and indeed he had decided that it was the only thing to do. It would give him time to review the miserable situation and look for a way out of it. But before he went he encompassed a further interview with Val, though he got little of it but pain. She was in that subtle way of hers éloignée from him once more, had put immeasurable distance between them.
"I want you to tell me more of this," he said drearily. "I must have details to go on before I can do anything to right the matter."
"You cannot right it," she answered. "It must be left as it is."
"What do you mean?"
"It must never come out that Horace Valdana is alive. One cannot so disgrace England."
Briefly she related the facts as far as she knew them, and he saw that she was right. Impossible to disgrace a country to right a private affair--even if the country were one you hated. But what a situation! There seemed to him to be no way out of it. Val, for a deep reason of her own, withheld from him the fact of Valdana's broken health. She wished him to feel absolutely free of her. She kept repeating that, with sardonic inflexible eyes.
"You see, you are free! What more do you ask?"
He asked much more, but with that mocking smile on her pale lips he would not tell her so.
"I want my son," he said coldly.
"My son," she answered, and that found them once more at the pitch at which they had parted the night before, reason withdrawn, cold fury in its place. Only by a great effort had he controlled himself.