"I am so unhappy! it is all my fault; knowing you loved me, I should have told you before of——"
But her voice breaks the spell: Cyril, as it meets his ears, rouses himself with a start. Not once again does he even glance in her direction, but with a muttered curse at his own folly, turns and goes swiftly homeward.
A very frenzy of despair and disappointment rages within him: to have so loved,—to be so foully betrayed! Her tears, her sorrow (connected no doubt with some early passages between her and Trant), because of their very poignancy, only render him the more furious.
On reaching Chetwoode he shuts himself into his own room, and, feigning an excuse, keeps himself apart from the rest of the household all the remainder of the evening and the night. "Knowing you loved me,"—the words ring in his ears. Ay, she knew it,—who should know it better?—but had carefully kept back all mention of the fact when pressed by him, Cyril, upon the subject. All the world knew what he, poor fool, had been the last to discover. And what was it her tender conscience was accusing her of not having told Trant before?—of her flirtation, as no doubt she mildly termed all the tender looks and speeches, and clinging kisses, and loving protestations so freely bestowed upon Cyril,—of her flirtation, no doubt.
The next morning, after a sleepless night, he starts for London, and there spends three reckless, miserable days that leave him wan and aged through reason of the conflict he is waging with himself. After which a mad desire to see again the cause of all his misery, to openly accuse her of her treachery, to declare to her all the irreparable mischief she has done, the utter ruin she has made of his life, seizes hold upon him, and, leaving the great city, and reaching Truston, he goes straight from the station to The Cottage once so dear.
In her garden Cecilia is standing all alone. The wind is sighing plaintively through the trees that arch above her head, the thousand dying leaves are fluttering to her feet. There is a sense of decay and melancholy in all around that harmonizes exquisitely with the dejection of her whole manner. Her attitude is sad and drooping, her air depressed; there are tears, and an anxious, expectant look in her gray eyes.
"Pining for her lover, no doubt," says Cyril, between his teeth (in which supposition he is right); and then he opens the gate, and goes quickly up to her.
As she hears the well-known click of the latch she turns, and, seeing him, lets fall unheeded to the ground the basket she is holding, and runs to him with eyes alight, and soft cheeks tinged with a lovely generous pink, and holds out her hands to him with a little low glad cry.
"At last, truant!" she exclaims, joyfully; "after three whole long, long days; and what has kept you from me? Why, Cyril, Cyril!"—recoiling, while a dull ashen shade replaces the gay tinting of her cheeks,—"what has happened? How oddly you look! You,—you are in trouble?"
"I am," in a changed, harsh tone she scarcely realizes to be his, moving back with a gesture of contempt from the extended hands that would so gladly have clasped his. "In so far you speak the truth: I have discovered all. One lover, it appears, was not sufficient for you; you should dupe another for your amusement. It is an old story, but none the less bitter. No, it is useless your speaking," staying her with a passionate movement: "I tell you I know all."