Daylight was fast fading away; but the reign of twilight had not yet commenced. After a blustering morning, a sudden stillness had fallen upon the earth. The wild north wind had ceased its moaning in the pine trees, and no longer came booming across the level moorland. The dull gray clouds which all day long had been driven across the leaden sky in flying haste, hung low down upon the sad earth, and from over the water a sea fog rose to meet them. Nature had nothing more cheerful to offer than silence, a dim light, and indescribable desolation.
A solitary man, with his figure carved out in sharp relief against the vaporous sky, stood on the highest point of the cliff. Everything in his attitude betokened the deepest dejection—in which at least he was in sympathy with his surroundings. His head drooped upon his bent shoulders, and his dark, weary eyes were fixed upon the rising sea fog in a vacant gaze. Warmly clad as he was, he seemed chilled through his whole being by the raw lifelessness of the air. Yet he did not move.
The utter silence was suddenly broken by the rising of a little flock of gulls from among the stunted firs hanging down over the cliff. Almost immediately afterwards there came another sound, denoting the advance of a human being. The little hand gate leading out of the plantation was opened and shut, and light footsteps began to ascend the ridge of the cliffs on which he was standing, hesitating now and then, but always advancing. As soon as he became sure of this, he turned his head in the direction from which they came, and found himself face to face with Helen Thurwell.
It was the first time they had come together since the terrible night at Thurwell Court, when their eyes had met for an awful moment over the dead body of Rachel Kynaston. The memory of that scene flashed into the minds of both of them; from hers, indeed, it had seldom been absent. She stood face to face with the man whom she had been charged, by the passionate prayers of a dying woman, to hunt down and denounce as a murderer. They looked at one another with the same thoughts in the minds of both. The first step she had already taken. Henceforth he would be watched and dogged, his past life raked up, and his every action recorded. And she it was who had set the underhand machinery at work, she it was whom he, guilty or innocent, would think of as the woman who had hunted him down. If he should be innocent, and the time should come when he discovered all, what would he think of her? If he could have seen her a few days back in the office of Messrs. Levy & Son, would he look at her as he was doing now? The thought sent a shiver through her. At that moment she hated herself.
It was no ordinary meeting this, for him or for her. Had she been able to look him steadily in the face, she might have seen something of her own nervousness reflected there. But that was just what at first she was unable to do. One rapid glance into his pale features, which suffering and intellectual labor seemed in some measure to have etherealized, was sufficient. She had all the poignant sense of a culprit before an injured but merciful judge, and at that moment the memory of those dying words was faint within her. And so, though it is not usually the case, it was he who appeared the least disturbed, and he it was who broke that strange silence which had lasted several moments after she had come to a standstill before him.
"You do not mind speaking to me, Miss Thurwell?"
"No; I do not mind," she answered in a low, hesitating tone.
"Then may I take it that Miss Kynaston's words have not—damaged me in your esteem?" he went on, his voice quivering a little with suppressed anxiety. "You do not—believe—that——"
"I neither believe nor disbelieve!" she interrupted. "Remember that you had an opportunity of denying it which you did not accept!"
"That is true!" he answered slowly. "Let it remain like that, then. It is best."