"Yes, I have been traveling a little!" he answered. "In Spain I was taken ill, and Lady Meltoun was kind to me. That is why I am here."
"But you do not say how it was that you were taken ill," she said, her cheeks suddenly glowing. "You saved her son's life. We saw all about it in the papers, but of course we did not know that it was you. It was splendid!"
"If you saw it in the papers at all, depend upon it, it was very much exaggerated!" he answered quietly. "Your father received my letter, I suppose?"
"Yes; the cottage has been shut up, just as you desired. Are you ever coming to take possession again?"
"I hope so—some day—and yet I do not know. There are strange things in my life, Miss Thurwell, which every now and then rise up and drive me away into aimless wanderings. Life has no goal for me—it cannot have. I stand for ever on the brink of a precipice."
There was a sadness in his voice which almost brought the tears into her eyes—mostly for his sake, partly for her own. For, though he might never know it, were not his sorrows her sorrows?
"Are they sorrows which you can tell to no one?" she asked softly. "Can no one help you?"
He shook his head.
"No one."
"And yet no sorrow can last for ever that has not guilt at its root," she said.