"Well, then, a mortgage on Middlemeads; and of course, then, you know Streightley smashed; and the end of it is, Middlemeads belongs to us--to her, I mean--and she wants to go and live there when the season's over. Deuced unpleasant, isn't it, Yeldham? especially after the story that poor fellow has just told us; looks as if I did it out of spite to Katharine. I can't explain to Hester; and there's no reasonable reason why she shouldn't have the place, is there, Charley? 'Pon my life, I don't know what to do."
"It's a strange coincidence, Gordon, and that's all that can be said about it. And, after all, it is only strange to us three, because only we know that it is a coincidence at all. To other people Mrs. Frere is much more strictly allied with the Streightleys than you are. As for Robert, he won't mind it in the least; he never thinks about the place. He was eager enough about it, poor fellow, when he and I saw it first; but I don't think it ever costs him a thought or a regret now. You may go and live there without a scruple, take my word for that."
"Do you really think so, Charley? That's very nice indeed, and a great relief; for I would not hurt Streightley for the world. Good-bye again."
He ran downstairs gaily, and his friend stood for a minute looking after him, thinking of the story that had been told to him, thinking of his own confidences about Katharine in the very same room, and wondering at, a little envying, perhaps a little despising, his invincible light-heartedness.
There was something odd, he thought, about the Middlemeads transaction. He had never heard Robert mention the mortgagee's being Mrs. Frere: but he would say nothing about it; it might agitate him. So he dismissed the matter from his mind, and went cheerfully back to Robert, whom he found pale and depressed, and willing to talk only of the one engrossing topic--when an answer must surely come from Miss Burton.
"What a fine fellow he is!" Robert thought sadly, in Yeldham's absence, as he reviewed Frere's conduct in their interview. "How nobly generous and forgiving! What a contrast to me! And yet he cannot have loved her as I love her, or no generosity could avail to make him pardon the man who robbed him of her. Ah, no; who could ever love her as it is my torment, my punishment, and yet my life, my pride to love her?"
A few hours more, and suspense, so far as the clue with which Mrs. Stanbourne had furnished Robert was concerned, was ended. The following morning brought a letter to Mr. Yeldham from Miss Burton, written, not from Paris, but from an obscure village in the Pyrenees, where a religious house of the order to which she belonged had lately been established. Its contents were conclusive. She had never heard from or of Katharine from the time she had received the intimation of her marriage; she had it not in her power to afford the slightest information or assistance, beyond writing to the superior of her former convent in Paris, and entreating her, should Mrs. Streightley make inquiry there for her, to detain her if possible, but in any case to communicate with her friends. She expressed the liveliest concern and inquietude concerning Katharine, and the deepest regret for her own inability to help in this sore strait.
Profound discouragement fell upon the friends when they had read this letter; nevertheless Robert bore the disappointment better than Yeldham expected. He had a settled sense of the sin he had committed upon him, and a resigned conviction that the punishment was not to be escaped or lessened. The uttermost farthing was to be the sum of the payment to be exacted from him; he did not rebel against the conviction he suffered. "I will never give up seeking her, though I don't believe I shall ever see her face again," he would say to Yeldham, when his friend strove to encourage him, to exhort him to a hope he himself was far from feeling.
Yeldham answered Miss Burton's letter, thanking her warmly for her good wishes, and the precaution she had taken in their behalf; and then he had nothing more to do--the weary waiting had to be resumed.
Many were the councils held by the three friends, as the days, which resembled each other only too closely to him, to whom not one of them brought hope or relief, passed by. Robert had returned to Brixton shortly after the arrival of Miss Burton's letter, and had improved since then in health. The demands of society on Gordon Frere were not quite so insatiable as in his bachelor days; and many a long summer evening found the friends together, sometimes on the river, sometimes in some quiet country nook, a little railway-run from town, and secluded as a desert; but oftener still in Yeldham's chambers.