"My promise is sacred," said the artist slowly, and turning away he left the blind woman seated in the hollow with her hands clasped on her lap, and her sightless eyes looking up to the blue sky.
"Strange," he thought, as he lighted a cigarette, "that girl has fallen in love with a voice, and does not even know she is in love, although she half guesses it. She knows nothing of Nestley and yet she loves him. Why? because he has a charming voice. I suppose we must call it a woman's instinct--ah if she only knew how hopeless her love is--Nestley is too much bewitched by Una to waste a thought on her."
This discovery, slight as it was, gratified Beaumont's keen sense of intrigue, as it gave him another card to play in the game against Patience. If he could do nothing with Reginald because he was embittered against him by his mother, still he could separate him from Una by circulating a few skilful falsehoods. If Cecilia ever learned that Nestley loved Una, she was too much of a woman to keep silent in the matter, and through her Una would hear of Nestley's infatuation; and, again, to secure Nestley to herself, Cecilia, knowing Reginald adored Una, would tell him of this new complication, with the result that Nestley and Reginald would quarrel over Miss Challoner, and, perhaps, in the end, such a quarrel would part Una and her lover for ever. It was all very vague and intangible as yet, still Beaumont felt in some mysterious way that the knowledge of the blind girl's love for Nestley might prove useful to him in weaving his nets around his son so as to secure him entirely to himself.
"Reginald and Nestley both love Una," he mused, as he sauntered home. "Cecilia Mosser loves Nestley. Yes, the materials for a complication are there. How, I don't see at present--still the more cards I have to play against Patience Allerby the sooner I'll win the game."
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
"The sower scattereth his seeds
In rich or barren ground,
And soon the earth in place of weeds
With golden corn is crowned."