“She is the widow of Sergeant O’Mara who fell at Targai. We both lost our husbands in that disaster, Jim. She had been for many years my maid-attendant. When she married the sergeant, a fine soldier whom Michael held in high esteem, I wished still to keep her near me. Michael had given me the Lodge to do with as I pleased. I put them into it. She lives there still. Oh, Jim dearest, try to realise that I have not said one word to you which was not completely truthful! Let me explain how I came to be in Cornwall under her name instead of my own. If I might put my hand in yours, Jim, I could tell you more easily.... No? Very well; never mind.
“After I received the telegram last November telling me of my husband’s death, I had a very bad nervous breakdown. I do not think it was caused so much by my loss, as by a prolonged mental strain, which had preceded it. Just as I had moved to town and was getting better, full details arrived, and I had to be told that it had been an accident. You know all about the question as to whether I should hear the name or not. You also know my decision. The worry of this threw me back. What you said in the arbour was perfectly true. I am a woman, Jim; often, a weak one; and I was very much alone. I decided rightly, in a supreme moment—possibly you may know who it was who graciously undertook to bring me the news from the War Office—but, afterwards, I began to wonder; I allowed myself to guess. Men from the front came home. My surmisings circled ceaselessly around two—dear fellows, of whom I was really fond. At last I felt convinced I knew, by intangible yet unmistakable signs, which was he who had done it. I grew quite sure. And then—I hardly know how to tell you, Jim—of all impossible horrors! The man who had killed Michael wanted to marry me!—Oh, don’t groan, darling; you make me so unhappy! But I do not wonder you find it difficult to believe. He cared very much, poor boy; and I suppose he thought that, as I should remain in ignorance, the fact need not matter. It seems hard to understand; but a man in love sometimes loses all sense of proportion—at least so I once heard someone say; or words to that effect. I did not allow it ever to reach the point of an actual proposal; but I felt I must flee away. There were others—and it was terrible to me. I loved none of them; and I had made up my mind never to marry again unless I found my ideal. Oh, Jim!”
She laid her hand upon his knee. It might have been a falling leaf, for all the sign he gave. She left it there, and went on speaking.
“People gossiped. Society papers contained constant trying paragraphs. Even my widow’s weeds were sketched and copied. My nerves grew worse. Life seemed unendurable.
“At last I consulted a great specialist, who is also a trusted friend. He ordered me a rest-cure. Not to be shut up within four walls with my own worries, but to go right away alone; to leave my own identity, and all appertaining thereto, completely behind; to go to a place to which I had never before been, where I knew no one, and should not be known; to live in the open air; fare simply; rise early, retire early; but, above all, as he quaintly said: ‘Leave Lady Ingleby behind.’
“I followed his advice to the letter. He is not a man one can disobey. I did not like the idea of taking a fictitious name, so I decided to be ‘Mrs. O’Mara,’ and naturally entered her address in the visitors’ book, as well as her name.
“Oh, that evening of arrival! You were quite right, Jim. I felt just a happy child, entering a new world of beauty and delight—all holiday and rest.
“And then—I saw you! And, oh my belovèd, I think almost from the first moment my soul flew to you, as to its unquestioned mate! Your vitality became my source of vigour; your strength filled and upheld everything in me which had been weak and faltering. I owed you much, before we had really spoken. Afterwards, I owed you life itself, and love, and all—ALL, Jim!”
Myra paused, silently controlling her emotion; then, bending forward, laid her lips upon the roughness of his hair. It might have been the stirring of the breeze, for all the sign he made.
“When I found at first that you had come from the war, when I realised that you must have known Michael, I praised the doctor’s wisdom in making me drop my own name. Also the Murgatroyds would have known it immediately, and I should have had no peace, As it was, Miss Murgatroyd occasionally held forth in the sitting-room concerning ‘poor dear Lady Ingleby,’ whom she gave us to understand she knew intimately. And then—oh, Jim! when I came to know my cosmopolitan cowboy; when he told me he hated titles and all that appertained to them; then indeed I blessed the moment when I had writ myself down plain ‘Mrs. O’Mara’; and I resolved not to tell him of my title until he loved me enough not to mind it, or wanted me enough, to change me at once from Lady Ingleby of Shenstone Park, into plain Mrs. Jim Airth of—anywhere he chooses to take me!