Well, After All--

by Frank Frankfort Moore

She heard his footsteps passing away on the hard gravel of the drive. She recollected how, on that morning when they had been together on the lawn, and he had left her with an abruptness that startled her, she had hurried to intercept him on the road. The impulse was now upon her to do as she had done that morning—to open the window and run across the lawn into his arms. She checked herself, however; she felt that it would be heartless for her to have so much happiness while Clare was overwhelmed with the misery that had fallen on her.

She turned away from the temptation of the window and seated herself in the dim light before the fire, giving herself up to her thoughts.

She had not quite recovered from the surprise that her own confession to Sir Percival had caused her. She had been amazed at the impulse under the force of which she had told him so much. Until that moment she had had no idea what was in her heart—what had been in her heart since the day of Claude Westwood's return. She knew, however, that she had confessed the truth to her friend: she had been deceiving herself when she thought she still loved Claude Westwood—when she thought she was sorry that she had flung his portrait on the floor of her room.

She had found it amazingly easy to be patient in regard to his returning to his old love for her; but it was only when she stood in front of Sir Percival that she knew how it was that she had neither been impatient for Claude's return to the old love which he had borne for her, nor jealous when she had come to learn that he loved Clare Tristram. She now knew that the Claude Westwood who had come back from Africa was not, in her eyes, the Claude Westwood whom she had promised to love.

Her awaking had come in a moment—the moment that Sir Percival had taken her hand. The scales fell from her eyes in a second, and her own heart was revealed to her, and what she saw in its depths amazed her. She felt amazed as the confession was forced from her in the presence of the man whom she trusted, and she had not recovered from that amazement when it was time for her to go to bed. She lay awake, thinking over all that had been revealed to her, and wondering how it was that she had been blind so long. It never occurred to her now to ask herself if what she had said to Sir Percival was true or false. When people see plainly the things before their eyes they do not need to puzzle over the question of the reality of those things.

The next day Clare was much more tranquil than she had been before. There was a certain brightness in her eyes that gave Agnes great hope that her future would not be so clouded, but that a glimpse ot sunshine would touch it. She made no allusion to Claude Westwood or his book; and after breakfast Agnes saw with pleasure that she had gone outside to feed the pigeons. She stood among them, calling them about her with that musical croon which acted like magic upon them; and they alighted upon her shoulders and whirled about her head, just as they had done on the afternoon she had arrived, when Claude had looked out at her.

Agnes was once again overcome with self-reproach as she thought how it might have been possible for her to prevent the misery that had entered the girl's life.

“If I had only known—if I had only considered the possibility which every one else but myself would have regarded as not merely possible—not merely probable—but absolutely inevitable, I would have taken her away the next day,” she moaned.

She turned away from the window with tears in her eyes, and when she looked out again, hearing footsteps on the drive, Clare was not to be seen. It was the postman who was coming up to the house.

Three letters were brought to Agnes. Two of them were ordinary business communications: the third was in the handwriting of Cyril. She had received two letters from her brother since he had arrived in Australia, and both were written in the most hopeful spirit. He had, he said, found the life that suited him.