Well, After All--

by Frank Frankfort Moore

He asked himself that question as he sat there now. He had put it to himself often during the past two years. Was there any treason toward his brother in the fact that that question had come to him, he wondered. Could any one fancy that his brother was still alive? Could any one believe that the insatiate maw of tropical Africa, which has swallowed up so many brave Englishmen, would disgorge any one of its victims?

He might still pretend that he believed that Claude was still alive, but in his heart he could not feel any hope that he should return. He wondered if Agnes had really any hope—if she too were trying to deceive herself on this matter—if she were not trying by constant references to his return to make herself believe that he would return.

Had Fate ever dealt so cruelly with two people as it had with himself and Agnes? He believed that if any direct evidence had been forthcoming of Claude's death, Agnes might, in course of time, have listened to him, and have believed him when he told her that he loved her—that he had loved her for years—long before Claude had come to tell her that he loved her. Even now.... He wondered if he were to go to her and ask her for his sake to leave the world of delusion in which she was content to live—the atmosphere of self-deception which she was content to breathe and to call it life when she knew it was nothing more than a living death—would she listen to him?

He sat there thinking his thoughts until the sound of the church clock striking the hour of midnight came to him through the still air.

He rose with a long sigh—the sigh of a lover who hopes that hope may come to him before it is too late to dissipate despair, and he was about to switch off the light, when he was startled by the sound of a footstep on the gravel of the walk between the grass of the terrace and the French window. The sound was not that of a person walking on the path, but of one stepping stealthily from the grass.

In another moment there came a tapping on the window—light, but quite distinct.

He switched off the light in an instant, and stepped quickly to one side, for he had no wish to reveal his whereabouts to whatever mysterious visitor might be watching outside. He slipped across the room to the switch of a tall pillar lamp standing close to the window, and when the tapping was repeated, he turned on the light, and looked from behind a screen through the window.

He quite expected to see there the man who an hour and a half before had threatened him, and he was, therefore, greatly surprised when he saw the figure of a girl peering into the room. He hastened to the window and opened it.

“Good heavens, child, what has brought you here at such an hour?” he said. “Lizzie, I'm ashamed of you; it is past midnight.”

“Every one is ashamed of me, sir,” said the girl; she was a very pretty girl of not more than twenty. She was a good deal paler and her features had much more refinement than the face of an ordinary country girl.