The thing was left at that, and Berrington made his preparations to depart. Mary was crying quietly now with the keen edge of her grief taken off. Mark and Beatrice drew aside, so that the others could talk in private.
"What shall I say to you, Mary?" Berrington asked.
"What can you say?" the girl asked in a gentle tone. "You are a good man, Phil, and it is good to know that you have loved me so devotedly and sincerely. I shall be able to come to you now and take up the thread of my happiness, where I deliberately snapped it three years ago. If my brother had not been misled by a designing woman——"
"Mary," Berrington said with firmness. "You are utterly wrong. I have had the story from Field only to-night, who has heard it from the lips of Miss Decié herself. She is a girl as good and pure as yourself. From first to last she was deceived. If Frank Leviter, the man who sacrificed his life for her sake and whom she loved, had lived, the mask would have fallen from your eyes. Your brother treated Violet Decié as he treated you, as he treated everybody. He was bad to the core of his being, and he has been saved from a shameful death by an accident. If you will try to get all that into your mind you will be a happier woman. You have lost three of the best years of your life—years that belonged to me as well as to you—in pursuit of a mistaken sense of duty. This must be clearly un
derstood between us if the path of our married life is to be free from care."
Mary bent her head and said nothing. And yet, deep down in her heart she knew that Berrington had said no more than the truth. She placed her hand in his.
"I am ready for you when the time comes, Phil," she whispered. "Only one thing I ask. Never let this be mentioned between us again."
"That I faithfully promise," said Berrington. "It is what I was going to suggest. Do you stay here to-night with Beatrice Darryll?"
Mary replied that that was the arrangement. Meanwhile Mark had been discussing the future with Beatrice. She had warmly approved of all that her lover had said about his father. She was glad to know that old Mr. Ventmore would not oppose the marriage, and that her love for him would not tend to keep Mark a poor man.
"So perhaps you had better let me have all those papers that Sartoris was so anxious to get hold of," Mark concluded. "Could you let me have them now?"