About noon next day the expected message came:
"Dear Guy,—I have got leave to see you at last, but it was very difficult to gain. It is only on these conditions: you are not to stay with me a moment beyond three hours, and you must leave Ventnor immediately afterward, and not return. I have promised all for you. It seems very hard; but we must not think of that now. Come directly. C.B."
Ten minutes later there was only a closed door between Livingstone, and the interview he longed for and dreaded so much. His steel nerves stood him in good stead then; it was not at the crisis that these were likely to fail. When Constance heard his step, it was measured and firmly planted as she always remembered it. So it would have been if he had been walking to meet the fire of a platoon. Her aunt, Mrs. Vavasour, was with her, but left the room, as Guy opened the door, and so they met again as they had parted—alone.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
"I charge thee, by the living's prayer,
By the dead's silentness,
To wring from out thy soul a cry
That God may hear and bless;
Lest heaven's own palm fade in my hand,