“There are perils where the only safety lies in flight. You must leave this before Major Keene returns, and he returns to-morrow.”
Perhaps I have failed in making you understand one hereditary peculiarity of the Tresilyans. When their hand was fairly laid to the plow they were incapable of looking back. Had Mark come ten hours later, when Cecil’s purpose was absolutely fixed, all his arguments would have been futile. As it was, once having decided finally on the line she was to take, it never occurred to her to make farther objections. “Yes, I will go,” she said; “but I must write to him.”
“I think you ought to do so,” answered Waring, “and if you will give me the letter I will deliver it myself.”
Every vestige of the returning color faded from Cecil’s cheek. “You do not know him: I dare not trust you.” He misinterpreted the cause of her terror. “I promise you that, however angry Major Keene may be, I will bear it patiently, and never dream of resenting it. He is safe from me now.”
She smiled very sadly, yet not without a dreary pride; she could have seen Royston pitted against any mortal antagonist, and never would have feared for him. “You scarcely understand me; I was not anxious for his safety, but for yours.”
Mark was too brave and single-hearted to suspect a taunt, even had such been intended. “Then there is nothing more to be settled,” he said, quietly, “but the time and manner of your departure. I will leave you now; I shall see you before you go.”
Cecil Tresilyan rose and laid her hand on his arm, her beautiful face fixed in its firm resolve like that of one of those fair Norse Valas, from whose rigid lips flowed the bode of defeat or victory, when the Vikings went forth to the Feast of the Ravens.
“I am not angry with one word you have said to-night; you have only expressed what my own cowardly conscience ought to have uttered; nevertheless, to-morrow sees our last meeting. All your account against me is fairly balanced now. I do not know what I may have to suffer, but I do know that I will be alone till I die. Perhaps some day I may thank you in my thoughts for what you have done; I can not—now.”
With a heavy heart Waring owned to himself that her words were bitterly true. In curing such diseases, the physician must work without hope of reward or fee; it will be long before the patient can touch without a shudder the hand that inflicted the saving cautery.
Her tone changed, and she went on murmuring, low and plaintively, as if in soliloquy and unconscious of another’s presence.