“Nothing,” he said, hastily thrusting his bandaged hand into his pocket. “Only a cut—from a knife—nothing more. There—that will do. Why did you come?”
“It is the twenty-fifth, Moray. I thought I’d come and remind you.”
“Twenty-fifth,” he said hurriedly; “twenty-fifth?”
“Yes, dear, Glynne Day’s wedding.”
She regretted speaking the next instant, as she saw her brother’s head go down upon his hand; but he looked up at her directly, and, to her surprise, with a peculiar smile.
“Thank you for reminding me, dear,” he said. “I hope she will be very happy.”
“I don’t,” cried Lucy petulantly, “and I’m sure she won’t be. Oh, how could she be so foolish as to engage herself to such a man as that!”
Alleyne did not reply, but sat gazing before him at a broad band of sunlight which cut right across the portion of the great room where he was seated. It seemed to him that Glynne was the bright bar of light that had been thrown across the dark, shadowy life that he had led; and to make the idea more real, the passing of a cloud cut the ray suddenly, and the great, chill room, with its uncouth instruments, its piles of scientific lumber, and its dust, was gloomy once again.
The bright ray had come and gone. It was but a memory now, and Alleyne uttered a sigh of relief, for he told himself that the past was dead, and he must divide it from his present existence by a broad, well-marked line.
“Have you nothing to say, Moray?” whispered Lucy at last. “Do you not understand? Are you not going to make one more effort to make her change her purpose.”