Cleer didn’t hear the words. She was below, gazing after them.
CHAPTER IV. — TYRREL’S REMORSE.
The two young men walked back, without interchanging another word, to the gate of the manor-house. Tyrrel opened it with a swing. Then, once within his own grounds, and free from prying eyes, he sat down forthwith upon a little craggy cliff that overhung the carriage-drive, buried his face in his hands, and, to Le Neve’s intense astonishment, cried long and silently. He let himself go with a rush; that’s the Cornish nature. Eustace Le Neve sat by his side, not daring to speak, but in mute sympathy with his sorrow. For many minutes neither uttered a sound. At last Tyrrel looked up, and in an agony of remorse, turned round to his companion. “Of course you understand,” he said.
And Eustace answered reverently, “Yes, I think I understand. Having come so near doing the same thing myself, I sympathize with you.”
Tyrrel paused a moment again. His face was like marble. Then he added, in a tone of the profoundest anguish, “Till this minute, Eustace, I’ve never told anybody. And if it hadn’t been forced out of me by that poor man’s tortured and broken-hearted face, I wouldn’t have told you now. But could I look at him to-day and not break down before him?”
“How did it all happen?” Le Neve asked, leaning forward and clasping his friend’s arm with a brotherly gesture.
Tyrrel answered with a deep sigh, “Like this. I’ll make a clean breast of it all at last. I’ve bottled it up too long. I’ll tell you now, Eustace.
“Nearly sixteen years ago I was staying down here at Penmorgan with my uncle. The Trevennacks, as I learned afterward, were in lodgings at Gunwalloe. But, so far as I can remember at present, I never even saw them. To the best of my belief I never set eyes on Michael Trevennack himself before this very morning. If I’d known who he was, you may be pretty sure I’d have cut off my right hand before I’d allowed myself to speak to him.