He spoke plaintively. Le Neve pulled a piece of grass and began biting it to hide his confusion. How near he might have come to doing the same thing himself. He thanked his stars it wasn’t he. He thanked his stars he hadn’t let that stone drop from the cliff that morning.
Tyrrel was the first to break the solemn silence. “You can understand now,” he said, with an impatient gesture, “why I hate Penmorgan. I’ve hated it ever since. I shall always hate it. It seems like a mute reminder of that awful day. In my uncle’s time I never came near it. But as soon as it was my own I felt I must live upon it; and now, this terror of meeting Trevennack some day has made life one long burden to me. Sooner or later I felt sure I should run against him. They told me how he came down here from time to time to see where his son died, and I knew I should meet him. Now you can understand, too, why I hate the top of the cliffs so much, and WILL walk at the bottom. I had two good reasons for that. One I’ve told you already; the other was the fear of coming across Trevennack.”
Le Neve turned to him compassionately. “My dear fellow,” he said, “you take it too much to heart. It was so long ago, and you were only a child. The... the accident might happen to any boy any day.”
“Yes, yes,” Tyrrel answered, passionately. “I know all that. I try, so, to console myself. But then I’ve wrecked that unhappy man’s life for him.”
“He has his daughter still,” Le Neve put in, vaguely. It was all he could think of to say by way of consolation; and to him, Cleer Trevennack would have made up for anything.
A strange shade passed over Tyrrel’s face. Eustace noted it instinctively. Something within seemed to move that Cornish heart. “Yes, he has his daughter still,” the Squire of Penmorgan answered, with a vacant air. “But for me, that only makes things still worse than before.... How can she pardon my act? What can she ever think of me?”
Le Neve turned sharply round upon him. There was some undercurrent in the tone in which he spoke that suggested far more than the mere words themselves might perhaps have conveyed to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, all eager, in a quick, low voice. “You’ve met Miss Trevennack before? You’ve seen her? You’ve spoken to her?”
For a second Tyrrel hesitated; then, with a burst, he spoke out. “I may as well tell you all,” he cried, “now I’ve told you so much. Yes, I’ve met her before, I’ve seen her, I’ve spoken to her.”
“But she didn’t seem to recognize you,” Le Neve objected, taken aback.
Tyrrel shook his head despondently. “That’s the worst of it all,” he answered, with a very sad sigh. “She didn’t even remember me.... She was so much to me; and to her—why, to HER, Eustace—I was less than nothing.”