"There were nothing left for I to du. Oh I didn't want to, for I were afraid, most terribul afraid—I were, but—but it seemed I must, 'twas as if the little stone maid were calling to I, just—just as she used to call to I of moonlight nights when I were in my grandmother's cottage, but—but 'twas different then—then I had not seen him, only—only in my dreams!"
"Seen him?" Kathleen asked softly.
"Allan!" the girl said simply and for the moment seemed to forget that it was Allan's wife who held her in her arms.
"Allan?"
"I did see him here, here in the old garden, long, long before he came here to live, many times I saw him digging at they flower beds, him all in brown wi' queer brass buckles to his shoes, and his hat all dragged down over his face, strange that I scarce did ever see his face, and yet—yet I knew him and when I came to him here in the garden while he sat on this very bench I knew—oh my lady, what be I saying, what be I saying?"
But Kathleen did not answer. It had come to her with a sudden shock, a feeling of desolation, of hopelessness. Allan, her husband, and this little maid, this Betty and the old garden! She remembered the dream of which he had told her, that night in a London theatre. It was but a dream then, a picture out of the past and nothing more and since then it had become reality and yet he had not told her as he had promised!
"And I du love him so—so cruel!" the girl sobbed.
Never once while she listened to this confession did Kathleen's arms relax their hold on the sobbing girl, yet Kathleen's heart was being tortured and wounded by every word.
Allan, her husband, whom she had regarded as the soul of honour—could it be—Allan into whose ears she had intended to pour this wonderful secret, this secret of a little life yet to be, which belonged to him and to her!
"Oh my lady, I be so terribul unhappy!" Betty whimpered, "So terribul unhappy for I did think he loved me as I loved him!"