‘Perhaps it is. It is well to make sure of things,’ said Ada, in a stronger voice. ‘But I’ll never do it again. I’ll never be stared at and whispered about in that way, any more. They would like to throw stones at me, if they dared. If I’d been alone, I daresay they would have done.’
‘You wrong them——’
‘What does it matter?’ she said, coldly, as she stooped to pick a tuft of small flowers from the grassy bank of the river. Then she paused a moment, picking them to pieces, and seemed absorbed in reflection upon what she had felt in passing through the town. Suddenly she looked up at Michael, and said—
‘There’s one thing I should like to say, Dr. Langstroth. You are a man, whatever the rest may be; and I always knew you were; and it was because I always felt you were so high above me that I used to say such ill-natured things of you to Roger. I knew that you saw through me, if he didn’t; but you never betrayed me. However, it will be all the same to you. I can’t hurt you or help you, one way or another—so good-bye.’
With that she slipped past him, with a darting movement which eluded his grasp, ran down the bank of the river, stood for one moment poised for the spring she took, and the next instant he saw her swept like a reed, many yards away, down the giant current of the stream.
‘Fool that I was!’ he muttered, turning instinctively to rush down the stream, and if possible, go beyond her, before he plunged in, so that he could meet and intercept her. But Gilbert met him at the corner of the bridge. There was a curious look in his eyes, and his hand held back Michael by the arm, with a grip in which the latter felt powerless.
‘Your way is over the bridge,’ he said. ‘Go and meet us. Eleanor sent me.’
It had scarce taken two seconds to say and do; and Gilbert had plunged into the stream also. The current instantly washed both figures across to the other bank. Michael rushed across the bridge, and down the other side, pale; a surging in his ears; his heart thumping, so that his laboured breath could scarce come. Dimly he saw that other forms met him at the bridge end, and followed him; vaguely he heard a hum of voices behind him. He pursued his way, panting, blind with fear. Ever and anon the noise of the river seemed to swell into a roar like thunder, which quenched all other sounds. Here and there a growth of bushes and willows hid the waters from him; but at last, as he stumbled onwards, and rounded one of the curves in that much curved stream, his straining eyes caught sight of something—human forms, surely—arrested by a rock which projected midway into the current.
‘He has got to shore, and brought her with him,’ a thought seemed to say. ‘He is too exhausted to drag himself out. I shall soon be with him now.’
But, without knowing it, he began to sob and sob and sob as he approached; and when he drew near, instead of going swiftly to the place, he strayed around and about it, and could not, dared not go close.