And as Chloe gently closed the heavy door on the peaceful, fragrant world without and returned to the little room where Cherry lay in an uneasy slumber, she knew that a faint suspicion which had crossed her mind earlier in the summer had been verified to-night.
"He too loved Iris," she said to herself, with a rather sad little smile. "And I thought—once—that she was ready to love him in return. But, I suppose she preferred Bruce. Only"—Chloe had no illusions on the subject of her brother—"I believe Dr. Anstice would have made her a happier woman than Bruce will ever be able to do. And if he"—she did not refer to Cheniston now—"has lost his chance of happiness to-day, no wonder he feels that he has been in hell. For there is no hell so terrible as the one in which a soul who loves wanders alone, without its beloved," said the woman whose husband had left her because of a cruel doubt. "From the bottom of my heart I pity that man to-night!"
And then, re-entering Cherry's little room, pathetic now in its very brightness of colouring, Chloe forgot all else in the world save the child who slept, in the narrow bed, watched by Margaret Trevor's soft, brooding eyes.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
On a cold and frosty morning in November Anstice was sitting over his solitary breakfast when the telephone-bell rang; and he left his coffee to grow cold while he answered the summons.
It was Sir Richard who was speaking; and even over the wire Anstice thought he detected an unusual note in the older man's voice.
"That you, Anstice? Are you busy, or can you spare me a few minutes this morning?"