“Good-bye, Mercy,” he said, gently, “let me call you Mercy, for the sake of the link between us—the link of common recollections, and the sad secrets of the past.”
“Call me what you like. It is not very probable we shall meet often.”
“You are very stubborn, cruel to yourself, and more cruel to those who want to help you. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” she echoed, almost in a whisper.
He went out into the shabby street haunted by those sad uplifted eyes, and the hollow cheeks faintly flushed with delicate bloom. How lovely she must have been in her dawning womanhood, and how closely she must have kept at home in the cottage by the west gate, seeing that he who had been so frequent a guest at Cheriton had never once met her there!
He was not satisfied to submit to this total failure of his mission without one further effort. He went from Hercules Buildings to Wedgewood Street, and saw his admirable Sarah Newton, into whose attentive ear he poured the story of Mercy’s obstinacy.
“She is a strange girl—a girl who could live in closest friendship with me all this time, and never tell me the secret of her past life,” said Miss Newton thoughtfully. “Why she should be so perverse in her refusal of Lord Cheriton’s offer I can’t imagine—but you may depend she has a reason.”
Theodore escorted Lady Cheriton back to Dorsetshire by the afternoon train, but they parted company at Wareham Station, he going on to Dorchester, where his sisters received him with some wonderment at his restlessness.
“It is rather a farce for you and Mr. Ramsay to make engagements which you never intend to keep,” said Sophia peevishly; and it was thereupon expounded to him that he and his friend had pledged themselves to be present at a certain tennis party upon the previous afternoon.