“It was to you he wrote, then?”
“Yes, after my mother’s death, only to me. He never wrote to his father. I told Mr. Sefton how unhappy I was about Harold, and my fear—a growing fear—that he must be dead. He argued me out of this terror, and told me that when a man who was leading a wild life far away from home once let a long time slip without writing to his relations, the probabilities were that he would leave off writing altogether. His experience had shown him that this was almost a certainty. And then, seeing how distressed I was, he promised that he would try and find out Harold’s whereabouts. He told me that the newspaper press and the electric cable had made the world a very small world, and that he certainly ought to be able to trace my brother’s wanderings, and bring me some information about him.”
“And did he succeed?”
“No; he failed always in getting any certain knowledge of Harold’s wanderings, though he did bring me some scraps of information about his adventures in Mashonaland; but that was all news of past years—ever so long ago. He could hear nothing about Harold in the present—not within the last four years—so there was very little comfort in his discoveries. Last November he told me that he had heard of a man at the diamond fields whose description seemed exactly to fit my brother, and he thought this time he was on the right track. He wrote to an agent at Cape Town, and took every means of putting himself in communication with this man—both through the agent and by advertisements in the local papers—and the result was disappointment. There was no Harold Marchant among the diamond-seekers. That was what he had to tell me the afternoon you overheard our conversation. He had received the final letter which assured him he had been mistaken.”
“And that was all—and verily all?” inquired Vansittart, taking her hand in his.
“That was all, and verily all.”
“And beyond that association, Mr. Sefton is nothing in the world to you?”
“Nothing in the world.”
“And if there were some one else, quite as willing as Mr. Sefton, to hunt for this wandering brother of yours, some one else who loves you fondly”—his arm was round her now, and he was drawing her towards him, drawing the blushing cheek against his own, drawing the slender form so near that he could hear the beating of her heart—“some one else who longs to have you for his wife, would you listen to him, Eve? And if that some one else were I, would you say ‘Yes’?”
She turned to answer him, but her lips trembled and were mute. There was no need of speech between lovers whose very life breathed love. His lips met hers, and took his answer there.