At any rate they were gone—quite gone—sprinkled to the four winds of heaven.
There was no other proof.
And his—no, not his father—Mr. Tempest, who knew all about him, had intended him to be his heir. He had left him his name and his place, with a solemn charge to do his duty by them.
"I have done it," said John to himself, "as those two would never have done. Shall I let all go to rack and ruin now? If I was not born a Tempest I have become one. I am one, and if I marry one my children will be Tempests, and those two fools will not be suffered to pull Overleigh stone from stone, and drag a great name into the dust; as they would, as they assuredly would."
Had not Mr. Tempest foreseen this when he exacted that solemn promise from John on his death-bed to uphold the honour of the family? Could he break that promise? And through the vain sophistries, upsetting them all, a mad cry rang, "Di loves me! She loves me at last! I cannot give her up!"
The challenge was thrown out into the darkness. No one took it up.
A fierce restlessness laid hold on John. He rushed up to London several times to hear how Colonel Tempest was going on. Each time he told himself that he was going to see Di. But although the first time he went to Colonel Tempest's lodgings the servant informed him that Di was with her father, he did not ask to see her. Each time he came back without having dared to go to the little house in Kensington. He could not meet those grave clear eyes with the new gentleness in them that went to his head like wine. He knew they would make him forget everything, everything except that he loved her, and would sell his very soul for her.
Time stopped. In all this enormous interval the buds of the horse-chestnut had not yet burst to green. It was ages since he had seen the first primrose, and yet to-day, as he walked in the woods on the day after his return from another futile journey to London, they were all out in the forest still.
And something stirred within him that had not deigned to take notice of all his feverish asseverations and wanderings, that had not rebuked him, that had not even listened when he had said repeatedly that he could not give up Di.
By an invisible hand the challenge was taken up, and John knew the time of conflict was at hand.