"You will marry me, won't you, Annette?" he said hoarsely.
Remembrance rushed back upon her. She drew away from him, and looked earnestly at him with tear-dimmed, wistful eyes.
The poor woman who had lived here, who had worn the little path on which they were standing, had loved Dick, but he had not married her. She herself, for one brief hour, had loved some one, but he had had no thought of marrying her. Was Roger, after all, like other men? Would he also cast her aside when he knew all, weigh her in the balance, and find her not good enough to be his wife?
There was a loud knocking at the door, and the bell pealed. It echoed through the empty house.
Roger started violently. Annette did not move. So absorbed was she that she heard nothing, and continued gazing at him with unfathomable eyes. After one bewildered glance at her, he hurried into the house, and she followed him half dazed.
In the hall she found him reading a telegram while a dismounted groom held a smoking horse at the door. At the gate the dogcart was waiting, tied to the gate-post.
Roger crushed the telegram in his hand, and stared out of the window for a long moment. Then he said to Annette—
"Janey has sent me on this telegram to say her brother Dick is dead. It has been following me about for hours. I must go at once."
He turned to the groom. "I will take your horse. And you will drive Miss Georges back to Noyes in the dogcart."
The man held the stirrup, and Roger mounted, raised his cap gravely to Annette, turned his horse carefully in the narrow path, and was gone.