His mother said nothing, and by and by she rose and went back to the group. Something in her face as she came up to them attracted Trevelyan and he stopped short in his excited talk and looked toward the solitary figure at the end of the table. His grasp suddenly relaxed on Cary's chair and he went up to Stewart and sat down on the arm of his chair and gripped hard at his shoulder.
"I'm a brute," he said in a low voice, and he kept his grip on Stewart's arm, and it was he who by and by led the others to calm down and eat their breakfast after some sort of a fashion.
He was to leave at midnight, and he had come especially to see Cary, but he scarcely saw her throughout the length of the long day. After that he devoted himself to Stewart, forcing him to think and speak of other things besides the great excitement of the hour. He laughed with him; he talked to him, and they went over their boyhood again. It was as it had once been between them, before they had grown to men. Once in the twilight Trevelyan spoke of Cary.
"Things are all going to pull straight between you," he said.
But Stewart, remembering the look on Cary's face, when she had been watching Trevelyan the day before, shook his head.
It was not until Trevelyan went to dress for dinner that he realized that the real hardness of the task lay undone. He would leave at midnight, and only God knew when he would come to Aberdeen again—and God was silent. To-night would mean "good-bye."
After dinner he went up to Cary as she was sitting at the piano in the music room.
"Won't you come for a walk on the beach?"
She looked up, flushed, and her hands fell back upon the keys discordantly.
"Why—I don't know. Isn't it too cold?"