He saw that she was really ill and would not trouble her with any of the old arguments. His own carriage, he said, should take her to the station. Her assurance that she would go down to Derbyshire alone troubled him, for he was a big-hearted man, as most of his kind. When Evelyn left him, she knew that she was leaving a friend ... and how few friends has any man or woman among us! Perhaps the truth of this helped her upon her long journey to Derbyshire. She was going to her father, to him who had loved her ... she was going to him to tell him every word of that story and to say to him, "Take me to Gavin, let us go together and forget that another has ever come between us." All else in the world, its rewards, its prizes, its teachings, seemed less to her than this gospel of love now warming her heart to life and bidding her look up. By it should peace come to him—to them both if Gavin lived!
Ah, if Gavin lived! How often by the way did that voice of doubt cry the question in her ears? As a heavy cloud upon the garden of her hopes so the thought recurred and would not be put away. If Gavin lived! Evelyn heard the words wherever she turned; they were spoken to her upon the breezes of that winter day, rolled out by the humming wheels as the train carried her northward, uttered by unknown voices which compelled her to listen. They followed her to Moretown; they were with her when she dismissed the hired carriage at the gates of Melbourne Hall and set out to walk across the park toward her home. Her desire to enter the house without observation or effusive welcome was in great part the fruit of her thoughts. She must be alone; she must have the full command of herself before she told her father the true story of yesternight.
The sun had set upon a glorious winter's day; a day of clear skies and bright scenes and fresh invigorating breezes. Now when eve fell the west wind ebbed away with the hours and left a twilight deeply still and beautiful. Not a branch of the leafless trees stirred in all that vast park about Melbourne Hall. Wide vistas of glade and avenue might have known no human foot since their story began. The deer browsed or moved with step so light that the quickest ear could not detect it. To Evelyn it mattered not whether she trod the park at dawn or dusk. Every landmark seemed as her own possession. Here was the dell wherein, long ago, she had played Di Vernon's part to the summer skies; there, the arbor to which she had carried the romances upon which her young imagination feasted. Far away, dark and gray between the trees, stood her home, offering her so chill a welcome that her heart sank wearily and tears came to her burning eyes. How if her father also had left her; if she found the great house empty and the gates of it shut! Such an end to her journey was not impossible; but the dread of it was in itself a heavy sorrow.
To be alone even at the gates of her home. Yes, it might be that. Standing upon the little bridge that spanned the river; she listened to its melancholy song and echoed it in her heart. Alone, it said—the dream lived, love lost, the world empty. What mattered it now that God's providence had saved her yesternight? Better, she thought in her distress, that she lay in yonder silent pool, drifting upon the slow eddies to rest and oblivion. For what had the world to give her? The tears flowed fast at the remembrance of all she had hoped, all she had suffered, all she had lost. "Gavin," she cried aloud, "save me, Gavin, for I cannot live alone."
*****
He came to her swiftly out of the darkness. But yesterday he had returned from Bukharest and, just as she to-day, had gone to Melbourne Hall to find it shuttered and empty. A good act of his destiny made it known to him at Moretown station that the Lady Evelyn had returned from London. He followed her swiftly and overtook her upon the bridge.
And so as in the dream of the unforgotten days he took her from the shadow of the river to his heart and, holding her close, he said:
"Evelyn, beloved, I am here as you wish."
