"I confess that I go back with you unwillingly," he said, in his grave, frank way. "You have shown me a new phase of your character, Bruce, and I do not in the least admire it. I trust yet to hear you repudiate your decision as unworthy of yourself as well as unjust to the girl whose sacred love you have trifled with."
"Perhaps I may yet," was the hurried reply. "I am so divided between conflicting emotions that I scarcely know my own mind yet. I may yet decide as you wish me to do."
Part of this was said to conciliate his friend, and part of it was true, for Bruce Conway did not err when he said that he scarcely know his own mind. The most of his failings and follies, as of a great many other people, arose from this amiable trait in his character.
He had not decided when the pleasant social ceremony of the nine o'clock tea was over, and leaving Captain Clendenon deep in converse with his stately hostess, he beguiled the younger lady into a walk down to the sea-shore. There standing, arm in arm, on the pebbly beach, he almost made up his mind. For she was so beautiful, and he loved beauty. A love of beauty was inherent in his luxurious nature, and Grace Grey was the fairest creature he had ever beheld as she lifted her shy glance to his in the brilliant moonlight, while as yet neither had spoken a word.
Why need they have spoken? It needed but that his hand should seek and hold hers in that lingering clasp that tells the all and all of love. But the soft breeze went sighing past like a spirit, the eternal sea surged strangely on, the stars burned, and the moon went under a transient cloud, while far away in the southern heavens a great red meteor flamed out and shone brilliantly among the silver stars. Both saw it at once, and both uttered an affected cry of surprise—affected, I say, because I do not think anything would have surprised them then, they were so absorbed in each other, so happy and yet so unhappy, as they stood together there, their young hearts throbbing "so near and yet so far."
She did not dream as she watched that fiery orb of light that her future hung on its transient beaming. She knew, with a woman's keen intuition, that he had brought her there to learn her fate. What it was to be she could not guess. Certainly she did not think that the man beside her had staked their two futures on the hazard of a meteor, and that when it paled and faded from the stormy sky he whispered to himself: "As was my love for her! Burning and comet-like as was that meteor, it shall fade as soon and leave me free."
Was it? Did the future prove so? Tenderly—more tenderly than he had ever done—he lifted the thin white drapery, half falling from her shoulders, and folded it closely about her.
"How heavily the dew falls," he said, kindly. "We had better return to the house."
Mrs. Conway looked curiously up as the pair came slowly into the drawing-room, and was content with what her keen glance read in the faces that wore the light mask of indifferent smiles.
"Gracie, child," in her most affable way, "don't let our guest leave us without the rare treat of hearing you sing. Captain Clendenon, will you turn the music for her?"