Addie's face is white and still; she stands erect before her companion, and says slowly—
"You have conquered; I will do what you want. Let me go now."
He opens his arms rapturously, with an exclamation of delight, while she flies away, wringing her hands, and muttering piteously—"Heaven help me, Heaven help me!"
"And so," thinks Armstrong, as he walks blindly round and round the silent park, "it has ended like every commonplace three-volume novel, after all! My fate is in no wise different from that of the ponderous middle-aged husband of domestic drama. The lover has turned up at last; Jamie has come back from sea, as I might have guessed he would sooner or later, and his sweetheart tells him, almost in the words of the old song, that 'Auld Robin Gray's been a good man to me.' Generous, kind, unselfish I have been, she tells him. Well, so I have, I think; but the rôle of Auld Gray begins to pall. I'll throw it up soon. I'll just give her a week clear from to-day to make what reparation she can, to confess all; and, if she does not, I will tell her what I know, what she hid from me so artlessly, then shut up Nutsgrove, take up my quartets in Kelvick—which I ought never to have left—and pack off my incumbrances—my precious wife and family—to old Jo at Leamington. Old Jo! I wonder was she in the plot, too? But of course she was; she did the 'pressin' sair' with a firm motherly hand! By Heaven, how cleverly they hid it all between them! How well Jamie was kept in the background—not the faintest suggestion of his existence! Even now I have not the least idea who he is; but I'll soon find out. As well as I could see in the gloaming, my rival is an uncommonly good-looking shapely fellow, and his voice—ah, well, his voice could win its way to any woman's heart! I wonder are they sighing out their sweet farewells still! It was a touching interview; but my poor little wife was not quite as temperate in her caresses as the young lady in the ballad. Jamie got more than one kiss to-night. Not that it matters to me whether it was one or a hundred—not a jot!"
"'If she be not fair to me,
What care I how fair she be?'
"Not a jot—not a jot now!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
When Armstrong enters the drawing-room, half an hour later, there is small evidence of any volcanic element in the cheerful family group that meets his glance.
Pauline is lying in an easy-chair reading a novel, Addie and Lottie are engaged with bésique, the Widow Malone purring on the latter's lap.