“On some points, yes,” she replied, and then he went; and Grace from an upper window watched him ride slowly away down the avenue, till the gloomy trees, dripping wet from the late storm, hid him from her sight.
For one second after she first recognized him, she had felt tempted to show her burden to this man who had once loved her, and ask him to take its weight and its responsibility. Only for one second. The formal Miss Moffat with which he addressed her cast the half-formed resolution to the winds.
How could she tell anything of the weary days, months, years, in which he had been schooling himself to forget the old familiar name, and think and speak of her only as Miss Moffat?
How could she, who had never loved him, understand the shock, the surprise, the misery, the pleasure, that sudden meeting had proved to him! How was it possible for her to comprehend anything save that he was changed, that the John Riley of her childish and girlish recollection was gone as utterly as the years which were past!
Dimly and yet certainly, watching his figure as it slowly disappeared, Grace grasped the truth, that when she refused him that evening, while the scent of summer flowers was around them, and the sea rippled in on the shore, she killed the John she had known so long—been associated with so intimately.
That John was dead and buried; and the John Riley, with the bronzed face and erect figure and bushy beard, who had answered her greeting so formally, was another man.
Over this interview, however, Grace had not much time to think. Another was impending that occupied her mind to the exclusion of almost every other topic.
“Shall I put it off?” she thought; “the lanes will be wet and the grass soaking.” And then she put the temptation from her.
“It must be done. Supposing I were to catch this fever, who would there be to see justice done; to save them both, if possible?”
If possible; she shivered at the suggestion contained in the words.