He was constantly throwing little proofs of his identity in her way, and surrounding himself with a halo of reality, and yet—and yet——
Margaret paced over the crisp brown leaves, whirling round her footsteps in the bleak November wind, her eyes ever and anon turning upon her companion in troubled scrutiny, her ear intent to catch each syllable.
"How these old creaking oaks bring back to me my boyhood! What bright dreams of glory filled my brain! What a life mine was to be! I was to go forth and conquer; all men were to bow before St. Udo Brand; beauty was to melt and find its level at my feet. But see me, Miss Walsingham—no longer a dream-dazzled boy. A man at his prime! Where are my brilliant prospects now? My visions of fame—of love—of happiness? Lost in the quicksand of Time. Is there in the whole world a more useless, ruined wretch than myself? I am famous but for my misdeeds. My intellect has been squandered upon worthless objects; love has cheated me; I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."
Margaret could not respond to this half-earnest, half-bitter appeal.
How often she had imagined just such words in the mouth of St. Udo Brand, with a yearning thrill, as if Heaven itself would have been opened to her.
But now that the time had come she shrank from the man and his loneliness and his half remorse in cold sympathy.
How dare he come to her with his polluted life.
She read the false and shifting eyes with loathsome shudder, and a hardening of the lip, as if a rat had fawned upon her.
"You wretch!" thought the girl, with fiercely-clenched hand.
"How dare you think to step into St. Udo's shoes and expect to cheat me?"