'It's positively wicked to talk in that way,' said his hostess. 'However, now you have come back, your friends must take care of you and keep you among them. You look dreadfully thin; but I suppose you're not ill, are you?' And then the kind creature looked at him with the same anxiety in her face that he remembered so well when he was a boy, over whose accidents and offences she had always mourned maternally.
'If it comes to that, it seems to me that no one looks very pink,' he returned playfully. 'Pollie's not what she used to be. You look as if you had gone through another night attack. And Bertram Devereux has gone home? What has happened? I feel abroad.'
'You are going to stay to-night, and your old room is ready for you, of course,' Mrs. Devereux answered. 'Do not allude to it when Pollie comes down. (This young lady had retired temporarily to her room.) I will tell you all about it after tea.'
Harold Atherstone looked searchingly at her, but held his peace. In a minute afterwards Pollie appeared, looking, in spite of her illness, so delicately lovely and overpowering, after his long sojourn in the desert, that all doubts and conjectures were put to flight or lost in the regained pleasure of seeing her smile of welcome and hearing the well-remembered tones of her voice.
It was a happy evening. Apart from 'love and love's sharp woe' there is such a thing as friendship, pure and unalloyed, between people of differing sexes. The sentiment of these friends was deep and sincere—founded upon sympathy, congenial tasks, and the long experience of mutual truth, loyalty, and affection. They were honestly glad to see each other again. Love temporarily divides friends, and, as it were, elbows out all other claimants. But as its fervour declines, the purer flame burns with a deeper glow. As the years advance, the fires of passion wax dim; the altar reared to friendship regains its votaries; while the more ornate and ephemeral edifice is too often deserted, empty, and ungarnished.
Thus, at their pleasant evening meal, all was mirthful interchange of news and adventures since last the little party had met. Harold's favourite wine of the remembered brand was brought out as of old; then Pollie was persuaded to sing some of her oldest songs, while Mrs. Devereux and their guest talked confidentially in the verandah. It seemed as if the happy old Corindah days had come again, when no malign influence intervened; when, in Mrs. Devereux's eyes, all things were peacefully tending towards the cherished aspiration of her life. Finally, when the parting hour—later than usual—arrived, each secretly confessed to a sensation so nearly akin to the joy long since departed from their lives, that not only wonder but even a soupçon of hope was commingled with its formation.
Harold Atherstone had been placed fully in possession of facts by Mrs. Devereux, as they sat on the verandah in the hushed southern night, while Pollie's sweet voice trilled nightingale-like through the odorous breath of the rose and the orange bloom. He heard how she had been deceived, wounded in her tenderest feelings, and was now deserted and left desolate. When he thought of her lying wearily on a bed of sickness, wan and wasted, heart-sore and despairing, he could not repress a malediction upon the head of the man who had received such unstinted kindness at the hands of the speaker, and had thus repaid it.
When the tale was finished he took her hand and pressed it silently. 'The poor child has suffered deeply,' he said; 'but matters are best as they are. Who knows but that deeper, more irrevocable misery might have been her lot had she not been warned in time? I mourn over the change in her, but she is returning to her old ways, and the memory of her sorrow will become yet more faint. Her youth and pride, with the resources at her command, will enable her to divest herself of all trace of what was one of the inevitable mistakes of youth.'
'You think then that she acted rightly in refusing to see him again?'
'Unquestionably; no other course was possible. I never thought him worthy of her. But he was her choice, and as a man of honour I could not disparage him, even had I any other grounds than those of mere taste and prejudice, which I had not. The event has proved that my instinctive distrust was correct. I need not tell you how I rejoice that she is again free and unfettered.'