Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'There is no need for me to send him that,' returned Audrey with rising colour. 'Indeed, there is no need of any message at all: Cyril and I understand each other.'

And then Mrs. Blake cried a little and called her a hard-hearted girl, but relented the next minute, and kissed her affectionately.

'You will tell Mollie to come to me as usual to-morrow?' were Audrey's parting words, and Mrs. Blake nodded assent.

As Audrey opened the green gate some impulse made her look back. Mrs. Blake was still on the threshold, watching her, and her large dark eyes were full of tears. There was something pathetic in her appearance. With a sudden impulse, for which she was unable to account, Audrey went back and gave her another kiss.

'We do not know when we shall meet again,' she said in a low voice. 'Try to be as happy as you can, and to make him happy too.'

She was glad that it was over, she told herself, as she walked back to Woodcote; nevertheless, she could not shake off a certain sense of depression. That dear Gray Cottage—how she had grown to love it, and what happy hours she had passed there, sitting by that window and watching the pigeons fluttering among the arches! Her heart was soft towards the woman she had left. Could she help it, she thought, if her moral sense were blunted and distorted? There was something defective and warped in her nature—something that seemed to make her less accountable than other people. Truth was not dear to her, or her marriage-vows sacred in her eyes. How came it that she and Matthew O'Brien should have a son like Cyril? Audrey's girlish brains grew confused over questions that might well baffle a psychologist; she could make nothing of them.

Mollie came to her the next morning with her eyes swollen with crying.

'Oh, dear Miss Ross!' she exclaimed, the moment she entered the room, 'do you know mamma says that we are going away to-morrow? I thought it was to be next week, and Biddy thought so too; but mamma says that Cyril is all alone in the lodgings, and that we ought to go to him at once. Biddy and she are packing up the books and things, and mamma seemed to think that I ought to have remained to help her; but I told her that I must—I must say-good-bye to my dear, dear Miss Ross;' and here Mollie gave her a low-spirited hug.

'My dear Mollie,' returned Audrey kindly, 'I have arranged that already with your mother, and you are to spend the whole morning with me. We will not do any lessons; I can see you are not fit for them. And it is such a lovely morning. We will go in the garden, and sit on that nice sunny seat overlooking Deep-water Chine. Do you remember our voyage there, and how contemptuous you were about the scenery?' but this allusion to one of the happiest days she had ever spent in her young life only brought on a fresh burst of grief.

Poor Mollie was broken-hearted at the idea of leaving her friend, and it was a long time before Audrey could induce her to look at things in a less lugubrious light. Michael, prowling about with his cigarette, and followed closely by his short-legged favourite, came upon them sitting hand-in-hand on a bench near the pond; but he was careful not to betray his presence, and he called off Booty rather sternly when the affectionate little animal showed some disposition to join his friends. Neither of them saw him. Audrey was talking earnestly, but he only heard a fragment of what she was saying.