Miss Winterton gave him her hand with a smile, but seemed so entirely unembarrassed that he could not flatter himself with the idea that she had the least suspicion as to the nature of the errand which had caused him to seek her out. That, however, in nowise served to turn him from his purpose; and after a little talk on ordinary topics which helped, as it were, to break the ice between them, he plunged at once into the subject which just then was paramount with him. He began his declaration in manly if somewhat commonplace terms, but had not proceeded far before the stream of his eloquence was arrested by Miss Winterton placing one of her hands on his sleeve with a gesture which he could not mistake.
"Before you say a word more, Mr. Hazeldine, permit me to ask you one question," she said, speaking with perfect quietude and without a trace of irritation or annoyance. "Are you, or are you not, aware that your father was not murdered, as everyone was led to believe, but that, in point of fact, he put an end to his own existence? Because if you are aware of it, do you think, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, that, as an honorable man, you are justified in asking me to become your wife?"
Had the ground opened at Edward Hazeldine's feet he could not have been more startled and astounded. He knew not what to say, where to look, what to do. Had his carefully-guarded secret, which he had flattered himself was known but to four people, or, at the outside, to five, become public property? If not, how had Miss Winterton become possessed of it? But these were vain questions, and what he had now to consider was the answer it behoved him to give to Miss Winterton. A moment later he had made up his mind. There should be no more double-dealing, or fencing with the truth on his part; he had suffered enough from that sort of thing already.
"Yes, I am aware of it," he said, with the desperate calmness of a man who finds himself in a position from which he sees no way of escape. "I have known it from the first. But I am a moral coward, Miss Winterton, and the consequences of telling the world what I knew would have been so grievous to me and mine that I had not the courage to avow the truth. You are right. I had no justification in speaking to you as I did. I can only crave your forgiveness for my offence, and assure you that you need have no fear of a repetition of it."
He raised his hat, made a more profound bow than ever he had made in his life, and then turning on his heel, he strode slowly back towards the house.
On previous occasions when he had dined at the Lodge it had nearly always been his lot to take down Miss Winterton, but to-day it was a relief to him to find himself relegated to Mrs. Wiggins, the wife of the family lawyer, to whom he paid as much attention during the progress of the meal as the somewhat confused State of his faculties would allow of his doing.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
CLEMENT'S QUEST.
It was only natural that Hermia's thoughts, since "Uncle John" had revealed to her the story of her adoption, should revert times without number to the mystery which enshrouded her birth and early years, challenging it first from one point of view and then from another, but only to give it up at last baffled and disheartened, and still, to all seeming, no nearer than before to finding the hidden key. More and more the possibility that she might still have a mother living became a dominant factor in her thoughts. Might there not have been a score of different reasons, she asked herself, why this mother should have been compelled to put her child out among strangers? And might not the same or other reasons still have force enough to keep her from acknowledging her daughter, or even allowing the fact of her own existence to become known? The more Hermia allowed her mind to dwell on the image thus conjured up the more clearly did it--unconsciously to the girl herself--assume by degrees an objective existence in her thoughts, till at length it needed but little to induce her to persuade herself that this mysterious parent was a being as real and tangible as any of those she saw around her. It was strange, she sometimes thought, that never had she yearned so much for a mother's love as now, when that other love, so sweet and yet so widely different, had taken her heart captive and held it beyond all power of ransom.
Something of this Hermia confided to Clement in their many walks and talks together--something, but not all, for in a maiden's heart there are sacred chambers, the threshold of which, not even to her lover, is it given to cross. But much of what she did not tell Clement, love's fine intuition enabled him to divine. For one thing, he could see that Hermia, without attaching paramount importance to the interdiction which had been laid upon her, could not help secretly chafing under it; as also that, in her own despite, the longing to unmask the secret of her birth was becoming more importunate day by day. Thus it fell out that, after a little while, Clement began to formulate a certain scheme in his mind, and when once he saw his way clear, proceeded with characteristic energy to arrange the preliminary steps for carrying it out.