“I wonder who has bought it,” he muttered to himself, “and who will live here in the years to come.”
There seemed to be no one about, and he walked in and turned into that room into which he had first gone on the occasion of his coming to Bamberton. And being in the room stopped dead with his heart beating suffocatingly; for there was a figure standing in one of the windows.
He knew, even in the semi-darkness of the place, that it was Madge Barnshaw before she turned her head or spoke; something in the mere fact of her being there told him that. He would have given anything not to have met her at that time and in that place; but there was no possibility of his getting away—for she turned and saw him.
She came quickly towards him and almost before he knew her hand was in his and she was looking straight into his eyes. “I wanted to see you,” she said slowly. “I waited here—strange as it may seem—in the hope that you would come.”
“Would it not have been better,” he replied bitterly, “if you had never seen me at all?”
She shook her head and a smile played for a moment about her lips. “That is an ungenerous thing to say,” she replied. “Surely it is right that we should meet here—in your home.”
“Mine no longer,” he said. “It was sold to-day to pay some of the debts I took upon me when I took the name of Dandy Chater.”
“Well—and do you know who bought it?” she asked almost in a whisper.
Something in her face as she bent nearer to him, still holding his hands, seemed to answer the question without the need of any word from him. She went on rapidly.
“When you first came to me, Philip, my heart was full of pity for a man who had professed his love for me often and often. Fool that I was, I never saw that a better man stood in his place—spoke with his voice—wooed me for his own sake and not because of his dead brother! Philip, you spoke just now of debts you have paid—and I know of burdens you have borne—for the sake of that brother. Philip”—she came nearer to him in the darkness—“there is another debt you must pay if you will, another burden you must bear. You have taken upon yourself the name of Dandy Chater, be Dandy Chater still to me—and love me!”