"My dear, I was always a plain and unattractive person, just as I am at this day," answered Margaret in a voice of infinite gentleness. "But why should you not know? There are more faithless than faithful lovers, may be; the one I had grew tired of so dull a person and he went away. That was all."
Then the two women moved away towards the house and the garden lay in silence.
Mark Ratcliff sat stiff with astonishment.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed at last. "She flings all the blame on me! The whole treachery was hers, and this is positively the coolest thing that ever I heard. Faithless lover, indeed! When she dismissed me with actual insult! But a woman with such a voice might do almost anything, you plain and unattractive Miss Mildmay!"
He lit another cigar, rose in leisurely fashion and sought the way to the front entrances of the villas. Under the shade of the horse-chestnuts, which his critical eye decided to be, like himself and Margaret, approaching the season of the sere and yellow leaf, he loitered, smoking and watching, and counting up the years since he had waited and watched for the same person before.
At last the right door opened and down the steps came a very sober-looking and unconscious lady. She was thinking of nothing but the dying girl from whom she had just parted.
"Margaret!"
She started violently. She knew the voice well enough, but after these years it was impossible that it should be sounding here.
"Margaret!" he said again imperatively.
"Mr. Ratcliff," she faltered. "I did not expect to see you again."