“I am her friend, Drury, as I am yours,” I declared. “I am aware that you love each other. I loved once, just as deeply, as fervently as you do. Therefore—I know.”
“But we cannot go south—back to Brighton,” the girl declared. “I refuse.”
“Why?” he asked. “Mr Trewinnard has given us the best advice. You need not now fear these mysterious enemies of yours who seem to haunt you so constantly.”
“Ah!” she cried in a low, wild voice, “you do not know, Dick! You don’t know the truth—all that I fear—all that I suffer—for—for your sake! Uncle Colin knows.”
“For my sake!” he echoed, staring at her. “I don’t quite follow you. What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she exclaimed in a low, hoarse voice, drawing herself up and standing erect, “I mean that you do not know what Uncle Colin is endeavouring to induce me to do—you do not realise the true tragedy of my position.”
“No, I don’t,” was his blunt response, his eyes wide-open in surprise.
“Oh, Dick,” she cried in despair, her voice trembling with emotion, “he speaks the truth when he urges me for my own sake to go south—to return again to Hove. But, alas! if I followed his advice, sound though it is, it would mean that—that to-morrow we should part for ever!”
“Part!” gasped the young man, his face becoming white in an instant. “Why?”
“Because—well, simply because all affection between us is forbidden,” she faltered in a hoarse, half whisper, her beautiful face ashen pale, “because,”—she gasped, still clinging to the back of the chintz-covered chair, “because, although we love each other as passionately and as dearly as we do, we can never marry—never! Between us there exists a barrier—a barrier strong but invisible, that can never be broken—never—until the grave!”