"No," Amabel said; she closed her eyes and turned her head away against the chair; "No; I have lived too. Don't pity me."



X

It was past five when Augustine came into the empty drawing-room. Tea was standing waiting, and had been there, he saw, for some time. He rang and asked the maid to tell Lady Channice. Lady Channice, he heard, was lying down and wanted no tea. Lady Elliston had gone half an hour before. After a moment or two of deliberation, Augustine sat down and made tea for himself. That was soon over. He ate nothing, looking with a vague gaze of repudiation at the plate of bread and butter and the cooling scones.

When tea had been taken away he walked up and down the room quickly, pausing now and then for further deliberation. But he decided that he would not go up to his mother. He went on walking for a long time. Then he took a book and read until the dressing-bell for dinner rang.

When he went upstairs to dress he paused outside his mother's door, as she had paused outside his, and listened. He heard no sound. He stood still there for some moments before lightly rapping on the door. "Who is it?" came his mother's voice. "I; Augustine. How are you? You are coming down?"

"Not tonight," she answered; "I have a very bad headache."

"But let me have something sent up." After a moment his mother's voice said very sweetly; "Of course, dear." And she added "I shall be all right tomorrow."

The voice sounded natural—yet not quite natural; too natural, perhaps, Augustine reflected. Its tone remained with him as something disturbing and prolonged itself in memory like a familiar note strung to a queer, forced pitch, that vibrated on and on until it hurt.

After his solitary meal he took up his book again in the drawing-room. He read with effort and concentration, his brows knotted; his young face, thus controlled to stern attention, was at once vigilant for outer impressions and absorbed in the inner interest. Once or twice he looked up, as a coal fell with a soft crash from the fire, as a thin creeper tapped sharply on the window pane. His mother's room was above the drawing-room and while he read he was listening; but he heard no footsteps.

Suddenly, dim, yet clear, came another sound, a sound familiar, though so rare; wheels grinding on the gravel drive at the other side of the house. Then, loud and startling at that unaccustomed hour, the old hall bell clanged through the house.

Augustine found himself leaning forward, breathing quickly, his book half-closed. At first he did not know what he was listening for or why his body should be tingling with excitement and anger. He knew a moment later. There was a step in the hall, a voice. All his life Augustine had known them, had waited for them, had hated them. Sir Hugh was back again.

Of course he was back again, soon,—as he had promised in the tone of mastery. But his mother had told him not to come; she had told him not to come, and in a tone that meant more than his. Did he not know?—Did he not understand?

"No, dear Hugh, not soon.—I will write."—Augustine sprang to his feet as he entered the room.

Sir Hugh had been told that he would not find his wife. His face wore its usual look of good-temper, but it wore more than its usual look of indifference for his wife's son. "Ah, tell Lady Channice, will you," he said over his shoulder to the maid. "How d'ye do, Augustine:" and, as usual, he strolled up to the fire.

Augustine watched him as he crossed the room and said nothing. The maid had closed the door. From his wonted place Sir Hugh surveyed the young man and Augustine surveyed him.

"You know, my dear fellow," said Sir Hugh presently, lifting the sole of his boot to the fire, "you've got devilish bad manners. You are devilishly impertinent, I may tell you."

Augustine received the reproof without comment.

"You seem to imagine," Sir Hugh went on, "that you have some particular right to bad manners and impertinence here, in this house; but you're mistaken; I belong here as well as you do; and you'll have to accept the fact."

A convulsive trembling, like his mother's, passed over the young man's face; but whereas only Amabel's hands and body trembled, it was the muscles of Augustine's lips, nostrils and brows that were affected, and to see the strength of his face so shaken was disconcerting, painful.

"You don't belong here while I'm here," he said, jerking the words out suddenly. "This is my mother's home—and mine;—but as soon as you make it insufferable for us we can leave it."

"You can; that's quite true," Sir Hugh nodded.

Augustine stood clenching his hands on his book. Now, unconscious of what he did, he grasped the leaves and wrenched them back and forth as he stood silent, helpless, desperate, before the other's intimation. Sir Hugh watched the unconscious violence with interest.

"Yes," he went on presently, and still with good temper; "if you make yourself insufferable—to your mother and me—you can go. Not that I want to turn you out. It rests with you. Only, you must see that you behave. I won't have you making her wretched."

Augustine glanced dangerously at him.

"Your mother and I have come to an understanding—after a great many years of misunderstanding," said Sir Hugh, putting up the other sole. "I'm—very fond of your mother,—and she is,—very fond of me."

"She doesn't know you," said Augustine, who had become livid while the other made his gracefully hesitant statement.

"Doesn't know me?" Sir Hugh lifted his brows in amused inquiry; "My dear boy, what do you know about that, pray? You are not in all your mother's secrets."

Augustine was again silent for a moment, and he strove for self-mastery. "If I am not in my mother's secrets," he said, "she is not in yours. She does not know you. She doesn't know what sort of a man you are. You have deceived her. You have made her think that you are reformed and that the things in your life that made her leave you won't come again. But whether you are reformed or not a man like you has no right to come near a woman like my mother. I know that you are an evil man," said Augustine, his face trembling more and more uncontrollably; "And my mother is a saint."

Sir Hugh stared at him. Then he burst into a shout of laughter. "You young fool!" he said.

Augustine's eyes were lightnings in a storm-swept sky.

"You young fool," Sir Hugh repeated, not laughing, a heavier stress weighting each repeated word.

"Can you deny," said Augustine, "that you have always led a dissolute life? If you do deny it it won't help you. I know it: and I've not needed the echoes to tell me. I've always felt it in you. I've always known you were evil."

"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh inquired.

Augustine was silent, biting his quivering lips.

"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh repeated. His assumption of good-humour was gone. He, too, was scowling now. "What have you to say then?"

"By heaven,—I say that you shall not come near my mother."

"And what if it was not because of my dissolute life she left me? What if you've built up a cock-and-bull romance that has no relation to reality in your empty young head? What then? Ask your mother if she left me because of my dissolute life," said Sir Hugh.

The book in Augustine's wrenching hands had come apart with a crack and crash. He looked down at it stupidly.

"You really should learn to control yourself—in every direction, my dear boy," Sir Hugh remarked. "Now, unless you would like to wreak your temper on the furniture, I think you had better sit down and be still. I should advise you to think over the fact that saints have been known before now to forgive sinners. And sinners may not be so bad as your innocence imagines. Goodbye. I am going up to see your mother. I am going to spend the night here."

Augustine stood holding the shattered book. He gazed as stupidly at Sir Hugh as he had gazed at it. He gazed while Sir Hugh, who kept a rather wary eye fixed on him, left the fire and proceeded with a leisurely pace to cross the room: the door was reached and the handle turned, before the stupor broke. Sir Hugh, his eyes still fixed on his antagonist, saw the blanched fury, the start, as if the dazed body were awakening to some insufferable torture, saw the gathering together, the leap:—"You fool—you young fool!" he ground between his teeth as, with a clash of the half-opened door, Augustine pinned him upon it. "Let me go. Do you hear. Let me go." His voice was the voice of the lion-tamer, hushed before danger to a quelling depth of quiet.

And like the young lion, drawing long breaths through dilated-nostrils, Augustine growled back:—"I will not—I will not.—You shall not go to her. I would rather kill you."

"Kill me?" Sir Hugh smiled. "It would be a fight first, you know."

"Then let it be a fight. You shall not go to her."

"And what if she wants me to go to her.—Will you kill her first, too—"—The words broke. Augustine's hand was on his throat. Sir Hugh seized him. They writhed together against the door. "You mad-man!—You damned mad-man!—Your mother is in love with me.—I'll put you out of her life—"—Sir Hugh grated forth from the strangling clutch.

Suddenly, as they writhed, panting, glaring their hatred at each other, the door they leaned on pushed against them. Someone outside was turning the handle, was forcing it open. And, as if through the shocks and flashes of a blinding, deafening tempest, Augustine heard his mother's voice, very still, saying: "Let me come in."



XI

They fell apart and moved back into the room. Amabel entered. She wore a long white dressing-gown that, to her son's eyes, made her more than ever look her sainted self; she had dressed hastily, and, on hearing the crash below, she had wrapped a white scarf about her head and shoulders, covering her unbound hair. So framed and narrowed her face was that of a shrouded corpse: the same strange patience stamped it; her eyes, only, seemed to live, and they, too, were patient and ready for any doom.

Quietly she had closed the door, and standing near it now she looked at them; her eyes fell for a moment upon Sir Hugh; then they rested on Augustine and did not leave him.

Sir Hugh spoke first. He laughed a little, adjusting his collar and tie.

"My dear,—you've saved my life. Augustine was going to batter my brains out on the door, I fancy."

She did not look at him, but at Augustine.

"He's really dangerous, your son, you know. Please don't leave me alone with him again," Sir Hugh smiled and pleaded; it was with almost his own lightness, but his face still twitched with anger.

"What have you said to him?" Amabel asked.

Augustine's eyes were drawing her down into their torment.—Unfortunate one.—That presage of her maternity echoed in her now. His stern young face seemed to have been framed, destined from the first for this foreseen misery.

Sir Hugh had pulled himself together. He looked at the mother and son. And he understood her fear.

He went to her, leaned over her, a hand above her shoulder on the door. He reassured and protected her; and, truly, in all their story, it had never been with such sincerity and grace.

"Dearest, it's nothing. I've merely had to defend my rights. Will you assure this young firebrand that my misdemeanours didn't force you to leave me. That there were misdemeanours I don't deny; and of course you are too good for the likes of me; but your coming away wasn't my fault, was it.—That's what I've said.—And that saints forgive sinners, sometimes.—That's all I want you to tell him."

Amabel still gazed into her son's eyes. It seemed to her, now that she must shut herself out from it for ever, that for the first time in all her life she saw his love.

It broke over her; it threatened and commanded her; it implored and supplicated—ah the supplication beyond words or tears!—Selflessness made it stern. It was for her it threatened; for her it prayed.

All these years the true treasure had been there beside her, while she worshipped at the spurious shrine. Only her sorrow, her solicitude had gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late. He could not love her when he knew.

And he was to know. That had come to her clearly and unalterably while she had leaned, half fallen, half kneeling, against her bed, dying, it seemed to her, to all that she had known of life or hope.

But all was not death within her. In the long, the deadly stupor, her power to love still lived. It had been thrown back from its deep channel and, wave upon wave, it seemed heaped upon itself in some narrow abyss, tormented and shuddering; and at last by its own strength, rather than by thought or prayer of hers, it had forced an outlet.

It was then as if she found herself once more within the church. Darkness, utter darkness was about her; but she was prostrated before the unseen altar. She knew herself once more, and with herself she knew her power to love.

Her life and all its illusions passed before her; by the truth that irradiated the illusions, she judged them and herself and saw what must be the atonement. All that she had believed to be the treasure of her life had been taken from her; but there was one thing left to her that she could give:—her truth to her son. When that price was paid, he would be hers to love; he was no longer hers to live for. He should found his life on no illusions, as she had founded hers. She must set him free to turn away from her; but when he turned away it would not be to leave her in the loneliness and the terror of heart that she had known; it would be to leave her in the church where she could pray for him.

She answered her husband after her long silence, looking at her son.

"It is true, Augustine," she said. "You have been mistaken. I did not leave him for that."

Sir Hugh drew a breath of satisfaction. He glanced round at Augustine. It was not a venomous glance, but, with its dart of steely intention, it paid a debt of vengeance. "So,—we needn't say anything more about it," he said. "And—dearest—perhaps now you'll tell Augustine that he may go and leave us together."

Amabel left her husband's side and went to her chair near the table. A strange calmness breathed from her. She sat with folded hands and downcast eyes.

"Augustine, come here," she said.

The young man came and stood before her.

"Give me your hand."

He gave it to her. She did not look at him but kept her eyes fixed on the ground while she clasped it.

"Augustine," she said, "I want you to leave me with my husband. I must talk with him. He is going away soon. Tomorrow—tomorrow morning early, I will see you, here. I will have a great deal to say to you, my dear son."

But Augustine, clutching her hand and trembling, looked down at her so that she raised her eyes to his.

"I can't go, till you say something, now, Mother;"—his voice shook as it had shaken on that day of their parting, his face was livid and convulsed, as then;—"I will go away tonight—I don't know that I can ever return—unless you tell me that you are not going to take him back." He gazed down into his mother's eyes.

She did not answer him; she did not speak. But, as he looked into them, he, too, for the first time, saw in them what she had seen in his.

They dwelt on him; they widened; they almost smiled; they deeply promised him all—all—that he most longed for. She was his, her son's; she was not her husband's. What he had feared had never threatened him or her. This was a gift she had won the right to give. The depth of her repudiation yesterday gave her her warrant.

And to Amabel, while they looked into each other's eyes, it was as if, in the darkness, some arching loveliness of dawn vaguely shaped itself above the altar.

"Kiss me, dear Augustine," she said. She held up her forehead, closing her eyes, for the kiss that was her own.

Augustine was gone. And now, before her, was the ugly breaking. But must it be so ugly? Opening her eyes, she looked at her husband as he stood before the fire, his wondering eyes upon her. Must it be ugly? Why could it not be quiet and even kind?

Strangely there had gathered in her, during the long hours, the garnered strength of her life of discipline and submission. It had sustained her through the shudder that glanced back at yesterday—at the corruption that had come so near; it had given sanity to see with eyes of compassion the forsaken woman who had come with her courageous, revengeful story; it gave sanity now, as she looked over at her husband, to see him also, with those eyes of compassionate understanding; he was not blackened, to her vision, by the shadowing corruption, but, in his way, pitiful, too; all the worth of life lost to him.

And it seemed swiftest, simplest, and kindest, as she looked over at him, to say:—"You see—Lady Elliston came this afternoon, and told me everything."

Sir Hugh kept his face remarkably unmoved. He continued to gaze at his wife with an unabashed, unstartled steadiness. "I might have guessed that," he said after a short silence. "Confound her."

Amabel made no reply.

"So I suppose," Sir Hugh went on, "you feel you can't forgive me."

She hesitated, not quite understanding. "You mean—for having married me—when you loved her?"

"Well, yes; but more for not having, long ago, in all these years, found out that you were the woman that any man with eyes to see, any man not blinded and fatuous, ought to have been in love with from the beginning."

Amabel flushed. Her vision was untroubled; but the shadow hovered. She was ashamed for him.

"No"; she said, "I did not think of that. I don't know that I have anything to forgive you. It is Lady Elliston, I think, who must try and forgive you, if she can."

Sir Hugh was again silent for a moment; then he laughed. "You dear innocent!—Well—I won't defend myself at her expense."

"Don't," said Amabel, looking now away from him.

Sir Hugh eyed her and seemed to weigh the meaning of her voice.

He crossed the room suddenly and leaned over her:—"Amabel darling,—what must I do to atone? I'll be patient. Don't be cruel and punish me for too long a time."

"Sit there—will you please." She pointed to the chair at the other side of the table.

He hesitated, still leaning above her; then obeyed; folding his arms; frowning.

"You don't understand," said Amabel. "I loved you for what you never were. I do not love you now. And I would never have loved you as you asked me to do yesterday."

He gazed at her, trying to read the difficult riddle of a woman's perversity. "You were in love with me yesterday," he said at last.

She answered nothing.

"I'll make you love me again."

"No: never," she answered, looking quietly at him. "What is there in you to love?"

Sir Hugh flushed. "I say! You are hard on me!"

"I see nothing loveable in you," said Amabel with her inflexible gentleness. "I loved you because I thought you noble and magnanimous; but you were neither. You only did not cast me off, as I deserved, because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. I do not say that you were ignoble; you were in a very false position. And I had wronged you; I had committed the greater social crime; but there was nothing noble; you must see that; and it was for that I loved you."

Sir Hugh now got up and paced up and down near her.

"So you are going to cast me off because I had no opportunity for showing nobility. How do you know I couldn't have behaved as you believed I did behave, if only I'd had the chance? You know—you are hard on me."

"I see no sign of nobility—towards anyone—in your life," Amabel answered as dispassionately as before.

Sir Hugh walked up and down.

"I did feel like a brute about the money sometimes," he remarked;—"especially that last time; I wanted you to have the house as a sort of salve to my conscience; I've taken almost all your money, you know; it's quite true. As to the rest—what Augustine calls my dissoluteness—I can't pretend to take your view; a nun's view." He looked at her. "How beautiful you are with that white round your face," he said. "You are like a woman of snow."

She looked back at him as though, from the unhesitating steadiness of her gaze, to lend him some of her own clearness.

"Don't you see that it's not real? Don't you see that it's because you suddenly find me beautiful, and because, as a woman of snow, I allure you, that you think you love me? Do you really deceive yourself?"

He stared at her; but the ray only illumined the bewilderment of his dispossession. "I don't pretend to be an idealist," he said, stopping still before her; "I don't pretend that it's not because I suddenly find you beautiful; that's one reason; and a very essential one, I think; but there are other reasons, lots of them. Amabel—you must see that my love for you is an entirely different sort of thing from what my love for her ever was."

She said nothing. She could not argue with him, nor ask, as if for a cheap triumph, if it were different from his love for the later mistress. She saw, indeed, that it was different now, whatever it had been yesterday. Clearly she saw, glancing at herself as at an object in the drama, that she offered quite other interests and charms, that her attractions, indeed, might be of a quality to elicit quite new sentiments from Sir Hugh, sentiments less shadowing than those of yesterday had been. And so she accepted his interpretation in silence, unmoved by it though doing it full justice, and for a little while Sir Hugh said nothing either. He still stood before her and she no longer looked at him, but down at her folded hands that did not tremble at all tonight, and she wondered if now, perhaps, he would understand her silence and leave her. But when, in an altered voice, he said: "Amabel;" she looked at him.

She seemed to see everything tonight as a disembodied spirit might see it, aware of what the impeding flesh could only dimly manifest; and she saw now that her husband's face had never been so near beauty.

It did not attain it; it was, rather, as if the shadow, lifting entirely for a flickering moment, revealed something unconscious, something almost innocent, almost pitiful: it was as if, liberated, he saw beauty for a moment and put out his hands to it, like a child putting out its hands to touch the moon, believing that it was as near to him, and as easily to be attained, as pleasure always had been.

"Try to forgive me," he said, and his voice had the broken note of a sad child's voice, the note of ultimate appeal from man to woman. "I'm a poor creature; I know that. It's always made me ashamed—to see how you idealise me.—The other day, you know,—when you kissed my hand—I was horribly ashamed.—But, upon my honour Amabel, I'm not a bad fellow at bottom,—not the devil incarnate your son seems to think me. Something could be made of me, you know;—and, if you'll forgive me, and let me try to win your love again;—ah Amabel—"—he pleaded, almost with tears, before her unchangingly gentle face. And, the longing to touch her, hold her, receive comfort and love, mingling with the new reverential fear, he knelt beside her, putting his head on her knees and murmuring: "I do so desperately love you."

Amabel sat looking down upon him. Her face was unchanged, but in her heart was a trembling of astonished sadness.

It was too late. It had been too late—from the very first;—yet, if they could have met before each was spoiled for each;—before life had set them unalterably apart—? The great love of her life was perhaps not all illusion.

And she seemed to sit for a moment in the dark church, dreaming of the distant Spring-time, of brooks and primroses and prophetic birds, and of love, young, untried and beautiful. But she did not lay her hand on Sir Hugh's head nor move at all towards him. She sat quite still, looking down at him, like a Madonna above a passionate supplicant, pitiful but serene.

And as he knelt, with his face hidden, and did not hear her voice nor feel her touch, with an unaccustomed awe the realisation of her remoteness from him stole upon Sir Hugh.

Passion faded from his heart, even self-pity and longing faded. He entered her visionary retrospect and knew, like her, that it was too late; that everything was too late; that everything was really over. And, as he realised it, a chill went over him. He felt like a strayed reveller waking suddenly from long slumber and finding himself alone in darkness.

He lifted his face and looked at her, needing the reassurance of her human eyes; and they met his with their remote gentleness. For a long moment they gazed at each other.

Then Sir Hugh, stumbling a little, got upon his feet and stood, half turned from her, looking away into the room.

When he spoke it was in quite a different voice, it was almost the old, usual voice, the familiar voice of their friendly encounters.

"And what are you going to do with yourself, now, Amabel?"

"I am going to tell Augustine," she said.

"Tell him!" Sir Hugh looked round at her. "Why?"

"I must."

He seemed, after a long silence, to accept her sense of necessity as sufficient reason. "Will it cut him up very much, do you think?" he asked.

"It will change everything very much, I think," said Amabel.

"Do you mean—that he will blame you?—"

"I don't think that he can love me any longer."

There was no hint of self-pity in her calm tones and Sir Hugh could only formulate his resentment and his protest—and they were bitter,—by a muttered—"Oh—I say!—I say!—"

He went on presently; "And will you go on living here, perhaps alone?"

"Alone, I think; yes, I shall live here; I do not find it dismal, you know."

Sir Hugh felt himself again looking reluctantly into darkness. "But—how will you manage it, Amabel?" he asked.

And her voice seemed to come, in all serenity, from the darkness; "I shall manage it."

Yes, the awe hovered near him as he realised that what, to him, meant darkness, to her meant life. She would manage it. She had managed to live through everything.

A painful analogy came to increase his sadness;—it was like having before one a martyr who had been bound to rack after rack and still maintained that strange air of keeping something it was worth while being racked for. Glancing at her it seemed to him, still more painfully, that in spite of her beauty she was very like a martyr; that queer touch of wildness in her eyes; they were serene, they were even sweet, yet they seemed to have looked on horrid torments; and those white wrappings might have concealed dreadful scars.

He took out his watch, nervously and automatically, and looked at it. He would have to walk to the station; he could catch a train.

"And may I come, sometimes, and see you?" he asked. "I'll not bother you, you know. I understand, at last. I see what a blunder—an ugly blunder—this has been on my part. But perhaps you'll let me be your friend—more really your friend than I have ever been."

And now, as he glanced at her again, he saw that the gentleness was remote no longer. It had come near like a light that, in approaching, diffused itself and made a sudden comfort and sweetness. She was too weary to smile, but her eyes, dwelling gently on him, promised him something, as, when they had dwelt with their passion of exiled love on her son, they had promised something to Augustine. She held out her hand. "We are friends," she said.

Sir Hugh flushed darkly. He stood holding her hand, looking at it and not at her. He could not tell what were the confused emotions that struggled within him; shame and changed love; awe, and broken memories of prayers that called down blessings. It was "God bless you," that he felt, yet he did not feel that it was for him to say these words to her. And no words came; but tears were in his eyes as, in farewell, he bent over her hand and kissed it.



XII

When Amabel waked next morning a bright dawn filled her room. She remembered, finding it so light, that before lying down to sleep she had drawn all her curtains so that, through the open windows, she might see, until she fell asleep, a wonderful sky of stars. She had not looked at them for long. She had gone to sleep quickly and quietly, lying on her side, her face turned to the sky, her arms cast out before her, just as she had first lain down; and so she found herself lying when she waked.

It was very early. The sun gilded the dark summits of the sycamores that she could see from her window. The sky was very high and clear, and long, thin strips of cloud curved in lessening bars across it. The confused chirpings of the waking birds filled the air. And before any thought had come to her she smiled as she lay there, looking at and listening to the wakening life.

Then the remembrance of the dark ordeal that lay before her came. It was like waking to the morning that was to see one on the scaffold: but, with something of the light detachment that a condemned prisoner might feel—nothing being left to hope for and the only strength demanded being the passive strength to endure—she found that she was thinking more of the sky and of the birds than of the ordeal. Some hours lay between her and that; bright, beautiful hours.

She put out her hand and took her watch which lay near. Only six. Augustine would not expect to see her until ten. Four long hours: she must get up and spend them out of doors.

It was too early for hot water or maids; she enjoyed the flowing shocks of the cold and her own rapidity and skill in dressing and coiling up her hair. She put on her black dress and took her black scarf as a covering for her head. Slipping out noiselessly, like a truant school-girl, she made her way to the pantry, found milk and bread, and ate and drank standing, then, cautiously pushing bolts and bars, stepped from the door into the dew, the sunlight, the keen young air.

She took the path to the left that led through the sycamore wood, and crossing the narrow brook by a little plank and hand rail, passed into the meadows where, in Spring, she and Augustine used to pick cowslips.

She thought of Augustine, but only in that distant past, as a little child, and her mind dwelt on sweet, trivial memories, on the toys he had played with and the pair of baby-shoes, bright red shoes, square-toed, with rosettes on them, that she had loved to see him wear with his little white frocks. And in remembering the shoes she smiled again, as she had smiled in hearing the noisy chirpings of the waking birds.

The little path ran on through meadow after meadow, stiles at the hedges, planks over the brooks and ditches that intersected this flat, pastoral country. She paused for a long time to watch the birds hopping and fluttering in a line of sapling willows that bordered one of these brooks and at another stood and watched a water-rat, unconscious of her nearness, making his morning toilette on the bank; he rubbed his ears and muzzle hastily, with the most amusing gesture. Once she left the path to go close to some cows that were grazing peacefully; their beautiful eyes, reflecting the green pastures, looked up at her with serenity, and she delighted in the fragrance that exhaled from their broad, wet nostrils.

"Darlings," she found herself saying.

She went very far. She crossed the road that, seen from Charlock House, was, with its bordering elm-trees, only a line of blotted blue. And all the time the light grew more splendid and the sun rose higher in the vast dome of the sky.

She returned more slowly than she had gone. It was like a dream this walk, as though her spirit, awake, alive to sight and sound, smiling and childish, were out under the sky, while in the dark, sad house the heavily throbbing heart waited for its return.

This waiting heart seemed to come out to meet her as once more she saw the sycamores dark on the sky and saw beyond them the low stone house. The pearly, the crystalline interlude, drew to a close. She knew that in passing from it she passed into deep, accepted tragedy.

The sycamores had grown so tall since she first came to live at Charlock House that the foliage made a high roof and only sparkling chinks of sky showed through. The path before her was like the narrow aisle of a cathedral. It was very dark and silent.

She stood still, remembering the day when, after her husband's first visit to her, she had come here in the late afternoon and had known the mingled revelation of divine and human holiness. She stood still, thinking of it, and wondered intently, looking down.

It was gone, that radiant human image, gone for ever. The son, to whom her heart now clung, was stern. She was alone. Every prop, every symbol of the divine love had been taken from her. But, so bereft, it was not, after the long pause of wonder, in weakness and abandonment that she stood still in the darkness and closed her eyes.

It was suffering, but it was not fear; it was longing, but it was not loneliness. And as, in her wrecked girlhood, she had held out her hands, blessed and receiving, she held them out now, blessed, though sacrificing all she had. But her uplifted face, white and rapt, was now without a smile.

Suddenly she knew that someone was near her.

She opened her eyes and saw Augustine standing at some little distance looking at her. It seemed natural to see him there, waiting to lead her into the ordeal. She went towards him at once.

"Is it time?" she said. "Am I late?"

Augustine was looking intently at her. "It isn't half-past nine yet," he said. "I've had my breakfast. I didn't know you had gone out till just now when I went to your room and found it empty."

She saw then in his eyes that he had been frightened. He took her hand and she yielded it to him and they went up towards the house.

"I have had such a long walk," she said. "Isn't it a beautiful morning."

"Yes; I suppose so," said Augustine. As they walked he did not take his eyes off his mother's face.

"Aren't you tired?" he asked.

"Not at all. I slept well."

"Your shoes are quite wet," said Augustine, looking down at them.

"Yes; the meadows were thick with dew."

"You didn't keep to the path?"

"Yes;—no, I remember."—she looked down at her shoes, trying, obediently, to satisfy him, "I turned aside to look at the cows."

"Will you please change your shoes at once?"

"I'll go up now and change them. And will you wait for me in the drawing-room, Augustine."

"Yes." She saw that he was still frightened, and remembering how strange she must have looked to him, standing still, with upturned face and outstretched hands, in the sycamore wood, she smiled at him:—"I am well, dear, don't be troubled," she said.

In her room, before she went downstairs, she looked at herself in the glass. The pale, calm face was strange to her, or was it the story, now on her lips, that was the strange thing, looking at that face. She saw them both with Augustine's eyes; how could he believe it of that face. She did not see the mirrored holiness, but the innocent eyes looked back at her marvelling at what she was to tell of them.

In the drawing-room Augustine was walking up and down. The fire was burning cheerfully and all the windows were wide open. The room looked its lightest. Augustine's intent eyes were on her as she entered. "You won't find the air too much?" he questioned; his voice trembled.

She murmured that she liked it. But the agitation that she saw controlled in him affected her so that she, too, began to tremble.

She went to her chair at one side of the large round table. "Will you sit there, Augustine," she said.

He sat down, opposite to her, where Sir Hugh had sat the night before. Amabel put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. She could not look at her child; she could not see his pain.

"Augustine," she said, "I am going to tell you a long story; it is about myself, and about you. And you will be brave, for my sake, and try to help me to tell it as quickly as I can."

His silence promised what she asked.

"Before the story," she said, "I will tell you the central thing, the thing you must be brave to hear.—You are an illegitimate child, Augustine." At that she stopped. She listened and heard nothing. Then came long breaths.

She opened her eyes to see that his head had fallen forward and was buried in his arms. "I can't bear it.—I can't bear it—" came in gasps.

She could say nothing. She had no word of alleviation for his agony. Only she felt it turning like a sword in her heart.

"Say something to me"—Augustine gasped on.—"You did that for him, too.—I am his child.—You are not my mother.—" He could not sob.

Amabel gazed at him. With the unimaginable revelation of his love came the unimaginable turning of the sword; it was this that she must destroy. She commanded herself to inflict, swiftly, the further blow.

"Augustine," she said.

He lifted a blind face, hearing her voice. He opened his eyes. They looked at each other.

"I am your mother," said Amabel.

He gazed at her. He gazed and gazed; and she offered herself to the crucifixion of his transfixing eyes.

The silence grew long. It had done its work. Once more she put her hands before her face. "Listen," she said. "I will tell you."

He did not stir nor move his eyes from her hidden face while she spoke. Swiftly, clearly, monotonously, she told him all. She paused at nothing; she slurred nothing. She read him the story of the stupid sinner from the long closed book of the past. There was no hesitation for a word; no uncertainty for an interpretation. Everything was written clearly and she had only to read it out. And while she spoke, of her girlhood, her marriage, of the man with the unknown name—his father—of her flight with him, her flight from him, here, to this house, Augustine sat motionless. His eyes considered her, fixed in their contemplation.

She told him of his own coming, of her brother's anger and dismay, of Sir Hugh's magnanimity, and of how he had been born to her, her child, the unfortunate one, whom she had felt unworthy to love as a child should be loved. She told him how her sin had shut him away and made strangeness grow between them.

And when all this was told Amabel put down her hands. His stillness had grown uncanny: he might not have been there; she might have been talking in an empty room. But he was there, sitting opposite her, as she had last seen him, half turned in his seat, fallen together a little as though his breathing were very slight and shallow; and his dilated eyes, strange, deep, fierce, were fixed on her. She shut the sight out with her hands.

She stumbled a little now in speaking on, and spoke more slowly. She knew herself condemned and the rest seemed unnecessary. It only remained to tell him how her mistaken love had also shut him out; to tell, slightly, not touching Lady Elliston's name, of how the mistake had come to pass; to say, finally, on long, failing breaths, that her sin had always been between them but that, until the other day, when he had told her of his ideals, she had not seen how impassable was the division. "And now," she said, and the convulsive trembling shook her as she spoke, "now you must say what you will do. I am a different woman from the mother you have loved and reverenced. You will not care to be with the stranger you must feel me to be. You are free, and you must leave me. Only," she said, but her voice now shook so that she could hardly say the words—"only—I will always be here—loving you, Augustine; loving you and perhaps,—forgive me if I have no right to that, even—hoping;—hoping that some day, in some degree, you may care for me again."

She stopped. She could say no more. And she could only hear her own shuddering breaths.

Then Augustine moved. He pushed back his chair and rose. She waited to hear him leave the room, and leave her, to her doom, in silence.

But he was standing still.

Then he came near to her. And now she waited for the words that would be worse than silence.

But at first there were no words. He had fallen on his knees before her; he had put his arms around her; he was pressing his head against her breast while, trembling as she trembled, he said:—"Mother—Mother—Mother."

All barriers had fallen at the cry. It was the cry of the exile, the banished thing, returning to its home. He pressed against the heart to which she had never herself dared to draw him.

But, incredulous, she parted her hands and looked down at him; and still she did not dare enfold him.

"Augustine—do you understand?—Do you still love me?—"

"Oh Mother," he gasped,—"what have I been to you that you can ask me!"

"You can forgive me?" Amabel said, weeping, and hiding her face against his hair.

They were locked in each other's arms.

And, his head upon her breast, as if it were her own heart that spoke to her, he said:—"I will atone to you.—I will make up to you—for everything.—You shall be glad that I was born."

THE END