The Imaginary Marriage Part 55

"Utterly. Con, I have something to tell you."

She turned eagerly.

"It is ended," he said quietly--"our engagement. Joan and I ended it to-day--not in anger, not in doubt, dear, but liking and admiring each other I think more than ever before, and--and, Con--" He paused.

"Oh, I am glad, glad," she said, "glad! Have you told--her?"

He shook his head.

"Will you wait here, John? I will send her to you."

John Everard's face coloured. "I will wait here for her, for Gipsy," he said. "Send her here to me, and I will tell her, Con."

And a few moments later she came. She stood here in the doorway looking at him, just as she had looked at him from that same place that night, that night when a light had dawned upon his darkness.

And now, because his eyes were widely opened at last, he could see the tell-tale flush in her cheeks, the suspicious brightness in her eyes, and it seemed to him that her love for him was as a magnet that drew his heart towards her.

"Con has told you?"

She nodded silently.

Then suddenly he stretched out his arms to her, a moment more and she was in them, her face against his breast.

CHAPTER XLVIII

HER PRIDE'S LAST FIGHT

"... I came to Starden because I believed you might need me. You did, and the help that you wanted I gave gladly and willingly. Now your enemy is removed; he can do you no more harm. You will hear, or perhaps have heard why, and so I am no longer necessary to you, Joan, and because I seem to be wanted in my own place I am going back. Yet should you need me, you have but to call, and I will come. You know that. You know that I who love you am ever at your service. From now onward your own heart shall be your counsellor.

You will act as it dictates, if you are true to yourself. Yet, perhaps in the future as in the past, your pride may prove the stronger. It is for you and only you to decide. Good-bye,

"HUGH."

She had found this letter on her return from Little Langbourne. She had gone hurrying, as a young girl in her eagerness might, down to Mrs.

Bonner's little cottage, to learn that she was too late. He had gone.

Mrs. Bonner, with almost tears in her eyes, told her.

"Yes, miss. He hev gone, and rare sorry I be, a better gentleman I never had in these rooms."

Gone! With only this letter, no parting word, without seeking to see her, to say good-bye. The chill of her cold pride fell on Joan. Send for him! Never! never! He had gone when he might have stayed--when, had he been here now, she would have told him that she was free.

Very slowly she walked back to the house, to meet Helen's questioning eyes.

"I am glad, dear, that there seems to be a better understanding between you and Johnny," Helen said.

"There is a perfect understanding between us. Johnny is not going to marry me. He is choosing someone who will love him more and understand him better than I could."

"Then--then, after all, it is over? You and he are to part?"

"Have parted--as lovers, but not as friends."

"And after all I have done," Helen said miserably.

Hugh had gone home. He had had a letter from Lady Linden telling about the accident to Tom Arundel, about his serious illness, and Marjorie's devoted nursing. And now he was shaping his course for Hurst Dormer. He had debated in his mind whether he should wait and see her, and then had decided against it.

"She knows that I love her, and she loves me. She is letting her pride stand between us. Everard is too good and too fine a fellow to keep her bound by a promise if he thought it would hurt her to keep it. Her future and Everard's and mine must lay in her own hands." And so, doing violence to his feelings and his desires, he had left Starden, and now was back in Hurst Dormer, wandering about, looking at the progress the workmen had made during his absence. He had come home, and though he loved the place, its loneliness weighed heavily on him. The rooms seemed empty. He wanted someone to talk things over with, to discuss this and that. He was not built to be self-centred.

For two days and two nights he bore with Hurst Dormer and its shadows and its solitude, and then he called out the car and motored over to Cornbridge.

"Oh, it's you," said her ladyship. "I suppose you got my letter?"

"Yes; I had it sent on to me."

"It's a pity you don't stay at home now and again."

"Perhaps I shall in future."

She looked at him. He was unlike himself, careworn and weary, and a little ill.

"Tom is mending rapidly, a wonderful const.i.tution; but it was touch and go. Marjorie was simply wonderful, I'll do her that credit. Between ourselves, Hugh, I always regarded Marjorie as rather weak, namby-pamby, early Victorian--you know what I mean; but she's a woman, and it has touched her. She wouldn't leave him. Honestly, I believe she did more for him than all the doctors."

"I am sure she did."

Marjorie was changed; her face was thinner, some of its colour gone. Yet the little she had lost was more than atoned for in the much that she had gained. She held his hand, she looked him frankly in the eyes.

"So it is all right, little girl, all right now?"

She nodded. "It is all right. I am happier than I deserve to be. Oh, Hugh, I have been weak and foolish, wavering and uncertain. I can see it all now, but now at last I know--I do know my own mind."

"And your own heart?"

"And my own heart."

She wondered as she looked at him if ever he could have guessed what had been in her mind that day when she had gone to Hurst Dormer to see him.

How full of love for him her heart had been then! And then she remembered what he had said, those four words that had ended her dream for ever--"Better than my life." So he loved Joan, and now she knew that she too loved with her whole heart.

Death had been very close, and perhaps it had been pity for that fine young life that seemed to be so near its end that had awakened love.

Yet, whatever the cause, she knew now that her love for Tom had come to stay.

"And Joan?" Marjorie asked.

"Joan?" he said. "Joan, she is in her own home."

"And her heart is still hard against you, Hugh?"