"She is in the dining-room. She spends her days there."
"How is she?" Dick asked, with less indifference in his manner.
"Better; but not well enough to stand a long journey, or else her father would have taken her to the south of France before this. Come and see her. She will be so pleased—but so grieved when she hears you are going out again. I am sure she has no idea of such a thing. And to-morrow, too!"
Dick followed Mrs. Parish from the room, wishing in his heart that convalescence was a shorter business, or else that Alice might have the advantages of climate that in a few days, and for evermore, would be his; also speculating as to whether he would find her much changed, but wishing and wondering without the slightest ruffling emotion. He had some time ago pronounced himself a cure. Therefore, of course, he was cured.
There were two fireplaces in the dining-room, one on each side of the conservatory door. In the grate nearer the windows, which were all at one end, overlooking lawn and river, a fire of wood and coal was burning brightly. In a long low structure of basketwork—half-sofa, half-chair, such as one mostly sees on shipboard and in verandahs—propped up by cushions and wrapped in plaids and woollen clouds, lay Alice, the convalescent. There was no sign that she had been reading. She did not look as though she had been sleeping. If, then, it was her habit to encourage the exclusive company of her own thoughts, it is little wonder that she was so long in parting company with her weakness.
Dick stood humbly and gravely by the door; a thrill of sorrow shot through him on seeing her lying there like that; the sensation was only natural.
"Here is Mr. Richard come to—to—to ask you how you are," stammered poor Mrs. Parish.
Alice looked up sharply. Mr. Richard crossed the room and held out his hand with a smile.
"I hope from my heart that you are better—that you will very soon be quite better."
"Thank you. It was kind of you to come. Yes, indeed, I am almost well now. But it has been a long business."
Her voice was weak, and the hand she held out to him seemed so thin and wasted that he took it as one would handle a piece of dainty, delicate porcelain. Her hair, too, was cut short like a boy's. This was as much as he noticed at the moment. The firelight played so persistently upon her face that, for aught he could tell, she might be either pale as death or bathed in blushes. For the latter, however, he was not in the least on the look-out.
"Won't you sit down?" said Alice. "Papa will come in presently, and he will be so pleased to see you; and you will take tea with us. Have you been away?"
"No," said Dick, feeling awkward because he had made no inquiries personally since the return of the Bristos from Yorkshire, now some days back. "But I have been getting ready to go." He put down his hat on the red baize cover of the big table, and sat down a few chairs further from Alice than he need have done.
"What a capital time to go abroad," said Alice, "just when everything is becoming horrid in England! We, too, are waiting to go; it is I that am the stumbling-block."
So she took it that he was only going on the Continent. Better enlighten her at once, thought Dick. Mrs. Parish had disappeared mysteriously from the room.
"This time to-morrow," Dick accordingly said, "I shall be on board the Rome."
The effect of this statement upon Alice was startling.
"What!" cried she, raising herself a few inches in suddenly aroused interest. "Are you going to see them off?"
"See whom off?" Dick was mystified.
"My dear good nurse—the first and the best of my nurses—and her brother the Sergeant."
"Do you mean Compton?"
"Yes. They sail in the Rome to-morrow."
"So the brother," Dick thought to himself, "is taking the sister back to her own people, to be welcomed and forgiven, and to lead a better kind of life. Poor thing! poor thing! Perhaps her husband's death was the best thing that could have befallen her. She will be able to start afresh. She is a widow now."
Aloud, he only said: "I am glad—very glad to hear it."
"Did you know," said Alice, seeing that he was thinking more than he said, "that she was a widow?"
"Yes," said Dick.
It was plain to him that Alice did not know whose widow the poor woman was. She suspected no sort of bond between the woman who had nursed her and the man who had made love to her. She did not know the baseness of that love on his part. This was as it should be. She must never suspect; she must never, never know.
"Yes," said Dick slowly, "I knew that."
"Oh!" cried out Alice. "How dreadful it all was! How terrible!"
"Ay," said Dick, gravely; "it was that indeed."
There was a pause between them. It was Alice who broke it.
"Dick," she said frankly—and honest shame trembled through her utterance—"I want to ask your pardon for something—no, you shall not stop me! I want to tell you that I am sorry for having said something—something that I just dimly remember saying, but something that I know was monstrous and inexcusable. It was just before—but I was accountable enough to know better. Ah! I see you remember; indeed, you could never forget—please—please—try to forgive!"
Dick felt immensely uneasy.
"Say no more, Alice. I deserved it all, and more besides. I was fearfully at fault. I should never have approached you as I did, my discovery once made. I shall never forgive myself for all that has happened. But he took me in—he took me in, up there, playing the penitent thief, the—poor fellow!"
His voice dropped, his tone changed: many things came back to him in a rush.
"Papa has told me the whole history of the relations between you," Alice said quietly, "and we think you behaved nobly."
"There was precious little nobility in it," Dick said grimly. Nor was there any mock modesty in this. He knew too well that he had done nothing to be proud of.
There was another pause. Dick broke this one.
"Forgive me," he said, "if I refer to anything very painful, but I am going away to-morrow, and—there was something else you said, just after you administered that just rebuke to me. You said you would tell us what Miles had said to you. Now I do not mean it as presumption, but we are old friends"—she winced—"and I have rather suspected that he made some confession to you which he never made to anyone else. There was a lot of gold——"
Alice interrupted him in a low voice.
"I would rather not tell you what he said; it was nothing to do with anything of that kind."
Dick's question had not been unpremeditated. He had had his own conviction as to the "confession" Alice had listened to; he only wanted that conviction confirmed. Now, by her hesitation and her refusal to answer, it was confirmed. Miles had proposed marriage on the way from Melmerbridge Church, and been accepted! Well, it was a satisfaction to have that put beyond doubt. He had put his question in rather an underhand way, but how was he to do otherwise? He had got his answer; the end justified the means.
"Pray don't say another word," said Dick impulsively. "Forgive me for prying. Perhaps I can guess what he said."
Alice darted at him a swift glance, and saw his meaning in a flash.
"Do not get up," said she quietly, for Dick was rising to go. "Since it is possible that you may guess wrong, I will tell you all. I insist in telling you all! Here, then, are the facts: Mr. Miles scarcely spoke a word on the way from church, until suddenly, when we were almost in sight of home, he—he caught hold of my hand."
Dick knew that already. He was also quite sure that he knew what was coming. It was no use Alice going on; he could see that she was nervous and uncomfortable over it; he reproached himself furiously for making her so; he made a genuine effort to prevail upon her to say no more. In vain; for now Alice was determined. Seeing that it was so, he got up from his chair and walked over to the windows, and watched the brown leaves being whisked about the lawn and the sky overhead turning a deeper grey.