everard lisle seemed to tread on air as he walked beside lady pell to the custodian's cottage, where they found mrs. tew and ethel awaiting them. luncheon was ready and they at once sat down to it. they made a very merry little party, everard in especial being in the gayest of spirits.
"now, what i should recommend you young people to do," said her ladyship by-and-by, "is to go in search of the haunted pool, about which the guide was telling us this morning. he said it was not above a mile away, and, in any case, the woods themselves are most lovely just now. as for mrs. tew and i, we shall have a couple of comfortable chairs taken out into the shade of yonder oak, and there have a quiet gossip to ourselves. and don't forget that tea will be ready at five o'clock to the minute."
we may be sure that lisle and ethel were by no means loth to carry out her ladyship's behest, and presently they were lost to view among the green shadows of the wood. lady pell gazed after them with a well-satisfied smile, but it was with a sigh that the canon's widow followed their retreating figures. "oh, to be young again and in love!" she said, hardly witting that she spoke aloud.
"and have all the troubled record of our lives to go through again," said her ladyship. "for my part no such desire ever enters my mind. all things considered, i'm pretty well content to be as i am."
perhaps for the moment she failed to remember that her life had many compensations denied to poor mrs. tew.
it was one of those lovely october days which make a golden bridge between summer and winter. the woods were clothed with their richest garments--a kaleidoscope of gorgeous tints, albeit the vesture of decay; the dry leaves rustled under their feet, and little splashes of colour kept dropping round them as they went. here and there a rabbit peered cautiously at them for a moment, showed a flash of white and was gone. somewhere out of sight a robin was fluting a monody to the dying year. they walked on for some time in silence; everard seemed to have left all his gaiety behind him. there was something about his changing moods to-day which ethel failed to understand. she had known all along that his love had never altered or varied in the slightest, and of late her own heart had whispered its secret to her in accents she could no longer mistake. more than once during the last few weeks she had felt nearly sure everard was on the point of saying that which, almost unknown to herself, she was secretly longing to hear; but the propitious moment had gone by and he had not spoken, and not improbably it was the vague sense of disappointment that had crept over her at such times which had first served to open her eyes to the truth as regarded herself.
but somehow to-day she had no prevision of what was so imminent. not even now that she had come with him for a solitary woodland ramble. for that day at least he seemed to have absolved himself from all serious thoughts, from all matters of moment, and to be transformed for the time into the similitude of a laughing, light-hearted school-boy. she could not know--how should she--that it was her presence, that it was the privilege of being able to spend several consecutive hours in her sweet company, which had thus had power to metamorphose him almost beyond his knowledge of himself.
from the summit of the keep he had caught a silvery gleam of water in a hollow no great distance away. it was probably the haunted pool, about which the guide had told them, and lay darkling in its forest hollow, with a fringe of bulrushes, and outside that a margin of soft turf that was pleasant to the feet. for all it had the name of being haunted, there was nothing weird or uncanny about the place, but rather an air of sweet solitariness as though of one of nature's temples, sacred to the shy creatures of the wood, upon which for any human foot to intrude was to break some mystic spell.
for a few moments lisle and ethel stood drinking in the silent beauty of the scene. then said everard,
"suppose we rest here awhile, 'the world forgetting, by the world forgot.'" speaking thus he led the way to the trunk of a tree, blown down in some tempest years before, which had been left unheeded where it had fallen.
and now at length had come the moment so long looked forward to, so long delayed, so long regarded with apprehension, but now at last seized on with a gladness which he himself felt to be closely allied to audacity. for events might yet make a mockery of his gladness and prove it to have no better foundation than a certain oracular utterance on the part of an old lady who believed herself possessed of a gift for seeing farther into a millstone than her neighbours. all this might come to pass of course, and yet he was not at all dismayed. to-day he felt lifted above the common world. for the time he breathed "an ampler ether, a diviner air."
nevertheless, it was in very commonplace terms that he began what he had to say.
"do you know, lady pell quite startled me as she and i were standing together on the keep before luncheon." he was not looking at ethel, but leaning forward and punching holes in the turf with the ferrule of his walking-stick.
"i should have thought your nerves proof against anything lady pell might have to say to you," answered ethel smilingly.
"she gave me to understand that her stay at the chase was drawing to a close, and that in a very little while she and you would be winging your flight elsewhere."
there was a moment's silence, and then ethel said: "it was a very natural announcement, and i cannot see what there was in it to startle you."
"that is because you look at it from one point of view, and i from another. to you it means fresh faces and other scenes--in short, a change, probably more or less welcome after the quiet and monotony of existence at withington chase."
he paused. ethel was quite aware that he was waiting for her to say: "and from your point of view what does it mean?" by this she needed no one to tell her what his reply would be. everything had been revealed to her as in a flash, and she marvelled at her blindness. and now the point for her to decide, and that on the instant, was whether she should, or should not, ask him that simple-seeming question, which she felt would but be the precursor to one of infinitely more significance on his part, from answering which there would be no possible escape for her. and in what terms was she prepared to answer it? her heart-throbs seemed to deafen her and her mind was torn by a conflict of emotions, among which, however, one claimed predominance over the others. she knew and owned to herself that she loved him. then in the silence a voice spoke. "and from your point of view, mr. lisle, what does lady pell's announcement mean?" it was as though some force within her had compelled her to put the question in her own despite.
"it means," began everard, and he paused for an instant as if his breath had suddenly failed him--"it means more, far more than i could tell you in many words." neither of them had been looking at each other, but lisle now left off his employment of punching holes in the turf, and drawing himself up, he turned on ethel a face all aglow with the emotion of the moment.
"when you quit the chase," he went on, "i shall lose that which to me is the most precious object on earth, and who shall say whether i shall ever find it again? ethel, on that april day which now seems so long ago that i could fancy it pertained to some prior state of existence, i told you that i loved you, and asked you to become my wife. your answer was, that you had no love to give me, and that you could never marry me. i took my dismissal and went--indeed, there was nothing else left me to do--not knowing whether i should ever see you again. then, when, one morning, months afterwards, i came suddenly upon you in one of the garden-paths at the chase, it seemed as if the gates of paradise must have opened, and that you had come down its golden stairs to meet me face to face. and the same instant my love for you, which i had locked up in the innermost chamber of my heart as a priceless treasure once more flooded all my being with a rapture of hope. ethel, that hope has not yet deserted me. if i have not spoken before, it has been because i feared to startle you, because i trembled lest my audacity might be the cause of my losing what i possessed already--your friendship--and yet give me nothing in return. but now the day of timid counsels is over, and at the risk of losing everything i cast silence to the winds. you must hear me, you must know all, let your sentence be what it may."
he poured forth the words with a fervour with which few who knew him would have credited the ordinarily quiet, self-contained and somewhat self-repressed everard lisle. they were both still seated on the trunk of the fallen tree, and he now drew a little closer to ethel, who, all this time, had been gazing straight before her with a strangely rapt expression on her face.
"so now again to-day," he went on, "i am going to ask you the self-same question that i asked you on your birthday----"
"stay i do not speak another word till you have heard what i have to say."
she had turned and was facing him, the delicate roses of her cheeks somewhat blanched, but her eyes shining clear and full like twin stars of morning. there was that in the way she spoke which compelled attention. everard was struck dumb. man though he was, his heart fluttered like a frightened bird. what was he about to be told? that he was too late?--that some rival had been beforehand with him? where was all his happy confidence now? it seemed to him as if his face had turned grey and old. a shiver went through him from head to foot.
"come," said ethel, "let us walk awhile. i have much to tell you."
she rose, and, like an automaton, he did the same. they turned and, side by side, began to pace the turfy margin of the pool. ethel did not at once break the silence. many emotions were at work within her, and she wanted to assure herself that she had them well under control before she spoke again.
"mine is a strange story, mr. lisle, as you will at once admit when i have told it you. you know me, and the world knows me, by the name of ethel thursby, but that is not my real name. what that is no one knows. neither does anyone know who were my parents, where i was born, nor, indeed, who i am at all."
therewith she went on to tell him all those facts in connection with her early history with which the reader is already familiar, beginning with the tragic death of the woman who had passed herself off as her mother on board the pandora, leading up through their adoption of her as their niece by the two miss thursbys, to her discovery of the truth as told her in matthew thursby's letter on her nineteenth birthday.
it was with growing wonder and interest that lisle listened to her as, step by step, she unfolded the details of her story.
"i hope you do not for a moment imagine that all this which you have just told me can make a shadow's difference in my love for you," he eagerly began almost before the last words had left her lips.
"but i have still another confession to make," she said, breathing the words, as it were, on the wings of a sigh. "let me finish, please, before you say anything more."
then came the confession which the truth that dwelt in her forced from her lips, although it was like tearing her heart to have to make it.
"mr. lisle, i have been engaged once already."
"ah!"--with a swift indrawing of his breath. it was undoubtedly a stab.
"i was young, inexperienced, romantic," resumed ethel, not allowing herself to notice his exclamation. "he was good-looking and plausible, and he persuaded me into fancying that i loved him, and after a time we became engaged. but, indeed, it was all a foolish fancy, for in my heart i never really cared for him. fortunately i discovered the sort of man he was before it was too late. he had sought me in the belief that i was an heiress, and when he found i was nothing of the kind, his only thought was in what way he could most readily break with me. but no such action on his part was called for, for meanwhile it had come to my knowledge that he was already engaged to someone else, to whom he had behaved with a baseness and a heartlessness which seem almost beyond belief. from that moment all was at an end between us. i felt like a prisoner when his fetters are struck off and he is told that he is free. how deep was my thankfulness that my eyes had been mercifully opened in time, i alone can ever know."
lisle had listened like one devouring her every word, but even before she had come to an end he drew a deep breath of relief. whomsoever this man might be, she had never really cared for him, her heart had never been touched, he had her own assurance to that effect, and for him, everard lisle, that was enough. it was merely one of those lessons of experience which, in one shape or another, we all of us have to learn, only she happily had been spared those bitter consequences which so many of us are called upon to drain to the lees.
if, as a lesson, it served no other purpose, it would at least teach her to discern and appreciate the difference between a spurious love and one that was rooted in the heart's inmost core.
"since you have chosen to tell me these things," he said, "i can but accept and value them as so many proofs of your confidence, but they weigh with me not so much as the lightest snowflake. they have not moved me by a single hair-breadth from the ground i stood on before, and now, at last, you must listen to what else i have to say. you have no longer any excuse for not doing so. ethel, answer me once again the question i put to you on your birthday, only this time--this time--let your answer be a different one! will you be my wife?"
they had come to a halt--why, neither of them could have told--and somehow both her hands found themselves imprisoned in his she did not try to release them, but her face was still averted and the marble of her neck and throat was flushed with tenderest rose.
"speak, dearest--have you not one word for me?" he pleaded.
then she turned upon him two darkly shining eyes which seemed the dwelling-place of that great mystery whose other name is love.
"and can you," she said, each syllable punctuated by a heart-throb--"nay, is it even possible, after what i have just told you, that you should still care for one who is nothing more than a waif--who as a wife would come to you parentless, nameless, dowerless? consider. take time to think. do not answer me now, unless----"
"do not answer you now!" broke in everard impetuously. "when then should i answer you? oh, my love--my love--how little you know me! this is my one and only answer."
an instant later she was locked in his arms.
