A Romance of Wastdale

wke's midnight visitor was the girl to whom he was betrothed, and the need of either verifying or disproving it was the one thing clear to him amid the turmoil of

atever its cause, he realised in a way, but as yet did he not feel it. The blow had stunned his reason, had even dulled his senses, had, in a word, struck at the very roots of his being. He was adrift in a maze of bewilderment. The scene he was witnessing grew in the end shadowy and unreal. Even Hawke seemed to lose his individuality; he became just a detail in the sum of the mystery, a thing to be explained, not a m

ly a difference in the manner of her walk, a certain hesitancy, absent when she swept by him on her way to the Inn. Then her footfalls had rung surely and rhythmically, betokening some quest in view; now they wavered, timidly, with uncertain beats as if the hope had gone out of her limbs. The sound was somehow familiar to Gordon, and, curiously ransacking his memories, he discovered the reason. He had marked women walk like that, with the same weariness, with the same hopelessness, late at night in the quiet of the London streets. This chance association of ideas acted on him like a shock. It woke him from his stupor, revivified him, set him with clear vision fronting facts. He grasped the full meaning of Kate's interview with Hawke. It rose before him like an acted scene in a play, and he recollect

rprise. "How you startled me! I am late, ver

er labouring effort to dig up an excuse. "You were right t

m, but he thrust his hands out with a ge

st three

s them

s to the tone of his voice. That loathsome dread at all events was

followed him in silence, drew a chair close to the dying fi

hese April nights a

He had heard her implore Hawke that it was past the hour, some time before he quitted his post of

ou want with me? I h

. The knowledge that she had been disc

y don't y

o me as if you had just come out of a convent," he had once said to her; and that sentence most exactly indicated the nature of the passion he had felt for her--an intense love refined and exalted by a blind, unreasoning reverence. There was, in truth, a certain air of spirituality about her manifest to most people on their first introduction.

im a decided lead. He waited and watched her. The skin of her wrist had broken when Hawke gripped it, and every now and then a drop of blood would fall on

ok to her keen intelligence, and she could read clearly enough that what kept his lips locked now was the conflict between his new knowledge and his old loyalty. In a flash she imagined Hawke's behaviour under the like circumstances a

u said you were going to Ravenglass. You tol

laces, as if she were the accuser and he the culprit, standing meekly self-condemned. Indeed

rhaps. W

h to me! Preach to me! Go on! Only be qu

ded, wistfully, "It can't be yo

self, that you have never known--that you never would know. You always had wrong ideas about me. I tried to open your eyes at first, but it w

sat opposite to her on the

all my faul

quite seriously. As a matter of fact, it had just begun to dawn on him that a frank expectat

I had met, and so in time I thought I might come to love you as well. I don't know whether I ever should have reached that if I had been left alone. But you made it impossible. You would not see that I had faults and caprices. You would not see that those very faults pleased me, that I meant to keep them, that I did not want to change. No! Whene

of the firelight on the buckle caught Gordon's eye, and he saw th

wet through,"

, and left the horse tied up to the footbridge over

xclaimed. "Then they must

own?" she asked,

unt. She is staying wit

have had no time to change if I had thought of it, as it was close on ten. I had told Martin, our groom, that I should want a horse--you

had found her out had alone possessed her mind. Now, however, she was compelled to look forward. What would he do? He was to ha

mantelshelf above her, and hi

?" he

d, "I am pretty safe for

eemed not to have

he repeated. "What

n thinking of her, not of himself. Yes,

"I must have time to think. I

re me as much

so it seemed to Gordon. She was so young for all this misery. Her ver

replied. "You need not be afraid of me. I

brain refused to act. Disconnected scraps of ideas and ludicrous reminiscences, all foreign to the matter, forced themselves upon his mind, the harder he strove to think. He gave the effort up. He wou

!" he said, retur

had pierced straight to her heart at last, a

of the story do

an't! If you had been rough and harsh,

must know the truth some way or another, and I would r

wearily; and for a space th