Part 105

"What shall we do?" whispered Mina. "Are you going to bed, Mason?"

"Not me, ma'am. Why, I don't know what mayn't happen before the morning!" He shook his head in humorous commentary on those he had served. "But there's no call for you to sit up, ma'am."

"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Mason," said the Imp indignantly. "It would be most--most improper if I didn't sit up. Why, it's nearly midnight!"

"They won't think of that up there," said he.

The sound of a door slammed came from upstairs. Mina's eyes met Mason's for a moment by an involuntary impulse, then hastily turned away. It is an excellent thing to be out of the reach of temptation. The door was shut!

"Give me a candle here in the library," said Mina with all her dignity. And there, in the library, she sat down to wonder and to wait.

Mason went off after the sandwiches, smiling still. There was really nothing odd in it, when once you were accustomed to the family ways.

XXVII

BEFORE TRANSLATION

Harry Tristram had come back to Blent in the mood which belonged to the place as of old--the mood that claimed as his right what had become his by love, knew no scruples if only he could gain and keep it, was ready to play a bold game and take a great chance. He did not argue about what he was going to do. He did not justify it, and perhaps could not. Yet to him what he purposed was so clearly the best thing that Cecily must be forced into it. She could not be forced by force; if he told her the truth, he would meet at the outset a resistance which he could not quell. He might encounter that after all, later on, in spite of a present success. That was the great risk he was determined to run. At the worst there would be something gained; if she were and would be nothing else, she should and must at least be mistress of Blent. His imagination had set her in that place; his pride, no less than his love, demanded it for her. He had gone away once that she might have it. If need be, again he would go away. That stood for decision later.

She walked slowly to the end of the Long Gallery and sat down in the great arm-chair; it held its old position in spite of the changes which Harry noted with quick eyes and a suppressed smile as he followed her and set his candle on a table near. He lit two more from it and then turned to her. She was pale and defiant.

"Well," she said, "why are you here?"

She asked and he gave no excuse for the untimely hour of his visit and no explanation of it. It seemed a small, perhaps indeed a natural, thing to both of them.

"I'm here because I couldn't keep away," he answered gravely, standing before her.

"You promised to keep away. Can't you keep promises?"

"No, not such promises as that."

"And so you make my life impossible! You see this room, you see how I've changed it? I've been changing everything I could. Why? To forget you, to blot you out, to be rid of you. I've been bringing myself to take my place. To-night I seemed at last to be winning my way to it. Now you come. You gave me all this; why do you make it impossible to me?" A bright color came on her cheeks now as she grew vehement in her reproaches, and her voice was intense, though low.

A luxury of joy swept over him as he listened. Every taunt witnessed to his power, every reproach to her love. He played a trick indeed and a part, but there was no trick and no acting in so far as he was her lover. If that truth could not redeem his deception, it stifled all sense of guilt.

"And you were forgetting? You were getting rid of me?" he asked, smiling and fixing his eyes on her.

"Perhaps. And now----!" She made a gesture of despair. "Tell me--why have you come?" Her tone changed to entreaty.

"I've come because I must be where you are, because I was mad to send you away before, mad not to come to you before, to think I could live without you, not to see that we two must be together; because you're everything to me." He had come nearer to her now and stood by her. "Ever since I went away I have seen you in this room, in that chair. I think it was your ghost only that came to town." He laughed a moment. "I wouldn't have the ghost. I didn't know why. Now I know. I wanted the you that was here--the real you--as you had been on the night I went away. So I've come back to you. We're ourselves here, Cecily. We Tristrams are ourselves at Blent."

She had listened silently, her eyes on his. She seemed bewildered by the sudden rush of his passion and the enraptured eagerness of his words that made her own vehemence sound to her poor and thin. Pride had its share in her protest, love was the sole spring of his intensity. Yet she was puzzled by the victorious light in his eyes. What he said, what he came to do, was such a surrender as she had never hoped from him; and he was triumphant in surrendering!

The thought flashed through her mind, troubling her and for the time hindering her joy in his confession. She did not trust him yet.

"I've had an offer made to me," he resumed, regaining his composure. "A sort of political post. If I accept it I shall have to leave England for a considerable time, almost immediately. That brought the thing to a point." Again he laughed. "It's important to you too; because if you say no to me to-night, you'll be rid of me for ever so long. Your life won't be made impossible. I shouldn't come to Blent again."

"A post that would take you away?" she murmured.

"Yes. You'd be left here in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it. His manner was involuntarily expressive. Even if she brought that sort of thing to Blent----! He turned back at the sound of a little laugh from Cecily and found her eyes sparkling.

"Father's birthday present, Harry," said she.

Delighted with her mirth, he came to her, holding out his hands. She shook her head and leant back, looking at him.