Part 54 (1/2)

”Yes.”

”Then what are you waiting for?”

”I want to give a note to Captain Kynaston,” said Tommy, crimson with confusion. ”Is he ever coming in?”

”He is in now; give me the note.”

”I was to give it to himself, to n.o.body else.”

”Who told you?”

”Aunt Vera.”

”Oh!” There was a whole volume of meaning in the simple exclamation.

Mrs. Kynaston held out her hand. ”You can give it to me, I am Captain Kynaston's wife, you know. Give it to me, Tommy. Your name is Tommy, isn't it? Yes, I thought so. Mr. Wilde, will you be so kind as to fetch Tommy a peach off the dinner-table? Give the note to me, my dear, and you can tell your aunt that it shall be given to Captain Kynaston directly.”

When Denis returned from his mission to the dining-room he only found Tommy waiting for his peach upon the terrace steps. Mrs. Kynaston had gone back into the house.

Tommy went off devouring his prey with, it must be confessed, rather a guilty conscience over it. Somehow or other, he felt that he had failed in the trust his aunt had placed in him; but then, Mrs. Kynaston had been very kind and very peremptory; she had almost taken the letter out of his hand, and she had smiled and looked quite like a fairy princess out of one of Minnie's story-books in her pretty blue silk dress and s.h.i.+ning locket--and then, peaches were so very nice!

What happened to Denis Wilde after the small boy's departure was this. He sauntered back to the drawing-room windows and looked in; no one was there. He then wandered further down the terrace till he came opposite the window of the boudoir--Mrs. Kynaston's own boudoir--which Sir John's loving hands had once lined with blue and silver for his Vera. Here he caught sight of Mrs. Kynaston's fair head and slender figure. Her back was turned to him; he was on the point of calling out to her, when suddenly the words upon his lips were arrested by something which he saw her doing. Instead of speaking, he simply stood still and stared at her.

Mrs. Kynaston, unconscious of observation, held the note which Tommy had just given her over the steam of a small jug of hot water, which she had hastily ordered her maid to bring to her. In less than a minute the envelope unfastened of itself. Helen then deliberately took out the note and read it.

What she read was this:--

”Dear Captain Kynaston,--I have something that I have promised to give to you when you are alone. Would you mind coming round to the vicarage after dinner to-night, at nine o'clock? You will find me at the gate.--Sincerely yours,

”Vera Nevill.”

Then Helen lit a candle, and fastened the letter up again with sealing-wax.

And Denis Wilde crept away from the window on tip-toe with a sense of shocked horror upon him such as he never remembered having experienced in his life before.

All at once his pretty, pleasant hostess, with whom he had been glad enough to banter, and with whom even he had been ready to enter upon a mild and innocent flirtation, became horrible and hateful to him; and there came into his mind, like an inspiration, the knowledge of her enmity to Vera; for it was Vera's note that she had opened and read. Then his instincts were straightway all awake with the acuteness of a danger, to something--he knew not what--that threatened the woman he loved.

”Thank G.o.d, I am here,” he said to himself. ”That woman is her foe, and she will be dangerous to her. I would not have come to her house had I known it; but now I am here, I will stay, for it is certain that she will need a friend.”

At dinner-time the note lay by Maurice's side on the table. Whilst the soup was being helped he took it up and opened it. He little knew how narrowly both his wife and his guest watched him as he read it.

But his face was inscrutable. Only he talked a little more, and seemed, perhaps, in better spirits than usual; but that is what a stranger could not have noticed, although it is possible that Helen may have done so.

”By the vicarage gate,” she had said, and it was there that he found her.

Behind her lay the dark and silent garden, beyond it the house, with its wide-open drawing-room windows, and the stream of yellow light from the lamp within, lying in a golden streak across the lawn. She leant over the gate; an archway of greenery, dark in the night's dim light, was above her head, and cl.u.s.ters of pale, creamy roses hung down about her on every side.

It was that sort of owl's light that has no distinctness in it, and yet is far removed from darkness. Vera's perfect figure, clad in some white, clinging garment that fell about her in thick, heavy folds, stood out with a statue-like clearness against the dark shrubs behind her. She seemed like some shadowy queen of the night. Out of the dimness, the clear oval of her perfect face shone pale as the waning moon far away behind the church tower, whilst the dusky veil of her dark hair lost itself vaguely in the shadows, and melted away into the background.

A poet might have hymned her thus, but no painter could have painted her.