Part 27 (1/2)

In all her confusing anxieties for Mrs. Lander, Gregory remained at the bottom of her heart a dumb ache. When the pressure of her fears was taken from her she began to suffer for him consciously; then a letter came from him:

”I cannot make it right. It is where it was, and I feel that I must not see you again. I am trying to do right, but with the fear that I am wrong. Send some word to help me before I go away to-morrow.

F. G.”

It was what she had expected, she knew now, but it was none the less to be borne because of her expectation. She wrote back:

”I believe you are doing the best you can, and I shall always believe that.”

Her note brought back a long letter from him. He said that whatever he did, or wherever he went, he should try to be true to her ideal of him.

If they renounced their love now for the sake of what seemed higher than their love, they might suffer, but they could not choose but do as they were doing.

Clementina was trying to make what she could of this when Miss Milray's name came up, and Miss Milray followed it.

”I wanted to ask after Mrs. Lander, and I want you to tell her I did.

Will you? Dr. Welwright says he's going to take her to Venice. Well, I'm sorry--sorry for your going, Clementina, and I'm truly sorry for the cause of it. I shall miss you, my dear, I shall indeed. You know I always wanted to steal you, but you'll do me the justice to say I never did, and I won't try, now.”

”Perhaps I wasn't worth stealing,” Clementina suggested, with a ruefulness in her smile that went to Miss Milray's heart.

She put her arms round her and kissed her. ”I wasn't very kind to you, the other day, Clementina, was I?”

”I don't know,” Clementina faltered, with half-averted face.

”Yes, you do! I was trying to make-believe that I didn't want to meddle with your affairs; but I was really vexed that you hadn't told me your story before. It hasn't taken me all this time to reflect that you couldn't, but it has to make myself come and confess that I had been dry and cold with you.” She hesitated. ”It's come out all right, hasn't it, Clementina?” she asked, tenderly. ”You see I want to meddle, now.”

”We ah' trying to think so,” sighed the girl.

”Tell me about it!” Miss Milray pulled her down on the sofa with her, and modified her embrace to a clasp of Clementina's bands.

”Why, there isn't much to tell,” she began, but she told what there was, and Miss Milray kept her countenance concerning the scruple that had parted Clementina and her lover. ”Perhaps he wouldn't have thought of it,” she said, in a final self-reproach, ”if I hadn't put it into his head.”

”Well, then, I'm not sorry you put it into his head,” cried Miss Milray.

”Clementina, may I say what I think of Mr. Gregory's performance?”

”Why, certainly, Miss Milray!”

I think he's not merely a gloomy little bigot, but a very hard-hearted little wretch, and I'm glad you're rid of him. No, stop! Let me go on!

You said I might! she persisted, at a protest which imparted itself from Clementina's restive hands. ”It was selfish and cruel of him to let you believe that he had forgotten you. It doesn't make it right now, when an accident has forced him to tell you that he cared for you all along.”

”Why, do you look at it that way, Miss Milray? If he was doing it on my account?”

”He may think he was doing it on your account, but I think he was doing it on his own. In such a thing as that, a man is bound by his mistakes, if he has made any. He can't go back of them by simply ignoring them.

It didn't make it the same for you when he decided for your sake that he would act as if he had never spoken to you.”

”I presume he thought that it would come right, sometime,” Clementina urged. ”I did.”

”Yes, that was very well for you, but it wasn't at all well for him. He behaved cruelly; there's no other word for it.”