“No.”  Mr. Frank came to a halt and dug with his heel at a daisy root in the turf.  Then using his heel as a pivot he swung himself round in an awkward circle.  The action was ludicrous almost, but he faced his cousin again with serious eyes.  “But it is not her heart that I doubt,” he added gently.

Miss Bracy stared up at him, “My dear Frank, do you mean to tell me that you regret?”

Yes; as a fact he did regret, and knew that he would never cease to regret.  He was not a man to nurse malice even for a wrong done to him, still less to live carelessly conscious of having wronged another.  He was weak, but incurably just.  And more; though self entered last into his regret, he knew perfectly well that the wrong had wrecked him too.  His was a career manque:  he had failed as a man, and it had broken his nerve as an artist.  He was a dabbler now, with—­as Heine said of de Musset—­a fine future behind him, and none but an artist can tell the bitterness of that self-knowledge.  Had he kept his faith with Bassett in spirit as in letter, he might have failed just as decidedly; her daily companionship might have coarsened his inspiration, soured him, driven him to work cheaply, recklessly; but at least he could have accused fate, circumstance, a boyish error, whereas now he and his own manhood shared the defeat and the responsibility.  Yes, he regretted; but it would never do to let Laura know his regret.  That would be to play the double traitor.  She had saved him (she believed) from himself; with utterly wrong-headed loyalty she had devoted her life to this.  The other debt was irredeemable, but this at any rate could be paid.

He evaded her question.  “My dear,” he said, “what was done has been atoned for by her, and is being atoned for by—­by us.  Let us think of her without bitterness.”

Miss Bracy shook her head “I am a poor sort of Christian,” she confessed; “and if she has taught this boy to hate us—­”

“Mr. Victor Bracy,” announced Deborah from the garden-porch behind them, and a tall youth in black stepped past her and came across the turf with a shy smile.

The pair turned with an odd sense of confusion, almost of dismay.  They were prepared for the “Victor,” but somehow they had not thought of him as bearing their own surname.  Mr. Frank had felt the shock once before, in addressing an envelope; but to Miss Bracy it was quite new.

Yet she was the first to recover herself, and, while holding out her hand, took quick note that the boy had Frank’s stature and eyes, carried his clothes well, and himself, if shyly, without clumsiness.  She could find no fault with his manner of shaking hands; and when he turned to his father, the boy’s greeting was the less embarrassed of the two.  Mr. Frank indeed had suddenly become conscious of his light suit and bird’s-eye neckcloth.

“But how did you come?” asked Miss Bracy.  “We sent a cart to meet you—­ I heard no sound of wheels.”