“But in all that time did you never write to
your wife?”
“Never, till the night before I left Sydney.
I could not write when everything looked so black.
I could not write and tell her that I was fighting
hard with despair and death. I waited for better
fortune, and when that came I wrote telling her that
I should be in England almost as soon as my letter,
and giving her an address at a coffee-house in London
where she could write to me, telling me where to find
her, though she is hardly likely to have left her
father’s house.”
He fell into a reverie after this, and puffed meditatively
at his cigar. His companion did not disturb him.
The last ray of summer daylight had died out, and
the pale light of the crescent moon only remained.
Presently George Talboys flung away his cigar, and
turning to the governess, cried abruptly, “Miss
Morley, if, when I get to England, I hear that anything
has happened to my wife, I shall fall down dead.”
“My dear Mr. Talboys, why do you think of these
things? God is very good to us; He will not afflict
us beyond our power of endurance. I see all things,
perhaps, in a melancholy light; for the long monotony
of my life has given me too much time to think over
my troubles.”
“And my life has been all action, privation,
toil, alternate hope and despair; I have had no time
to think upon the chances of anything happening to
my darling. What a blind, reckless fool I have
been! Three years and a half and not one line—one
word from her, or from any mortal creature who knows
her. Heaven above! what may not have happened?”
In the agitation of his mind he began to walk rapidly
up and down the lonely deck, the governess following,
and trying to soothe him.
“I swear to you, Miss Morley,” he said,
“that till you spoke to me to-night, I never
felt one shadow of fear, and now I have that sick,
sinking dread at my heart which you talked of an hour
ago. Let me alone, please, to get over it my
own way.”
She drew silently away from him, and seated herself
by the side of the vessel, looking over into the water.
George Talboys walked backward and forward for some
time, with his head bent upon his breast, looking
neither to the right nor the left, but in about a
quarter of an hour he returned to the spot where the
governess was seated.
“I have been praying,” he said—“praying
for my darling.”
He spoke in a voice little above a whisper, and she
saw his face ineffably calm in the moonlight.
Hidden relics.
The same August sun which had gone down behind the
waste of waters glimmered redly upon the broad face
of the old clock over that ivy-covered archway which
leads into the gardens of Audley Court.
A fierce and crimson sunset. The mullioned windows
and twinkling lattices are all ablaze with the red
glory; the fading light flickers upon the leaves of
the limes in the long avenue, and changes the still
fish-pond into a sheet of burnished copper; even into
those dim recesses of brier and brushwood, amidst
which the old well is hidden, the crimson brightness
penetrates in fitful flashes till the dank weeds and
the rusty iron wheel and broken woodwork seem as if
they were flecked with blood.
