Still, this weariness was never to be detected in his air and manner, or in the phrases which fell from his lips, so apparently unpremeditated that they seemed alive with natural impulse. They were, in fact, the outcome of theatrical and carefully elaborated pessimism; they were lamentations over the ills of life, pity for Eva, wrapped in mysterious regrets; and amid all this melancholy, accusations against Westhove--mere trifles, pa.s.sing hints, amounting to nothing but for the tone and accent--accusations of levity, inconstancy, caprice, fickleness. But at the slightest outcry on Eva's part he was ready to contradict himself, fencing cleverly enough, now with himself, and now with Eva, with all the feints of a master of the foils, just touching her lightly--a p.r.i.c.k here and a p.r.i.c.k there--drawing a tiny drop of blood at each hit.

And to Eva it seemed that her soul, after having been dragged through a gutter, was bleeding to death under these pin-p.r.i.c.ks. It was a very sensible pain when she hopelessly compared the reality with her dreams, as they grew more vague and faded away, when she argued with herself in the cold light of reason, and asked herself, "Why am I so wretched?

Because Frank is a young man like other young men; because Bertie is a pessimist, and despairs of my ever being happy?" And then she would shrug her shoulders; her trouble was intangible, had paled to a thin cloud, and vanished. She had always been very happy; Bertie's dejection was sickly nonsense; she should be happy again. But, notwithstanding that her common-sense thus dissipated the pain, it constantly returned in spite of reason and argument; returned persistently, like an object tossed on a wave, which comes and goes, comes and goes.

She could endure it no longer, and one day when she ventured to look honestly into her own heart, she saw that she did indeed doubt Frank, and the truth of his statements about that woman.

Longing for some certainty, she asked Bertie--his friend:

"Tell me, Bertie--that Something of which you once spoke to me; that mystery: what is it?"

"Oh, nothing, my dear girl, absolutely nothing."

She gazed at him with penetrating eyes, and went on in a strange, cold tone:

"Well; but I know; I have guessed."

Bertie was startled. What was she thinking; what had she got into her head?

"Yes, I have guessed it," she repeated. "Frank does not love me; he loves--he loves that woman--that creature of the Lyceum. He has always loved her; is it so?"

Bertie said nothing, but stared before him; that was the easiest and best reply.

"Bertie, tell me, is it so?"

"No, it is not so," he answered, dully. "What a foolish notion to have got into your head. What made you think, of such a thing?" But there was no ring of conviction in his voice; he spoke mechanically, as though in absence of mind, as if he were thinking of something else.

"Does he ever see her now?" she went on, feeling as if she were defiling herself with her own words; as if her lips were dropping slime.

"Why, of course not. What are you thinking of?"

She leaned back with a sigh, and tears glistened in her large eyes. He was silent for a minute, studying her out of the corner of his eye.

Then, as if to mitigate his too feeble repudiation of the suspicion, he went on reproachfully:

"Really, Eva, you must not think such things of Frank. It is not nice; you must have some confidence in the man you are to marry."

"Then it is not the truth?"

"Certainly not. He never sees her now."

"But does not he think of her still?"

He gave her a long, deep, enigmatical look. His eyes were like black velvet darkness; she could not read their meaning.

"Fie!" said he, reprovingly, and he shook his head.

"That is no answer," she said, urgently. And again he fixed that dark gaze on her.

"Good G.o.d! answer me!" she cried, her heart wrung to the very core.

"How can you expect me to know Frank's feelings?" he dared to murmur. "I don't know--there!"

"Then it is so?" she moaned, clutching his hands.

"I don't know," he repeated, and, freeing himself from her grasp, he turned away and rose.

"He loves her; he cannot live without her; he is that creature's slave, as you men sometimes are to such women; and though he sees her no more, out of respect for me, he thinks of her and talks of her to you--and that is why he is so silent and grave when he is here. Is it so?"

"Good Heavens! I do not know," he groaned, with mild impatience. "How should I know?"

"But why then does he pretend to love me? Why did he ask me to marry him? Because once, for a moment in Norway, he fancied he could do without her? Because he meant to live a new life, and now finds that he cannot?" She clasped her hands With a gesture of anguish.

"Good G.o.d, Eva! say no more--say no more. I do not know, I tell you--I know nothing about it--nothing."

He sank back in his chair with a sigh of exhaustion. She said no more; the tears streamed from her eyes like rain impossible to be restrained.

XI.

And in her misery she thought she had been very clever and cunning, and that she had guessed rightly; while, in truth, as guileless as a child, she had been as it were hypnotised by his magnetic gaze, and had spoken the very words he had intended she should utter.

She felt nothing of this; she saw him still as her brother-friend, fragile, affectionate, and unhappy, dreading to wound her, anxious to screen her from the truth for fear of hurting her, and yet not crafty enough to conceal it when she pressed him too closely. This was how he appeared to her. Not for an instant did she suspect that she was as a fly wrapping itself closer and closer in the spider's toils.

Bertie himself, after this scene, failed to see clearly that he had pulled the wires; that he had been the first to taint her confidence with the poison of suspicion; that he had brought about the catastrophe as they came out of the Lyceum; that he had compelled Eva to follow the clue he had chosen to suggest. Dimness shrouded the clearness of his mental vision, as a breath clouds a mirror; the lucid crisis of his faculties was past. This was all the outcome of circ.u.mstances, he thought; no human being of his own free will could work such things out--How easily everything had come about, how simply, without a hitch!

It was because Fate had so willed it and had favoured him--he had no part in it. Nor was this self-deception: he really thought so.

In the evening after their last interview, Eva went, very late, to seek her father in his study, where he sat reading his books on heraldry. He supposed she had come to bid him good-night, as usual; but she sat down facing him, very upright, and with a set face like a sleep-walker.

"Father, I want to speak to you."

He looked at her in surprise. In the Olympian peace of his genealogical studies, in the calm, emotionless existence of a hale old man, who finds a solace for advancing years among his books, he had never discerned that a drama was going on close beside him, played by three beings whom he saw every day. And he was startled at his daughter's rigid face and tone of suppressed suffering.

"Are you ill, my child?"

"Oh no, I am quite well. But I want to ask you something. I want to know if you will speak to Frank?"

"To Frank?"

"Yes. To Frank. The other evening as we were coming out of the Lyceum--"

And she told him the whole story, sitting straight up in her chair, with that strange look in her face, and a husky, subdued voice; all about the yellow-haired woman, and her own suspicions and distrust. It was wrong of her to doubt Frank, but really she could not help it. She would fain have quoted Bertie as evidence, but Bertie had after all said nothing definite, so she did not see how she could bring him into court, and did not therefore mention his name.

Sir Archibald listened in dismay. He had never suspected what was going on in his daughter's mind; he had always supposed that everything was as clear as the sun at noon.

"And--what then?" he asked in some embarra.s.sment.

"And then--I want you to speak to Frank. Ask him point blank whether he still loves this woman, who has played some part in his past life; whether he cannot bear to give her up; whether that is the reason he is always so silent and gloomy when we see him here. Get him to speak out.

I would rather hear my doom than live in this dreadful suspense. And to you, perhaps, he will clear it all up, so that things may go on as they were before. Say nothing of my distrust; if it is not justified by the facts it might make him angry. It is too bad of me to suspect his truth, and I have tried to bring myself to a better mind; but I cannot succeed.