She put out her hand for her work and busied herself with it, knowing instinctively that the occupation of her hands and eyes upon it would fret him less than if she sat idle and looked at him. She had nothing to learn about how to deal with Roger.

She worked for some time in silence, and hope dead and buried rose out of his deep grave in her heart, and came towards her once more. Was it indeed hope that stirred in its grave, this pallid figure with the shroud still enfolding it, or was it but its ghost? She knew not.

At last Roger raised a tortured face out of his hands.

"Of course, she _says_ she is innocent," he said, looking hopelessly at Janey.

Janey started violently. Her work fell from her hands.

"Annette--says--she--is--innocent," she repeated after him, a flame of colour rushing to her face.

"Yes. Mary Deane said the same. They always say it."

Janey shook as in an ague.

She saw suddenly in front of her a gulf of infamy unspeakable, ready to swallow her if she agreed with him--she who always agreed with him. He would implicitly believe her. The little gleam of hope which had fallen on her aching, mutilated life went out. She was alone in the dark. For a moment she could neither see nor hear.

"If Annette says she is innocent, it's true," she said hoa.r.s.ely, putting her hand to her throat.

The room and the lamp became visible again, and Roger's eyes fixed on her, like the eyes of a drowning man, wide, dilated, seen through deep water.

"If Annette says so, it's true," she repeated. "She may have done wrong.

She says she has. But she does not tell lies. You know that."

"She says d.i.c.k did not try to entrap her, that she went with him of her own accord."

"But don't you see that d.i.c.k _did_ take advantage of her, all the same, a mean advantage, when she was stunned by despair? I don't suppose you have ever known what it is to feel despair, Roger. But I know what it is. I know what Annette felt when her lover failed her."

"She told me she meant to drown herself. She said she did not care what became of her."

"You don't know what it means to feel like that."

Roger heard again the thud and beat of the distant train in the sod against his ear.

"Yes, I do," he said, looking at her under his heavy brows.

"I don't believe you. If you had, you would understand Annette's momentary madness. She need not have told you that. She need not have blackened herself in your eyes, but she did. Can't you see, Roger, will you never, never understand that you have had the whole truth from Annette?--the most difficult truth in the world to tell. And why do you need me to hammer it into you that she was speaking the truth to you?

Can't you see for yourself that Annette is upright, as upright as yourself? What is the good of you, if you can't even see that? What is the good of loving her--if you do love her--if you can't see that she doesn't tell lies? _I'm_ not in love with her,--there have been times when I've come very near to hating her, and I had reason to believe she had done a wicked action,--but I knew one thing, and that was that she would never lie about it. She is not that kind. And if she told you that in a moment of despair she had agreed to do it, but that she had not done it, then she spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Roger could only stare at Janey, dumfounded. She who in his long experience of her had always listened, had spoken so little beyond comment or agreement, now thrust at him with a sword of determined, sharp-edged speech. The only two women he thought he knew were becoming absolute strangers to him.

"If I had been in Annette's place, I would have died sooner than own that I agreed to do wrong. I should have put the blame on d.i.c.k. But Annette is humbler than I am, more loyal than I am, more compa.s.sionate.

She took the blame herself which belongs to d.i.c.k. She would not speak ill of him. If I had been in her place, I should have hesitated a long time before I told you about the will. It will ruin her good name. I should have thought of that. But she didn't. She thought only of you, only of getting your inheritance for you. Just as when d.i.c.k was ill, she only thought of helping him. Go and get your inheritance, Roger. It's yours, and I'm glad it is. You deserve it. But there's one thing you don't deserve, and that is to marry Annette. You're not good enough for her."

Janey had risen to her feet. She stood before him, a small terrible creature with blazing eyes. Then she pa.s.sed him and left the room, the astounded Roger gaping after her.

He waited a long time for her to return, but she did not come back.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

"Les seuls defauts vraiment terribles sont ceux qu'on prend pour des qualites."--H. RABUSSON.

"Wherever we go," said Aunt Harriet complacently from her sofa that evening, "weddings are sure to follow. I've noticed it again and again.

Do you remember, Maria, how when we spent the summer at Nairn our landlady's son at those nice lodgings married the innkeeper's daughter?

And it was very soon after our visit to River View that Mary Grey was engaged to the curate. Which reminds me that I am afraid they are very badly off, for I heard from him not long ago that he had resigned his curacy, and that as his entire trust was in the Almighty the smallest contribution would be most acceptable; but I did not send anything, because I always thought Mary ought not to have married him. And now we have been here barely fifteen months and here is Harry Manvers marrying the nurse. The Miss Blinketts tell me that she is at least fifteen years older than him. Not that that matters at all if there is spiritual affinity, but in this case---- Really, Annette, I think your wits must be woolgathering. You have put sugar in my coffee, and you know as well as possible that I only have a tiny lump not in the cup, but in the spoon."

Annette expressed her contrition, and poured out another cup.

"Did Roger Manvers say anything to you about Harry's marriage, Annette?"

said Aunt Maria. "I thought possibly he had come to consult us about it, but of course he could say nothing before the Miss Blinketts. They drove him away. I shall tell Hodgkins we are not at home to them in future."

"He just mentioned the marriage, and that he had been seeing a lawyer about it."

"If every one was as laconic as you are, my love," said Aunt Harriet, with some asperity, "conversation would cease to exist; and as to saying 'Not at home' to the Miss Blinketts in future, Maria, you will of course do exactly as you please, but I must own that I think it is a mistake to cut ourselves entirely adrift from the life of the neighbourhood at a--a crisis like this. Will the marriage be recognized? Ought we to send a present? Shall we be expected to call on her? We shall have to arrive at _some_ decision on these subjects, I presume, and how we are to do so if we close our ears to all sources of information I'm sure I don't know."

"Mayn't we have another chapter of _The Silver Cross_?" said Annette in the somewhat strained silence that followed. Aunt Maria was correcting her proof sheets, and was in the habit of reading them aloud in the evenings.

"Yes, do read, Maria," said Aunt Harriet, who, however trying her other characteristics might be, possessed a perennial fund of enthusiastic admiration for her sister's novels. "I could hardly sleep last night for thinking of Blanche's estrangement from Frederic, and of her folly in allowing herself to be drawn into Lord Sprofligate's supper party by that foolish Lady Bonner. Frederic would be sure to hear of it."

"I am afraid," said Aunt Maria, with conscious pride, "that the next chapter is hardly one for Annette. It deals, not without a touch of realism, with subjects which as a delineator of life I cannot ignore, but which, thank G.o.d, have no place in a young girl's existence."

"Oh, Maria, how I disagree with you!" interposed Aunt Harriet before Annette could speak. "If only I had been warned when I was a young, innocent, high-spirited creature, if only I had been aware of the pitfalls, the snares, spread like nets round the feet of the young and the attractive, I should have been spared some terrible disillusionments. I am afraid I am far too modern to wish to keep girls in the total ignorance in which our dear mother brought us up. We must march with the times. There is nothing that you, being what you are, Maria, nothing that you with your high ideals could write which, however painful, it could harm Annette to hear." (This was perhaps even truer than the enunciator was aware.) "She must some time learn that evil exists, that sin and suffering are all part of life."

Annette looked from the excited figure on the sofa to the dignified personage in the arm-chair, and her heart was wrung for them both. Oh!

Poor dears! poor dears! Living in this shadowy world of their own in which reality never set foot, this tiny world of which Aunt Harriet spoke so glibly, which Aunt Maria described with such touching confidence. Was she going to shatter it for them?--she whom they were doing their best to guide into it, to make like themselves.

"I am rather tired," she said, folding up her work. "I think I will go to bed, and then you can read the chapter together, and decide whether I can hear it later on."

"It is very carefully treated, very lightly, I may say skilfully touched," said Aunt Maria urbanely, whose previous remark had been entirely conventional, and who had no intention of losing half her audience. "I think, on the whole, I will risk it. Sit down again, Annette. Let me see, how old are you?"

"Twenty-three."

"Many women at that age are wives and mothers. I agree with you, Harriet. The danger we elders fall into is the want of realization that the younger generation are grown up. We must not make this mistake with you, Annette, or treat you as a child any longer, but as--ahem!--one of ourselves. It is better that you should be made aware of the existence of the seamy side of life, so that later on, if you come in contact with it, your mind may be prepared. Chapter one hundred and twenty-five. _The False Position._"

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

"All other joy of life he strove to warm, And magnify, and catch them to his lip: But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, And gazed upon him sallow from the storm."

GEORGE MEREDITH.

Roger went to Fontainebleau. He looked at the oaks as they came close up on both sides of the line, and thought that they needed thinning, and made a mental note of the inefficiency of French forestry. And he put up at an old-fashioned inn, with a prim garden in front, with tiny pebbled walks, and a fountain, and four stunted clipped acacia trees. And he found the doctor in the course of the next morning; and the doctor, who had not realized d.i.c.k's death under another name, gave him the notary's address; and the notary explained by means of an interpreter that Monsieur Le Geyt had warned him emphatically not to give up the will to his mother, if she came for it, or sent for it after his death. Only to Monsieur Roger Manvers his cousin, or Mademoiselle Manvers his sister.