And what a picture she made, reclining against the rough, twisted arm of the old rustic seat, one hand supporting the graceful head, and the delicate oval face, with its refined beauty of feature! The long lashes lay in a dark fringe upon each smooth cheek, which, lovingly kissed by the warm, generous air, was tinged with a faint but inexpressibly charming flush. The sweet, red lips were closed, but without a trace of hardness in their tender curves; and the whole att.i.tude one of ease, abandonment, and yet of infinite grace in its every contour. A figure thoroughly in harmony with the place, clime, and hour. A lovely picture indeed.

So thought its only spectator, as, with a rapturous yearning pain at his heart, he noiselessly moved aside the trailing boughs and stepped within their shade. He would not disturb the spell, but stood gazing entranced upon the slumbering form in all its wealth of refinement of beauty.

A large pear fell to the ground with a dull thud. Lilian stirred uneasily, then half rose, letting fall the hand she had been leaning upon. It was seized in a firm grasp by two other hands, and in tones wherein earnest tenderness struggled with a gleeful laugh, a voice whispered:

"One doesn't wear gloves on the frontier, or what a chance of being set up in them for life!"

The long lashes unclosed, and she started ever so slightly. It was too much. The hot blood rushed through Claverton's veins as though it were molten liquid, and lifting her from the seat, he pressed her to him, raining down warm, pa.s.sionate kisses upon her lips, forehead, eyes, and the soft dark hair which lay against his cheek, whispering wild, delirious words of love and entreaty. Then he felt ashamed of his fierce impulsiveness--his brutality as it seemed, in taking her at a disadvantage. Was she angry or humiliated, or both? She made no resistance as he held her there. Or had he about frightened her to death? Then he held her from him.

"You--here?" she cried, in astonishment; but there was no anger in her tone, although a lovely blush suffused her face, even to the very roots of her dark hair. "I thought you were going to be away all day. You told me you would hardly get back before night."

"I thought better of it. I couldn't remain away from you anything like so long; wherefore I turned back. That's the plain, unvarnished truth.

Am I not improving in veracity?"

"Oh! I am hurting your hand!" she exclaimed, suddenly becoming aware that her fingers had been leaning hardly on the place where the scorpion had stung him. No fault of hers, by the way, for she could not have withdrawn them if she would.

"Say, rather, you are healing it. Your touch would have more effect in that line, with me, than that of a whole legion of Apostles," he replied, still holding her.

"Hush! You must not talk like that," said she, gently. Then, referring to the sting: "But I ought not to lecture you, when it was done for me.

Ah, why do you take such care of me?" she cried, in conclusion, and her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

"Why do--Oh, I do take care of you, then, do I?"

"Always. If I want anything, you are sure to have it ready. If ever I have a misgiving about anything, you are sure to be there to dispel it and rea.s.sure me. In fact, I can't walk a yard but you are spreading metaphorical carpets before my feet. And yet--Oh, Arthur, why did we ever meet?"

She turned away from him, standing with hands clasped before her, and her eyes fixed on the ground.

"Why did we ever meet?" he repeated, again drawing her to him and bending down to whisper in her ear, a low, quick, pa.s.sionate whisper.

"Because you and I were made for each other. Because we were brought together here, both of us, from the other side of the world on purpose for each other. Darling, that was the first thought that flashed through me the very moment I saw you that first day. All of me before that, was a different self; I hardly recognise it, now. You remember that night by the water--it was the hardest blow I ever had, that that little hand dealt me. But I wouldn't take it as final, I wouldn't give it up, and now I've served my apprenticeship fairly well, haven't I?

What you've just said tells me that, even if nothing else did."

There was a frightened, despairing look in her eyes; her lips moved as if she were trying to speak, but the words would not come, and she made as if she would draw away from him.

"Lilian--sweetest--life of my life! Don't look so frightened, darling,"

he cried, in a tone of thrilling tenderness. "Remember what you have just told me, and for G.o.d's sake don't look so frightened. Tell me now that you are going to give me the care of your whole life--your sweet, love-diffusing life. Tell me this: Haven't I fairly established a claim to it? Look at the sunshine around. That shall be an earnest of your life, if you give it to me. My darling--my more than Heaven--only say you will."

He paused, hanging breathlessly on the reply. Again she struggled to speak. The tension was fearful. Would she faint or die? Then he bent his ear yet lower to catch two words hoa.r.s.ely whispered:

"I--cannot!"

And then again the black bolt of despair shot through Claverton's heart.

This was the last throw of the dice, the last chance, and he felt it was. Hitherto he had been almost confident in his hopefulness, now the cup was dashed to the ground. Thus they stood for a s.p.a.ce, neither speaking. To Lilian it seemed as if the hour of her death had come, and with her own hand she must drive home the weapon--down, down to her very heart. The stray sunbeams crept along the ground beneath the old pear-tree, insects hummed, and a bird twittered in the radiant light without, and all told of calm and peace, and the very air seemed like a glow from Heaven. With that mysterious instinct which stamps upon the mind the veriest trifles at the time of some momentous crisis, she marked the efforts of two large black ants who were carrying the dead body of a cricket up the trunk of the tree; and to the end of her days she would remember the persevering attempts of the laborious insects as they dragged their burden, regardless of check or stumble, over the rough bark of the old espalier. It seemed to her that hours had pa.s.sed instead of moments. Then he spoke, but his voice had lost its confident, hopeful ring. "Don't say that. Say you can, and you will!"

She tried to lift her head, to speak firmly, but the attempt was a failure.

"I cannot," she repeated. "Forget me--hate me, if you will," and she shuddered; but he clasped her closer to him. "I can be nothing to you.

I am bound--tied--bound firmly. Nothing can release me--nothing!"

A look so stony and awful came into Claverton's face that, had she seen it, she would inevitably have fainted away then and there.

"Oh, Lilian! It can't be--that you are--that--you are--married?" he gasped, and his brow was livid as he hang upon her answer.

"No," she replied, "I am not--that," and again she shuddered.

For a moment the other did not speak, but his face would have made a study pa.s.sing curious as he a.n.a.lysed the position. In the midst of the shock his coolness seemed to have come back to him in a sudden and dangerous degree.

"Listen, now, Lilian," he said. "You are under a promise to some one--a rash, hasty promise. That much I might almost have seen for myself. I don't care whether it was made in Heaven or in h.e.l.l; but you are going to annul it, and to annul it in favour of me. For it was a rash promise, and if you keep it you will be doing evil that good may come of it. Your own creed would tell you that much, and would forbid it, too."

"You don't care for this man, whoever he is," went on Claverton, having paused for her reply, but none came, "and he doesn't care for you, or he would never have allowed you to throw yourself on the world's tender mercies as he has done," and his voice grew hard at the thought. "You don't care for him, and you do--for--me," he said, in a desperation which rose far above conventionalities of speech.

Again she made no reply, so he continued; but now his tones were very soft and pleading.

"Yes, you do for me, darling. I could see it. Haven't I seen your sweet face light up at my approach? Haven't I noticed the softening in that exquisite voice when you turned to me? You remember when I came back that time we went after the stolen oxen," (referring to an episode which had involved a three days' absence from Seringa Vale). "You were so glad to see me, then, sweetest. There was no mistaking the speech of those divine eyes of yours. There's no conceit in my saying this, because love sometimes begets love, and have not I poured out the whole of mine at your feet? And I should be a fool not to see that you had been happy when with me. Oh, my darling, I cannot lose you. We cannot part. Only think of it! How can we? What will life be worth? Lilian, I won't live without you. Only give me your future, your past shall never trouble you in your future's sunshine. This wretched promise, it is nothing. It was made unthinkingly; you must retract it. You dare not wreck two lives for the sake of keeping a rash promise. You cannot, you dare not?"

He was terribly in earnest. There was something heartrending in the wild and, as it were, clinging tones of his entreaty, as he saw the prize slipping from his grasp just as he had thought to win it. He had played a bold stake, but it was his last, and the game must be boldly played if it was to be won.

To Lilian the moment was awful. She looked up at the dark, pleading face bent over her, drank in every tone of the strong, earnest voice.

It was maddening, delirious. Ah! what happiness might be hers! She would yield. Then came the recollection of another face, another voice none the less pleading, a promise given, spoken low in a darkened chamber and at the side of a deathbed, but spoken in all pure faith and trust, a promise which was to hold good to the end of time, come weal, come woe. A promise--and such a promise--was sacred. She might tear out her own heart in keeping it, but it must be kept. Oh, G.o.d! this was indeed awful. Would she be able to bear up much longer, or would she die? And in her ears kept ringing _his_ voice--his loving, earnest, firm voice--firm now, though at times so terribly shaken. "You dare not wreck two lives for the sake of keeping a rash promise." And the picture he had drawn for her! Oh, no; the price to be paid was to be counted in tears of blood, but a promise is sacred to the end of time.

"Only think of the future, Lilian," he whispered, entreatingly. "The future, the bright future. Always sunny like this," glancing at the surroundings. "An earnest of our lives. Yours and mine."

With a low cry she tore herself from his hold and sank down upon the rustic seat.

"Ah, don't tempt me!" she wailed, despairingly, with her face buried in her hands. "You don't know what you are saying. Why do you tempt me like this? It is not fair, it is not manly of you."

The first words of reproach he had ever heard pa.s.s her lips--and they were addressed to him!

"I want to save two lives from shipwreck," he said. "Yours and mine."

"Then listen," she said, sitting up, and for the first time speaking firmly. "You must forget all this--you must forget me--hate me, if you will, for having brought you to this. I told you from the first that I could give you no hope whatever, and yet I was selfish enough to ask you to undertake a one-sided bargain. All through, I have been deceiving you, more and more. Think me utterly heartless--but forget me. And you--you have urged me to break a sacred promise for you," she went on in a hard, dry, monotonous voice, as unlike her usual tones as it was possible to be. "Arthur Claverton, I have treated you shamefully. You will always; look back upon my memory with the scorn and contempt it deserves; but on one point you are wrong: _I do not love you_!"

"You do."

The answer came quietly and confidently, as if he had been setting her right upon some trivial point under discussion.

She looked up at him with burning, tearless eyes; for she wae about to pluck her very heart out.

"What! you refuse to believe me? I must have sunk low in your estimation. I have told you the truth, and--and--you must leave me.

Will you?" she went on, speaking fast in her fear lest she should break down in the act of sacrifice. "Will you go quite away until I leave this place? It will only be for a few days now, and it will be best for both of us. Will you do this for me?"

"No."

"No? You will not? Then that is the extent of your love for me?" she said. "Ah! now I know you."

Claverton reeled giddily, as if her words had struck him, as he stood facing her. He pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes as though to clear away a mist. Was it indeed Lilian Strange who sat there before him, dealing out her pitiless, scornful words in that hard, steely voice--Lilian Strange, his ideal of all that was tender, and loving, and pitiful--or had some beautiful demon a.s.sumed her form to torment him? He felt half inclined to break away, and dash off to the house, where he would find the real Lilian in all her truth and sweetness. No; he was under a spell.

Taking a couple of turns of half-a-dozen steps, he again stood before her.

"Lilian, do you indeed mean what you say?" he asked, in a quiet, hopeless tone. "Are you really going to drive me from you? I will go-- your lightest wish has ever been sacred to me. After this day you will never see me again; but that will be nothing to you. I see I was quite mistaken, darling," he said, wishing to spare her the humiliation of thinking that he knew her love to be his, "quite mistaken. Forgive me-- it was my fault, not yours--but it does not matter now, we shall never meet again. Am I to stay or--go?"