"It's only a mile, and I thought you would like a walk, so I have told
the boy to fetch your luggage in the donkey cart."
"A walk will be very acceptable after sitting all day cooped up in a
railway-carriage."
"Well, now, tell me all about your wife. You know I have heard nothing
since that one letter you wrote after you turned up again. What
adventures you have had, my dear fellow! and wasn't Valmai overjoyed to
see you back again?"
"No, Ellis, and that is all I can say to you now. It is a long story,
and I would rather wait until later in the evening."
"All right, old fellow, in the smoking-room to-night."
And in the smoking-room that night they sat late, Cardo opening his
heart to his friend, recounting to him the tale of his unfortunate
illness in Australia, his return home, and the unexpected blow of
Valmai's unrelenting anger and changed feelings towards him,
culminating in her utter rejection of him, and refusal to live with him.
"Astounding!" said Gwynne Ellis, "I will not believe it. It is a moral
impossibility that that loving nature and candid mind, could ever so
change in their characteristics, as to refuse to listen to reason, and
that from the lips of one whom she loved so passionately, as she did
you."
"That is my feeling," said Cardo, "but alas! I have her own words to
assure me of the bitter truth. 'If I ever loved you,' she said, 'I
have ceased to do so, and I feel no more love for you now, than I do
for yonder ploughman.' In fact, Ellis, I could not realise while I was
speaking to her that she was the same girl. It was Valmai's lovely
outward form, indeed, but the spirit within her seemed changed. Are
such things possible?"
Ellis puffed away in silence for some seconds before he replied: "Anything--everything is possible now-a-days; there is such a thing as
hypnotism, thought transference--obsession--what will you? And any of
these things I will believe sooner, than that Valmai Wynne can have
changed. Cheer up, old fellow! I was born to pilot you through your
love affairs, and now here's a step towards it." And from a drawer in
his escritoire he drew out an ordnance map of the county of Monmouth.
"Now, let me see, where lies this wonderful place, Carne Hall, did you
call it? I thought so; here it is within two miles of my new church.
In a month I shall be installed into that 'living,' and my first duty
when I get there shall be to find out your wife, Cardo, and to set you
right in her estimation."
"Never," said Cardo; "she has encased herself in armour of cold and
haughty reserve, which not even your persuasive and cordial manners
will break through."