Chance

Yet what sentiment could there have been on her part? I remembered her

tone only a moment since when she said: "That evening Captain Anthony

arrived at the cottage." And considering, too, what the arrival of

Captain Anthony meant in this connection, I wondered at the calmness with

which she could mention that fact. He arrived at the cottage. In the

evening. I knew that late train. He probably walked from the station.

The evening would be well advanced. I could almost see a dark indistinct

figure opening the wicket gate of the garden. Where was she? Did she

see him enter? Was she somewhere near by and did she hear without the

slightest premonition his chance and fateful footsteps on the flagged

path leading to the cottage door? In the shadow of the night made more

cruelly sombre for her by the very shadow of death he must have appeared

too strange, too remote, too unknown to impress himself on her thought as

a living force--such a force as a man can bring to bear on a woman's

destiny.

She glanced towards the hotel door again; I followed suit and then our

eyes met once more, this time intentionally. A tentative, uncertain

intimacy was springing up between us two. She said simply: "You are

waiting for Mr. Fyne to come out; are you?"

I admitted to her that I was waiting to see Mr. Fyne come out. That was

all. I had nothing to say to him.

"I have said yesterday all I had to say to him," I added meaningly. "I

have said it to them both, in fact. I have also heard all they had to

say."

"About me?" she murmured.

"Yes. The conversation was about you."

"I wonder if they told you everything."

If she wondered I could do nothing else but wonder too. But I did not

tell her that. I only smiled. The material point was that Captain

Anthony should be told everything. But as to that I was very certain

that the good sister would see to it. Was there anything more to

disclose--some other misery, some other deception of which that girl had

been a victim? It seemed hardly probable. It was not even easy to

imagine. What struck me most was her--I suppose I must call

it--composure. One could not tell whether she understood what she had

done. One wondered. She was not so much unreadable as blank; and I did

not know whether to admire her for it or dismiss her from my thoughts as

a passive butt of ferocious misfortune.