Ownie's conjectures were not misleading her; the business manager's
views of life had been deranged. To dress well and have a "good time"
now appeared to him less dazzling a prospect than to clothe Hilda and
have a home. Confronted by temptation he had been no stronger than the
multitude; he was prepared to travel the course handicapped, and like
every other young man at the inevitable crisis, persuaded himself that a
pair of arms round his neck would accelerate the pace. Hilda, too, was
in love. Moreover, she was in love with the idea of being married. She
had, passed the stage at which the Beauty of every family looks forward
to wedding a millionaire, and although she had gathered something of
Vivian's position by now, she meant to accept him when he asked her.
One of the greatest sacrifices for love that a girl in the provinces
can make is to marry and remove to local lodgings. There were perfervid
moments when Hilda felt equal even to this, but in moods less head-long
it was her intention to remain engaged to him until he secured a
similar appointment in another town. Meanwhile Vivian wondered whether
she would be startled if he confessed his feelings thus early.
Fearful that he might "lose it all," he resolved to be discreet; so he
confided to her facts of which she was unaware, and withheld the one
that she knew. It was a vast relief to him to settle the matter of the
opera between them. Of late the opera had seemed to darken his future;
and when he had intimated nervously that her father overestimated his
influence with Mr. Jordan, he thanked Heaven to see that she did not
find the news an overwhelming shock.
One afternoon--it was on the Friday after Ownie unbosomed herself to
David--Hilda exclaimed--
"What do you think, Bee? The man who wrote _A Celibate's Love Songs_ is
Mr. Harris's half-brother. He has just gone."
The colour left Bee's face; her heart thudded.
"Who?" she faltered. "David Lee?"
"No, Mr. Harris. He dropped in just now to return a book. Isn't it
strange? His mother married twice; she married Elisha Lee, the black
tenor--I don't know how she could have done it. The poet is their son--a
mulatto. Fancy!"
The woman stood stone-still.... She moved by a blind instinct to a
chair. It seemed to her a long time before she could reach chair.
"A mulatto?" she said faintly.
"Yes--almost a nigger, Mr. Harris says. He's ashamed--I could tell,
though he tried to sound casual. Of course it isn't nice for him to have
a half-brother like that, is it? And then his mother doing such a thing!
I was awfully sorry for him, poor fellow--he did look so uncomfortable
while he was talking. Of course he hung on to his brother's cleverness
and all that, but----Well, he can't be very proud, can he?"
Bee made no answer; she did not hear. "A mulatto--almost a nigger." For
an instant her mind was dwarfed by it. She could not think beyond it,
could see no further than the monstrous personality that seemed to close
upon her. "Almost a nigger." The instant was heavy, affrighting with his
presence. In the next, her thoughts flashed to the mulatto who had gone
to Godstone--and she knew that he was the man.
"He must look rather like that Mr. Tremlett, I suppose," Hilda was
saying.
She nodded. "Yes."
"Fancy a nigger writing poetry! You don't seem very interested? I
thought you'd gasp when I told you--you liked his book so much."
"Did you? Oh, I _am_ interested. Yes, fancy his writing poetry.'"
She felt sick, stupefied; she could not talk. David Lee was a mulatto;
was the poor young man with the swarthy skin and the negro features whom
she had pitied condescendingly, whom she had passed, and repassed, and
addressed with no emotion. She sat struggling with the thing. She did
not doubt it, she never questioned it for a moment; it was so obvious
now that she even wondered that she had not suspected it then; but
anomalously David seemed for the first time strange to her, remote. The
association dazed her, and before the physical impression all the sense
of familiarity receded.
"Tremlett" was David Lee. He had been to seek her. As the cloud of her
confusion lifted, she saw the reason of his long delay, saw why, at
last, he had assumed a name. Light was shed upon his work; its sorrow
was illumined, she understood the secret of its intimate appeal. Like
herself, he suffered and was despised.
He had been to seek her, afraid to tell her who he was. Her? No, not
her--_Hilda!_ She stared across the room at her sister blankly: Hilda
had renounced the effort at conversation, and was in a love-reverie
over a novelette. It was Hilda he had been to seek, attracted by her
photograph! He had gone at last not to find the writer of the letters,
but the girl whose likeness he had seen. Only when the likeness reached
him had he cared to go! And he had followed Hilda about the garden,
looked at her with his heart in his eyes--he was fond of her. Yes, it
was to Hilda that his letters were really written now--and Hilda would
probably marry his half-brother!
Her misery and shame were profound; she did not define the vague, pained
stir of another feeling in her breast. She was engulfed by the knowledge
that she had brought a new grief into his life, had given him still more
to bear. She hated herself, and she felt that when he learned the truth
he too would hate her--that he must; that he would curse the misshapen
fool who had cheated him into loving the girl who would be his brother's
wife.
When hours had passed, she untied the letters that had come to her since
her return from Surrey, and read them in her bedroom slowly by the light
of recognition. The sore stir of the subtle feeling within her was
stronger as she read them, realising that they were meant for Hilda. But
compassion for him swept her like a flood. The spirit of the man spoke
to her again; she found herself again sensitive to his spirit--less
dominated by his face.
They were meant for Hilda! Always her mind reverted to this. It became
her ascendant thought. She locked the letters in their drawer, and tried
to consider the one that she must write; and now she shuddered before
confession, not so much in dread of the throes that she would suffer, as
of the blow that she would deal. His confidences were meant for Hilda,
and he must be told that Hilda had never heard from him, had never
responded by a line. She perceived dismayed that the words explaining
it would sound to him the words of a stranger--of a little woman with a
crooked back, claiming her sister's qualities. Yes, the very qualities
that had first pleased him he attributed to Hilda now! And in herself,
when he understood, they would fall to nothingness. Her sympathies were
abstractions, shadows; the realities were Hilda's lips and eyes, and
lithe, straight form. While she sat there, Hilda came to the room with
a message; Bee did not look at her as she answered. She tried to think
it was because she had been crying; but there was another reason which
she would not see, which she shunned because the inborn prejudices of a
white woman feared to own it--in her heart there was a jealousy of Hilda.
Sunday came before she had written to David. He went to Regent's Park
uneasily. Vivian and his mother were in the little room, half-parlour,
half-office, in which she made out the bills, and received applicants
for "board residence." It was clear that he had interrupted an
altercation. Vivian's smile of greeting was an obvious effort, and Ownie
was frankly discomposed. For two or three minutes, while the young men
exchanged remarks, she kept silent, breathing quickly, her nostrils
dilated, her mouth compressed. Then she broke out--
"Why don't you tell David your news? Your brother's going to be married,
David. Don't you congratulate him on his luck?"
"Is that so?" said David, turning to him.
"So the mater says," muttered Vivian. "I didn't know it myself--I'm not
engaged yet."
She sniggered: "Oh, it doesn't take long to get engaged; you can soon do
that if you want to!"
"Well, I do want to, and I mean to marry her if she'll have me!" he
exclaimed. "And now you've got it, so we needn't say any more."
"How pretty," she said between a sneer and a sob. "She has a beautiful
influence over you, I must say--to make you rude to your mother."
"Oh, of course," he returned, "it's all _her_ fault that you take it
badly, isn't it? It's all _her_ fault that you quarrel with me when I
confide in you? That's rich! It strikes me I've behaved about as well
as a fellow could, in telling you how things stand; I needn't have said
anything till it was settled. I think you might pretend to be glad even
if you aren't."
"'Glad'?"
"Yes, glad. What's to prevent your being glad? One would imagine I was
doing you some infernal injury by the way you talk."
"I'm talking for your own good; you're too young to get married. Before
you've been----"
"Oh, I know all about that!" he cried; "I should always be too young,
according to you. I tell you what it is: you're not thinking of my
good at all--you're thinking of yourself. You don't like the idea of
my marrying; you've got it in your head that you'll 'lose' me if I
marry--you said so at the beginning--and so you call me names, and run
her down--a girl you've never seen--and try to persuade yourself it's
holy affection for me. But it isn't, it isn't anything of the kind. It's
just selfishness; and as you've used such very plain English, I'll use
some too and tell you so. It's sheer selfishness, to want me to spoil
my life to please you. What have you ever done for me, that you should
expect me to sacrifice myself for you? I think it's disgusting."
His handsome face was flushed, his manner insolent. The girl to
whom his attachment presented him at his best would scarcely have
recognised her lover here at his worst. He stirred in Ownie memories
of his father, memories of scenes in the Liverpool villa when the fur
business had become involved. She did not speak; her lips twitched.
Although her objections appeared to David unreasonable, he felt sorry
for her. Whatever her faults towards others, she had always been fond of
Vivian--it jarred that Vivian reproached her for selfishness.
After a little pause she said wistfully: "If that's the way you feel,
I'm afraid I can't expect to see much of you in future whether you marry
or not?"
"You don't see much of me now; I don't live here."
"But you belong to me still," she pleaded.
He looked towards David with an air of triumph. "You see what I say is
quite true: it isn't for my sake that she's against my marrying, but for
her own--I'm to sacrifice myself because she's jealous."
David lit a cigarette, without replying. All this time his pulses were
impatient for the sound of the girl's name.
Ownie's humility deserted her; her temper flamed, though there were
still tears in her voice.
"'Sacrifice'?" she retorted. "It's a fine sacrifice, to keep your
comfort! The sacrifice'll come in if you throw yourself away for the
first pretty face you meet. I thought you had more sense--you talk like
a sentimental boy. 'Sacrifice yourself'? In a year's time you'd have
forgotten you ever wanted her, and she'd be engaged to somebody else!
Any young man can get spoony on any girl if he sees enough of her. Why
don't you pick up a girl of a different sort? You must have plenty of
opportunities. If you want to play the fool, choose a girl who doesn't
aim at getting married!"
Vivian rose with fury in his veins. He made a desperate effort to
disguise it, to answer her with dignity.
"I must decline to discuss the matter. If you can compare the love of my
life with--with that kind of thing, there's no more to be said."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, exasperated, "what an idiot you are! Marry her
then, and drag uphill with a wife and a family on your back, and see how
you like it. Make haste before the bargain has gone; I daresay she'll
jump at any man who asks her."
"Ah, it isn't _every_ woman who'll jump at any man who asks her," he
said savagely. "You're not a fair judge on that point, you know!"
The blood swept up to her forehead, and then she blanched, and the
rouge stains looked grotesque. She trembled as if the blow had been
struck with his fists. Her dyed head went down in her hands, and she
began to sob--unrestrainedly, hysterically, in an abandonment of
wretchedness.
He watched her, discomfited. His anger dwindled in view of her defeat,
and already he repented his taunt. He decided, ashamed, to pretend that
he did not understand what she was crying about.
David went over to her, murmuring encouragement.
"Let me alone," she quavered. "Go away, both of you; I don't want
anyone."
"I don't know what has upset you," Vivian stammered. "I didn't mean
anything particular."
"You did," she gasped; "you insulted me--you tried to! You said I was
too low to judge her--your mother was too low to judge her! I'll never
talk about your marriage again as long as I live. I don't want to hear
about it." She dabbed her eyes and cheeks impetuously, and moved to the
door. "I hope you'll be happy ... that's all. I'm going; I've nothing
more to say."
The door closed, and there was a moment's pause. Her sons looked at each
other.
"Damned nonsense!" said Vivian, scowling.
"I didn't mean any harm. I wish I hadn't come."
"She has gone up to her bedroom," said David constrainedly. "You'd
better run up after her."
"What for--to have another scene? No, thank you; I've had enough....
Well, I suppose we may as well go."
"I think I'll just say a word to her first. Will you wait for me? I
won't be long. You will wait, won't you? I want to talk to you."
Vivian nodded. "All right; but don't tell her that _I_ want to come
up, because I don't. It's beastly, this sort of thing. Good Lord! one
would think I was dependent on her; one would think she was making me an
allowance.... Give me a cigarette."
David found a servant to point "Madam's" room out to him, and tapped
timidly. Ownie had thrown herself on the bed, and at his entrance she
turned, in the hope that it was his brother's.
"Oh, it's you," she said. "Has he gone?"
"No, he's downstairs. He--I'm sure he's sorry he hurt you, mother."
"He's hard," she faltered, "hard as nails. He doesn't care; he doesn't
care for me a bit. You heard how he talked to me. 'What have I ever done
for him?' he asked. What have I ever done for him? You know, you know
very well how good I've always been to Vivian. When he was a child I
never refused him anything--I studied him in every way--he was always
first to me. And this is how he treats me. He talks to me as if I were a
stranger. It wouldn't trouble him for a minute if he never saw me again."
"Oh, you shouldn't say that," he murmured; "it isn't true. He's got a
rough tongue, but his heart is good. He doesn't show what he feels. He's
just as unhappy now as you are, but he--it isn't easy for him to find
the right words. You understand that really, only you're too sore to
remember it yet."
"He only thinks of that girl," she sobbed. "'Jealous,' he called me.
If I _am_ jealous, what of it? He's all I've got, and she's taking him
away from me. I'm not young any more, I haven't the interests that I
used to have; I don't want to be left alone. He doesn't care a snap of
his fingers for me now. He never cared much, but I wouldn't see it, and
now he cares nothing. Nobody cares for me; there's not a soul to mind
whether I live or die. Oh, it was nice of you to come up--it's more
than _he_ did--but you're not fond of me, David; you never were. I'm
not blaming you--I'm not unjust--it's my own fault, that. But it isn't
my fault with him, God knows it isn't! If I deserve anything I deserve
to be loved by Vivie. I don't ask for much, I don't expect miracles;
but I did expect to be treated well by Vivie when I was old, when I was
lonely, and I had nobody else to turn to."
The tears had streaked the rouge on her quivering face; her yellow hair,
disordered by the pillow, showed the lines of age that it was trained
to hide. Timeworn and desolate, she lay huddled on the bed, making her
moan while he sought pityingly to comfort her; and it pained him that he
could not speak of his own affection for her--that she could not believe
him if he did.
When she was more tranquil he left her. She had not asked for her elder
son to be sent to her, nor did he inquire whether he was wanted.
"You've been long enough!" he said. "Well, is she better?"
"Yes," David answered coldly, "she is better. Have you anything to do?
What time do you go back?"
Vivian explained that he was not returning to Beckenhampton till
the morrow: "I've business here; that's why I came up. No, I've
nothing to do till eight o'clock--then I've got to see a man at the
Eccentric." They descended the steps, and, after a furtive glance at his
half-brother, he added deprecatingly: "It has been going on for an hour
pretty nearly--you only heard the fag-end of it. I can tell you that
what I've had to listen to would have tried the patience of a saint!"
It embarrassed him to walk in the streets with David, and he signed to
a passing hansom. "Where shall I tell him to drive? I'll come to your
place with you if you like."
His contrition by no means abated his sense of being ill-used, nor did
his indifference to his companion extend to his companion's disapproval.
That David should be presuming to censure him was a situation not
the less annoying because it seemed to him anomalous, and they were
no sooner in the cab than he began vehemently to expatiate upon his
grievance. David waited with rising eagerness for an opportunity to
frame the question that again engrossed him.
"If I had guessed how she'd take the news, there'd have been none of
this confounded row at all--I'd have left her in the dark. It's an
encouraging thing, upon my soul it is, to be bullied when you make a
confidant of your mother! What's it to do with her, anyhow? It won't
cost her anything. How does it affect her if I marry? It's not as if I
had to keep her--she's in no need of my assistance; I've never given
her a pound in my life." He seemed to regard this as conclusive, and
repeated it. "On my honour, I've never given her a pound in my life;
she'd be every bit as well off if I were married, as she is now I'm
single! There isn't a grain of logic in her objection; it isn't even
as if I were living at home. Hang it, I scarcely ever see her! It's
a regular dog-in-the-manger attitude she adopts--she hasn't got me
herself, and she grudges me to anybody else."
"That isn't the way she looks at it," said David; "while you're single
she feels she _has_ still got you. Who is the girl?"
"She's beautiful--she's absolutely the most beautiful girl I ever
met. She--she's the top stair of the highest flight of an artist's
imagination. You should see the people turn round after her wherever
she goes. And she's as clever as she's good-looking. I never believed I
should meet a woman who'd understand me as she does. 'Jump at the first
man who asks her'? Ha, ha! You can take your oath she's had proposals
enough, young as she is.... I didn't come up with the intention of
talking about it at all; it was the mater pumped me. I thought she was
entering into it at the start--she was smiling, she seemed interested; I
gave myself away before I dreamt she was going to make a fuss. Then it
began. A bit of a sneer, a little ridicule, pretending it was all too
silly to talk seriously about--after she'd led me on, after she'd made
me think she was sympathising! Then when she saw that didn't work, she
got nasty; she began to show her claws--I was a 'fool' in every other
sentence. A man is the best judge of his own life; I know what I want,
without anybody telling me. I'd have proposed long ago if I were sure it
would be all right. I haven't much to offer, unfortunately. 'Throwing
myself away'? I'm no catch for a girl like that. And then, of course ...
I don't know; I think she does, but ... I can't swear she cares for me.
Perhaps when it came to the point--she may only like me as a friend."
"What's her name?" said David. "How did you meet her?"
"I met her father first, and then he asked me up to the house. I'd seen
her already then, or I daresay I shouldn't have gone. I might have
missed everything if she hadn't been with him that afternoon. Funny, eh?
Did it ever strike you how a fellow's life is often altered by things
that don't seem anything at the time? I mean how the biggest things turn
up from things that you'd think don't matter. There's a new idea for
your poetry--you go in for original fancies like that, don't you? I read
somewhere that your book's full of 'em. Her father is very amiable to
me, but--he's not very wide awake--I don't think he sees how the land
lies. He mayn't be keen on giving his daughter to me when I spring it
on him, even if she accepts me. I wish she hadn't got a father. If she
were on her own in the profession, the running would be easier for me;
they marry in the profession on nothing--some of them--live in lodgings,
and carry the babies down to the station on Sunday mornings. It's
different with a girl like her. And the town is full of Johnnies who
are in their governors' businesses and could offer her a decent home--a
villa on the Hunby Road, and a couple of servants. It makes one a bit
shaky about one's chances, you know."
The cab stopped before David could obtain the answer that he sought,
and he opened the door with his latchkey, and led the way upstairs. His
restlessness under the flood of discourse loosed upon him had heightened
his misgiving. There had been nothing to justify his fear except
enthusiasm--no word to suggest that it was Hilda who was referred to;
he kept telling himself so. But, fluttering in his senses, there was a
nervous, inexplicable conviction that it _was_ Hilda. Reason could not
still it. He even dreaded to repeat his question, feeling that with
insistence the bolt would fall.
He took the whisky and a syphon out of the miniature sideboard, and
called on the landing for tumblers. Vivian dropped into the armchair on
the hearth.
"Yes, it doesn't make a fellow sanguine, to remember how much better
she might do," he went on. "I don't mean that she's mercenary--nothing
of the sort--but I daresay her family will be against it. Not that
they're particularly well off themselves, as far as that goes--rather
the reverse. Still, they have got a house. It's not being able to
take a house that makes a fellow look so hard up. It doesn't show
while he's single--I might have a thousand a year now, for all anybody
can tell--but if I stop in diggings after I'm married, it'll be a
different pair of shoes. There's no doubt that when a fellow marries, he
advertises his position for all the world to see. I'm sick of diggings."
"So am I," said David.
The drudge had burst in with the glasses. Vivian got up, and lounged
about the room. "Is that where you write?" he asked. He wandered to the
smaller table in a corner, on which some manuscript lay, and swung round
with an ejaculation:
"Good heavens! How did you get this?" He held up Hilda's photograph.
The answer to David's question had come. It reverberated as if he had
been unprepared. Almost he felt that he _had_ been unprepared. He stared
at his brother mutely.
"This is her likeness.... _Isn't_ this Hilda Sorrenford? How did you get
it?"
"She sent it to me," replied David, dragging out his voice.
"Sent it to you? ... Sent it to you? Why, she doesn't know you!"
"Oh yes, she knows me. That is, she writes to me."
"Writes to you?"
"Yes."
"What about?"
"I must explain to you. It's difficult to say. We have written to each
other for a long time. She wrote first about my work--she liked it--and
then somehow we began to correspond regularly.... She doesn't know that
we're related; I haven't spoken of you--I didn't know she had ever seen
you."
"I don't understand. I've spoken of _you:_ she didn't say she knew you.
Why did she make a secret of it?"
"I can't think why."
"Have you ever met her?"
"Yes."
"It's the most extraordinary----Where?"
"She was in the country this summer with her sister."
"Bee?"
"Yes, 'Bee.' I went down there. That was after she sent me the likeness.
I wanted to see her. I had rooms in the same house for a few days."
"Upon my soul!... And she let me think--why, she seemed astonished to
hear you were a----She knew nothing about you except your name!"
There was silence for an instant.
"Do you mean she was astonished to hear I was a mulatto?" asked David.
"You told her?"
"Yes."
"How long ago?"
"The other day."
"When? ... Last week? This week?"
"This week."
David turned aside. It was a week since he had received Bee's last
letter. "What did she say?" he faltered.
"She was astonished."
"Horrified?"
"N--no, she wasn't so interested as all that. But I don't understand!"
he exclaimed again; "you said just now that you had met her?"
"She doesn't know I've met her---she doesn't know it was I. I took
another name; I called myself 'Tremlett.'"
"You called, yourself 'Tremlett'? Why? What the devil is all this
about--what did you take another name for?"
"I didn't want her to discover I--I wasn't a white man; not then, not so
soon. I was afraid."
"'Afraid'?"
"Afraid she might stop writing to me if she knew."
"So help me God! it sounds as if you're telling me you are in love with
her?"
"Yes," said David quietly, "that is what I have to tell you. I am in
love with her."
They stood looking into each other's eyes for several seconds, neither
of them moving.
"Is this a joke?" asked Vivian harshly.
"Oh no, it's true, it's perfectly true. I'm sorry, very sorry, to hear
you're fond of her; but I loved her before I heard it--you mustn't
forget that. It oughtn't to make bad blood between us, whatever happens.
I've told you as soon as I could; I've been quite open with you."
"I--I'm hanged if I'm quite sure now what you're driving at," said
Vivian after another pause. "You're 'sorry'--'whatever happens'?... What
is it you're doing--warning me? Do you mean----You don't mean to say you
think she'll marry you?"
"I hope and pray she will. If she cares more for _you_, of course she
won't."
"What?" He forced a laugh. "Are you out of your mind? Why, the thing's
preposterous! It's an insult to her to imagine it.... Look here, I don't
want a row with you. You must see very well that it's no good. We don't
make ourselves, it's not your fault that you're not the same as other
fellows, it's your misfortune--but you can't expect a decent girl to
marry a coloured man; it's against nature."
"Our mother did," said David.
"I've had quite enough about that!... Besides, we all know she
was wretched. And I've told you Hilda belongs to _me_. Don't come
interfering; it has gone too far already, with the correspondence and
the likeness. I can't make it out."
"She doesn't belong to you; if she belonged to you, I'd say nothing. She
belongs to neither of us--she can choose the one she likes best. Well,
let her choose! If my love is preposterous, if it's an insult to her,
why are you frightened for me to go and plead?"
"Frightened?" Vivian blazed; "do you think I'm jealous of _you_? You
know better. You're frightened yourself--you said so. When you went
to her, it was like a coward; by your own showing, you've hung about
her under a false name. I suppose that was 'open,' was it? You've been
trying to get round her by your poetry, haven't you? trying to sneak her
fancy before she knew what you were like! Go and plead--and be damned to
you--and hear what she'll say, now she knows what you are!"
He waited for an answer, affected another laugh, and then turned to the
table and picked up his hat. David drew close to him, shaking.
"_You_ make the quarrel," he panted, "do you? _You_ complain?... By
what right? She was dear to me before you had ever seen her, before you
had ever heard of her, before you'd set foot in the town she lives in.
_You_ complain? It's for me to resent, not you. All our lives since
we were children, you've had everything I was denied because you were
good-looking and I was hideous; when we were boys your good looks made
things harder for me; as men, all the pleasure of life has been for you,
while I've had nothing but contempt. And at last when a girl has come to
care for me--to care for what I am, my work, my thoughts, my feelings,
the things that _are_ myself--_you_ must blunder in the way, and want to
take _her_ from me too. You taunt me with my colour? It ought to remind
you of what I've had to bear; it ought to shame you for asking me to
give up to you the only chance of happiness I've ever had! If I've been
a coward, I was what the intolerance of minds like yours has made me.
Show your own courage--take your appeals to the girl you love, don't
beg me to stand aside for you! You taunt me with my colour? Wait till
_she_ does! Talk to her as best you can--and so will I. For once I'm not
afraid of your good looks--she has seen deeper than my skin. _Tell_ her
that you love her, and find which has more power to move her heart--your
face, or _the words in me!_"
And while he boasted, he believed in the power of words, not knowing
that he had preferred a face himself.
When he was alone, he cried, looking uglier still.
And late in the evening he wrote his first love-letter.
It was a very long letter. He wrote of the joy that the correspondence
had brought him, of the years of loneliness and suffering that had made
him afraid to own the truth. He wrote of the day the portrait came, his
temptation, his weakness--of his longing to confess himself at Godstone,
and of the fear that had still held him back. He poured out the story
of his life, the story of his childhood, of his youth, and of his love.
He prayed to her for pity, for tenderness, for "Heaven." He said that
on the morrow he would go to her to hear her answer. And because the
need for pretending ignorance of the name was past now, he addressed the
letter to "Miss Hilda Sorrenford" in full.