All the heavy days are over.--W. B. YEATS.
It was very late when Magdalen and Fay reached home.
Bessie was on the lookout for them, and met them in the hall.
"Wentworth has been here," she said. "He arrived about an hour after you
had started. As you were both out he asked to see me. He was greatly
excited. He had come to tell us that Michael's innocence has suddenly
been proved. He goes to Italy to-morrow. He said he would call here on
his way to the station a little before eleven, to tell you both about
it."
And punctually at a few minutes to eleven Wentworth appeared, and was
ushered into the little white morning-room where Fay was waiting for
him.
The room was full of sunshine. The soft air came gently in, bringing
with it a breath of primroses.
Delight was in the room, tremulous, shining in Fay's eyes. Delight was
in the whole atmosphere. An enormous boundless relief overflowed
everything.
Wentworth was excited, softened, swept out of himself.
He held her soft hand in his. He tried to speak, but he could not. His
eyes filled with tears. He was ashamed.
And when he looked up he saw Fay's eyes were wet, too. His heart went
out to her. She was rejoicing with him. He pulled himself together, and
told her what little he knew; not much more than the bare facts
contained in the papers. It was now known by the Marchesa's confession
that the murder took place inside the Colle Alto gardens. Everyone,
including the police, had believed that the murder took place in the
road, and that the assassin took advantage of the accident of the garden
door being unlocked to drag the body into the garden, and hide it there.
But the Marchesa stated that she stabbed her husband in the garden
suddenly without premeditation, but with intent to kill him, because of
his determination to marry their seventeen year old daughter to a friend
of his, a _roue_, the old Duke of Castelfranco, who drank himself to
death soon afterwards.
The Marchesa stated that she dragged the body behind a shrub, walked
back through the garden to the house with the front of her gown covered
with blood without being noticed, found no attendant in the cloak room,
wrapped herself in a long cloak not belonging to her, told her servants
that the Marchese would follow later, and drove home, partially burned
her gown and the cloak as if by accident, and then awaited events. The
first news she received of her husband's death next morning was
accompanied by the amazing information that Michael had confessed to the
murder.
The Marchesa in her tardy confession stated that she believed Michael,
who had always shown her great sympathy, must have actually witnessed
the crime, and out of a chivalrous impulse towards her, had immediately
taken the guilt of it upon himself.
"That accounts for his extraordinary silence," said Wentworth, "not
only to others, but to myself. He never would say a word pro or con,
even when I told him it was no use trying to persuade me he was guilty.
The mystery is cleared up at last. I shall reach Milan to-night, and I
shall see him to-morrow. And I suppose we may be able to start home the
following day. I say these things, but I don't believe them. I can't
believe them. It all seems to me like some wonderful dream. And you are
like a person in a dream, too, as if a fairy wand had passed over you?"
As he spoke Wentworth suddenly realised that this marvellous, radiant
transformation which he beheld in Fay, which seemed to flow even to the
edges of her lilac gown, was happiness, and that he had never seen her
happy till this moment. She had always looked pathetic, mournful,
listless. Now for the first time he saw her, as it were, released from
some great oppression, and the change was almost that of identity. Her
beauty had taken on a new magic.
There is no joy so rapturous, so perfect as the moment of relief from
pain. There was, perhaps, no creature in the world on this particular
April morning whose happiness approached Fay's. She raised her white
eyelids and smiled at Wentworth.
His well-conducted heart nudged him suddenly like a vulgar, jocular
friend.
"Is all your gladness for Michael?" he said boldly. "Have you none to
spare for me?"
He was in for it.
"You must forgive me if I am too impetuous, too precipitate," he said,
"but won't you make me doubly happy, Fay, before I go." He rose and came
towards her. She looked down, half frightened, and he suddenly felt
himself colossal, irresistible, a man not to be trifled with. "You have
known for a long time that I love you," he said. "Won't you tell me that
you love me a little, too?"
A delightful sense of liberty and newness of life were flowing in
regenerating waves over Fay's spirit.
Wentworth seemed a part of this all-pervading joyousness and freedom.
She made a little half unconscious movement towards him, and in a
moment, that intrepid man, that dauntless athlete of the emotions had
taken her in his arms.