Mary received her with a gentle voice and a show of tenderness.  She said very little.  They had tea together, and when Gwenda would have gone Mary kept her.

She still said very little.  She seemed to brood over some happy secret.

Presently she spoke.  She told her secret.

And when she had told it she turned her eyes to Gwenda with a look of subtle penetration and of triumph.

“At last,” she said,—­“After three years.”

And she added, “I knew you would be glad.”

“I am glad,” said Gwenda.

She was glad.  She was determined to be glad.  She looked glad.  And she kissed Mary and said again that she was very glad.

But as she walked back the four miles up Garthdale under Karva, she felt an aching at her heart which was odd considering how glad she was.

She said to herself, “I will be glad.  I want Mary to be happy.  Why shouldn’t I be glad?  It’s not as if it could make any difference.”

LVII

In September Mary sent for her again.

Mary was very ill.  She lay on her bed, and Rowcliffe and her sister stood on either side of her.  She gazed from one to the other with eyes of terror and entreaty.  It was as if she cried out to them—­the two who were so strong—­to help her.  She stretched out her arms on the counterpane, one arm toward each of them; her little hands, palm-upward, implored them.

Each of them laid a hand in Mary’s hand that closed on it with a clutch of agony.

Rowcliffe had sat up all night with her.  His face was white and haggard and there was fear and misery in his eyes.  They never looked at Gwenda’s lest they should see the same fear and the same misery there.  It was as if they had no love for each other, only a profound and secret pity that sprang in both of them from their fear.

Only once they found each other, outside on the landing, when they had left Mary alone with Hyslop, the old doctor from Reyburn, and the nurse.  Each spoke once.

“Steven, is there really any danger?”

“Yes.  I wish to God I’d had Harker.  Do you mind sending him a wire?  I must go and see what that fool Hyslop’s doing.”

He turned back again into the room.

Gwenda went out and sent the wire.

But at noon, before Harker could come to them, it was over.  Mary lay as Alice had lain, weak and happy, with her child tucked in the crook of her arm.  And she smiled at it dreamily.

The old doctor and the nurse smiled at Rowcliffe.

It couldn’t, they said, have gone off more easily.  There hadn’t been any danger, nor any earthly reason to have sent for Harker.  Though, of course, if it had made Rowcliffe happier—!

The old doctor added that if it had been anybody else’s wife Rowcliffe would have known that it was going all right.

And in the evening, when her sister stood again at her bedside, as Mary lifted the edge of the flannel that hid her baby’s face, she looked at Gwenda and smiled, not dreamily but subtly in a triumph that was almost malign.