Of course, William Farrell had done it all!  There was scarcely a piece of furniture, a picture, a book, that was not of his choosing and placing.  Little by little, they had been gathered round her.  His hand had touched and chosen them, every one.  He took far more pleasure and interest in the details of these few rooms than in any of his own houses and costly possessions.

Suddenly—­as she sat there on the window-ledge, considering the room, her back to the mountains—­one of those explosions of consciousness rushed upon Nelly, which, however surprising the crash, are really long prepared and inevitable.

What did that room really mean—­the artistic and subtle simplicity of it?—­the books, the flowers, and the few priceless things, drawings or terra-cottas, brought from the cottage, and changed every few weeks by Farrell himself, who would arrive with them under his arm, or in his pockets, and take them back in like manner.

The colour flooded into Nelly’s face.  She dropped it in her hands with a low cry.  An agony seized her.  She loathed herself.

Then springing up passionately she began to pace the narrow floor, her slender arms and hands locked behind her.

Sir William was coming that very evening.  So was Cicely, who was to be her own guest at the farm, while Marsworth, so she heard, was to have the spare room at the cottage.

She had not seen William Farrell for some time—­for what counted, at least, as some time in their relation; not since that evening before Bridget went away—­more than a fortnight.  But it was borne in upon her that she had heard from him practically every day.  There, in the drawer of her writing-table, lay the packet of his letters.  She looked for them now morning after morning, and if they failed her, the day seemed blank.  Anybody might have read them—­or her replies.  None the less Farrell’s letters were the outpouring of a man’s heart and mind to the one person with whom he felt himself entirely at ease.  The endless problems and happenings of the great hospital to which he was devoting more and more energy, and more and more wealth; the incidents and persons that struck him; his loves and hates among the staff or the patients; the humour or the pity of the daily spectacle;—­it was all there in his letters, told in a rich careless English that stuck to the memory.  Nelly was accustomed to read and re-read them.

Yes, and she was proud to receive them!—­proud that he thought so much of her opinion and cared so much for her sympathy.  But why did he write to her, so constantly, so intimately?—­what was the real motive of it all?

At last, Nelly asked herself the question.  It was fatal of course.  So long as no question is asked of Lohengrin—­who, what, and whence he is—­the spell holds, the story moves.  But examine it, as we all know, and the vision fades, the gleam is gone.