His eyes laughed into hers.  The western light was streaming in across the music-room.  They stood together in the turret beyond Saltash’s piano, where she had found him pouring out wild music that made her warm heart ache for him.

She had come to him with the earnest desire to help, but he baffled her at every turn, this man to whom once in the days of her youth she had been so near.  She could not follow the complex workings of his mind.  He was too quick to cover his feelings.  His inner soul had long been hidden from her.

Yet the conviction persisted that if any could pass that closed door that he kept so persistently against all comers, it would be herself.  She had once possessed the key, and she could not believe that it was no longer in her power to turn it.  He would surely yield to her though he barred out all beside.

Perhaps he read her thoughts, for the laugh died out of his eyes, melting into the old tender raillery that she remembered so well.

“Will you drink with me?” he said.  “You have actually stooped to enter my stronghold without your bodyguard.  Will you not honour me still further—­partake of my hospitality?”

She smiled at him.  “Of course I will have tea with you with pleasure, Charlie.  Didn’t you realize I was waiting to be asked?”

“You are very gracious,” he said, and crossed the room to ring a bell.

She remained in the western turret, looking out over the beech woods that blazed golden in the sun to the darker pine-woods beyond.

“What a paradise this is!” she said, when he joined her again.

His restless eyes followed hers without satisfaction.  A certain moodiness had come upon him.  He made no answer to her words.

“Why doesn’t Bunny come up to see me?” he asked suddenly.  “He knows I am here.”

She looked at him in surprise.  “Are you expecting him?”

He nodded with a touch of arrogance.  “Yes.  Tell him to come!  I shan’t quarrel with him or he with me.  Is he still thirsting for my blood?  He’s welcome to it if he wants it.”

“Charlie!” she protested.

He turned from her and sat down at the piano.  His fingers began to caress the keys, and then in a moment the old sweet melody that he had played to her in the long ago days came softly through the room.  Her lips formed the words as he played, but she made no sound.

“There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate. 
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate. 
The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near!’
And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late!’
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear!’
And the lily whispers, ‘I wait!’”

“She is certainly very late,” commented Charles Rex quizzically from the piano.  “And the lily is more patient than I am.  Why don’t you sing, Maud of the roses?”

She started a little at his voice, but she did not answer.  She could not tell him that her throat was dumb with tears.