She left us, to make the necessary arrangements for staying with my father, whose illness appeared to have lost suddenly its worst symptoms.  As soon as she was gone he regarded me with a look half angry, half contemptuous.

“What a fool you are!” he said.  “You have no tact whatever in the management of women.  Julia would fly back to you, if you only held up your finger.”

“I have no wish to hold up my finger to her,” I answered.  “I don’t think life with her would be so highly desirable.”

“You thought so a few weeks ago,” he said, “and you’ll be a pauper without her.”

“I was not going to marry her for her money,” I replied.  “A few weeks ago I cared more for her than for any other woman, except my mother, and she knew it.  All that is changed now.”

“Well well!” he said, peevishly, “do as you like.  I wash my hands of the whole business.  Julia will not forsake me if she renounces you, and I shall have need of her and her money.  I shall cling to Julia.”

“She will be a kind nurse to you,” I remarked.

“Excellent!” he answered, settling himself languidly down among his pillows.  “She may come in now and watch beside me; it will be the sort of occupation to suit her in her present state of feeling.  You had better go out and amuse yourself in your own way.  Of course you will go home to-morrow morning.”

I would have gone back to Guernsey at once, but I found neither cutter nor yacht sailing that afternoon, so I was obliged to wait for the steamer next morning.  I did not see Julia again, but Captain Carey told me she had consented that he should remain at hand for a day or two, to see if he could be of any use to her.

The report of my father’s illness had spread before I reached home, and sufficiently accounted for our visit to Jersey, and the temporary postponement of my last trip to England before our marriage.  My mother, Johanna, and I, kept our own counsel, and answered the many questions asked us as vaguely as the Delphic oracle.

Still an uneasy suspicion and suspense hung about our circle.  The atmosphere was heavily charged with electricity, which foreboded storms.  It would be well for me to quit Guernsey before all the truth came out.  I wrote to Tardif, telling him I was going for an indefinite period to London, and that if any difficulty or danger threatened Olivia, I begged of him to communicate with my mother, who had promised me to befriend her as far as it lay in her power.  My poor mother thought of her without bitterness, though with deep regret.  To Olivia herself I wrote a line or two, finding myself too weak to resist the temptation.  I said: 

“MY DEAR OLIVIA:  I told you I was about to be married to my cousin Julia Dobree; that engagement is at an end.  I am obliged to leave Guernsey, and seek my fortune elsewhere.  It will be a long time before I can see you again, if I ever have that great happiness.  Whenever you feel the want of a true and tender friend, my mother is prepared to love you as if you were her own daughter.  Think of me also as your friend.  MARTIN DOBREE.”