He endeavored to rouse her.  “Did I protect you from insult?” he asked.

She said absently:  “Yes!”

“Will you do as I do, dear?  Will you try to forget?”

She said:  “I will try to atone,” and moved toward the door of her room.  The reply surprised him; but it was no time then to ask for an explanation.

“Would you like to lie down, Sydney, and rest?”

“Yes.”

She took his arm.  He led her to the door of her room.  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

“Nothing, thank you.”

She closed the door—­and abruptly opened it again.  “One thing more,” she said.  “Kiss me.”

He kissed her tenderly.  Returning to the sitting-room, he looked back across the passage.  Her door was shut.

His head was heavy; his mind felt confused.  He threw himself on the sofa—­utterly exhausted by the ordeal through which he had passed.  In grief, in fear, in pain, the time still comes when Nature claims her rights.  The wretched worn-out man fell into a restless sleep.  He was awakened by the waiter, laying the cloth for dinner.  “It’s just ready, sir,” the servant announced; “shall I knock at the lady’s door?”

Herbert got up and went to her room.

He entered softly, fearing to disturb her if she too had slept.  No sign of her was to be seen.  She had evidently not rested on her bed.  A morsel of paper lay on the smooth coverlet.  There was only a line written on it:  “You may yet be happy—­and it may perhaps be my doing.”

He stood, looking at that last line of her writing, in the empty room.  His despair and his submission spoke in the only words that escaped him: 

“I have deserved it!”

FIFTH BOOK.

Chapter XXXVIII.

Hear the Lawyer.

“Mr. Herbert Linley, I ask permission to reply to your inquiries in writing, because it is quite likely that some of the opinions you will find here might offend you if I expressed them personally.  I can relieve your anxiety on the subject of Miss Sydney Westerfield.  But I must be allowed to do so in my own way—­without any other restraints than those which I think it becoming to an honorable man to impose on himself.

“You are quite right in supposing that Miss Westerfield had heard me spoken of at Mount Morven, as the agent and legal adviser of the lady who was formerly your wife.  What purpose led her to apply to me, under these circumstances, you will presently discover.  As to the means by which she found her way to my office, I may remind you that any directory would give her the necessary information.

“Miss Westerfield’s object was to tell me, in the first place, that her guilty life with you was at an end.  She has left your protection—­not to return to it.  I was sorry to see (though she tried to hide it from me) how keenly she felt the parting.  You have been dearly loved by two sweet women, and they have thrown their hearts away on you—­as women will.