“Margaret!”

She started violently.  She knew the voice well enough, but after these years it was impossible that it should be sounding here.

“Margaret!” he said again imperatively.

“Mr. Ratcliff,” she faltered.  “I did not expect to see you again.”

“Your expectations seem to be a little curious,” he replied, surveying her coolly.  “There is a great deal that you have to explain to me.  What do you mean by calling me a false lover?”

“Who told you that I accused you of falsehood?” she asked, dropping the book she was carrying in her surprise.  “If I did you could scarcely contradict me, but this is not quite the place for such discussions.”

He possessed himself of the book and led the way to the public gardens, where the principal walks offered privacy enough at an hour when most of the world was busy over tennis.  Children and nursemaids do not count as intruders on privacy.

“See here, Margaret, I was eavesdropping under the garden-fence, while you talked with your sick friend, and I heard you giving me a famously bad character.  At least,” suddenly recollecting himself, “unless I have made a fool of myself, and it was somebody else you meant.”

Margaret said nothing.

“Had you ever any other love?”

“Never,” said she, and the colour flew up into her pale face.  She did not at all understand the accusation brought against her, or the fierceness of the accuser.

“Then apologise at once for the charge you have brought against me.”

She looked up at him with knitted brows.  She wanted to look at him, but her eyes would drop again immediately.

“Are you not unreasonable?” she asked.  “Years ago you made love to me.  Then you went away.  Your father was ill, and you could not choose but go, but you gave me to understand that you were coming back to me.  You never came.  Do you call that faithfulness?”

“I wrote.”

“Never.”

“Margaret!” he cried indignantly.  “I wrote and had your answer.  Are you dreaming?”

“You never wrote.  In my life I never wrote to you.”

“Good heavens!  When I have your letter in my pocket!  I wrote to you asking if I might come back as your accepted lover, and you sent me this in return,” said he, giving her the paper for which he had searched his pocket-book.

She took it and looked it over.  When she gave it back her glance was fixed far away over the miraculous river that ran with mimic waterfalls through the gardens, and she was ghastly pale.

“I did not write that,” she said.  “You ought to have known it.”

“It is your signature and your hand.”

“It is like my hand.  I never signed myself M. Mildmay.  How could I, when we were all M. Mildmay?”

A light broke in upon him.  They were all M. Mildmay, of course, and he remembered a long-forgotten feud with Miriam.  He bit his lip and stamped his foot angrily.  What a fool he had been!