And then something curious happened.  Radmore, even while conscious that he was a fool, felt a violent desire to see Enid Crofton again and very soon, alone.  He was trying to make up a form of words to convey this to her before the other two, when good fortune seemed to favour him, for brother and sister began—­as they were wont to do—­wrangling together.

Seeing his opportunity he bent down a little over Mrs. Crofton’s couch in order to suggest to her that he should come again to-morrow.  And then, in a flash, the whole expression of his face altered and stiffened.  Half under the lace coverlet over the eiderdown a letter written on familiar looking pale grey notepaper was sticking out, and he couldn’t help seeing the words:—­“My own darling angel.”

Straightening himself quickly and hardly knowing what he was saying, he exclaimed, “I do hope you’ll soon feel all right again.”

And then he saw that she was aware of what had happened for she became even whiter than she had been before.  Every bit of colour fled from her face—­except for the unnaturally pink lips.

CHAPTER XXIII

As he walked away from The Trellis House Radmore felt terribly disturbed, and maddened with himself for feeling so disturbed.

After all, Enid Crofton meant very little to him!  He even told himself that he had never really liked, still less respected, her and yet there had been something that drove him on, that allured him, that made him feel as he had felt to-night.  But for the accident of his having seen that letter from poor foolish Jack Tosswill he might, by this time to-morrow, have been in the position of Enid Crofton’s future husband!  The knowledge turned him sick.

Just now he felt that he never wished to see her again.

As he walked on, leaving the village behind him, and emerging on the great common which stretched between Beechfield and the nearest railway station—­he asked himself whether or no it was possible that she had genuinely fallen in love with Jack Tosswill?

And then he stayed his steps suddenly.  He had remembered the look of terror, the look of being “found out,” which had crossed her face, when she had realised that he had seen that fatally revealing corner of her love-letter.

Why had she looked like that?  And then, all at once, he knew.  It was for him that Enid Crofton had come to Beechfield, for him, or rather for his money.  He felt hideously disturbed as certain tiny past happenings crowded on his memory.  He felt he would give half his possessions were it possible thereby to transplant The Trellis House hundreds of miles from Beechfield.

He threw a rueful thought to Jack Tosswill.  Miss Pendarth had been right, after all.  That sort of experience might well embitter the whole of the early life of such a priggish, self-centred youth; and while he was chewing the cud of these painful, troubling thoughts there came a woman’s voice out of the darkness.