’I mean that we have no way of discovering whether it is true or not.’

’It will make no change.  I shall not speak of it to father.  There will be no change, in any case.’

Again there fell a short silence.

‘I can only wait in hope of hearing from him,’ Mrs. Ormonde said.

’Of course.  If my aunt says anything to me about it, I will write to you.  Good-bye.’

‘I shall see you to-morrow, as we arranged?’

‘Oh yes.  But, please, we won’t refer again to this.’

They parted as on an ordinary occasion.

But Annabel did not go home at once.  She walked down to the shore, and stood for a long time looking upon the dim sea.  It was the very spot where Thyrza had stood that Sunday morning when she came out in the early sunlight.

Annabel had often thought how fitting it was that at this period of her life she should leave the calm, voiceless shore of Ullswater for the neighbourhood of the never-resting waves.  The sea had a voice of craving, and her heart responded with desire for completion of her being, with desire for love.

The thought that she would be near Walter Egremont had a great part in her anticipation of London.

She was not hitherto sure that she loved him.  It was rather, ’Let me see him again, and discover how his presence affects me.’  Yet his manifest coldness at the last meeting had caused her much vague heartache.  She blamed herself for being so cold:  was it not natural that he should take his tone from her?  He would naturally watch to see how she bore herself to him, and, remembering Ullswater, he could not press for more than she seemed ready to give.  Yet her reserve had been involuntary; assuredly she was not then moved with a longing to recover what she had rejected.

There was a change after the meeting with Thyrza Trent.  It seemed to her very foolish to remember so persistently that Egremont had said nothing of the girl’s strange loveliness, yet she could not help thinking of the omission as something significant.  She even recollected that, in speaking to her of Thyrza, he had turned his eyes seaward.  Such trifles could mean nothing as regarded Egremont, but how in reference to herself?  How if she knew that he had given his love to another woman?  I think that would be hard to bear.

And it was hard to bear.

Passion had won it over everything.  He had taken Thyrza at the eleventh hour, and now she was married to him.  She did not doubt it; she felt that Mrs. Ormonde did not doubt it.  It had meant something—­that failure to speak of the girl’s beauty, that evasion with the eyes.

The night was cold, but she sat down by the shore, and let her head droop as she listened to the sea-dirge.  She could love him, now that it was in vain.  She knew now the warm yearning for his presence which at Ullswater had never troubled her, and it was too late.  No tears came to her eyes; she did not even breathe a deeper breath.  Most likely it would pass without a single outbreak of grief.