It came abruptly, and was schoolingly cold and short.

It had the effect on me of freezing my blood and setting what seemed to be the nerves of my brain at work in a fury of calculation to reckon the minutes remaining of her maiden days.  I had expected nothing, but now we had parted I thought that one last scene to break my heart on should not have been denied to me.  My aunt Dorothy was a mute; she wept when I spoke of Janet, whatever it was I said.

The minutes ran on from circumstance to circumstance of the destiny Janet had marked for herself, each one rounded in my mind of a blood colour like the edge about prismatic hues.  I lived through them a thousand times before they occurred, as the wretch who fears death dies multitudinously.

Some womanly fib preserved my father from a shock on leaving Janet’s house.  She left it herself at the same time that she drove him to Lady Sampleman’s, and I found him there soon after she had gone to her bridesmaids.  A letter was for me:—­

’Dear harry,—­I shall not live at Riversley, never go there again; do not let it be sold to a stranger; it will happen unless you go there.  For the sake of the neighbourhood and poor people, I cannot allow it to be shut up.  I was the cause of the chief misfortune.  You never blamed me.  Let me think that the old place is not dead.  Adieu.

’Your affectionate,
‘Janet.’

I tore the letter to pieces, and kept them.

The aspect of the new intolerable world I was to live in after to-morrow, paralyzed sensation.  My father chattered, Lady Sampleman hushed him; she said I might leave him to her, and I went down to Captain Welsh to bid him good-bye and get such peace as contact with a man clad in armour proof against earthly calamity could give.

I was startled to see little Kiomi in Mabel’s company.

They had met accidentally at the head of the street, and had been friends in childhood, Captain Welsh said, adding:  ‘She hates men.’

‘Good reason, when they’re beasts,’ said Kiomi.

Amid much weeping of Mabel and old Mrs. Welsh, Kiomi showed as little trouble as the heath when the woods are swept.

Captain Welsh wanted Mabel to be on board early, owing, he told me, to information.  Kiomi had offered to remain on board with her until the captain was able to come.  He had business to do in the City.

We saw them off from the waterside.

’Were I to leave that young woman behind me, on shore, I should be giving the devil warrant to seize upon his prey,’ said Captain Welsh, turning his gaze from the boat which conveyed Kiomi and Mabel to the barque Priscilla.  He had information that the misleader of her youth was hunting her.

He and I parted, and for ever, at a corner of crossways in the central city.  There I saw the last of one who deemed it as simple a matter to renounce his savings for old age, to rectify an error of justice, as to plant his foot on the pavement; a man whose only burden was the folly of men.