“I have something to tell you before you go.”  Helen spoke with a set face, forcing herself to meet her friend’s eyes.  “Mr. Otway wants an opportunity of talking with you, alone.  He hoped for it this morning.  As he couldn’t see you, he talked about you to me—­you being the only subject he could talk about.  I promised to be out of the way if he came this afternoon.”

“Thank you—­but why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because, as I said, things have got rather on my nerves.”  She took a step forward.  “Will you overlook it—­forget about it?  Of course I should have told you before he came.”

“It’s strange that there should he anything to overlook or forget between us,” said Irene, with wide pathetic eyes.

“There isn’t really!  It’s not you and I that have got muddled—­ only things, circumstances.  If you had been a little more chummy with me.  There’s a time for silence, but also a time for talking.”

“Dear, there are things one can’t talk about, because one doesn’t know what to say, even to oneself.”

“I know!  I know it!” replied Helen, with emphasis.

And she came still nearer, with hand held out.

“All nerves, Irene!  Neuralgia of—­of the common sense, my dear!”

They parted with a laugh and a quick clasp of hands.

CHAPTER XXXVII

For half an hour Irene sat idle.  She was waiting, and could do nothing but wait.  Then the uncertainty as to how long this suspense might hold her grew insufferable; she was afraid too, of seeing Helen again, and having to talk, when talk would be misery.  A thought grew out of her unrest—­a thought clear-shining amid the tumult of turbid emotions.  She would go forth to meet him.  He should see that she came with that purpose—­that she put away all trivialities of prescription and of pride.  If he were worthy, only the more would he esteem her.  If she deluded herself—­it lay in the course of Fate.

His way up from Redmire was by the road along which she had driven on the evening of her arrival, the road that dipped into a wooded glen, where a stream tumbled amid rocks and boulders, over smooth-worn slabs and shining pebbles, from the moor down to the river of the dale.  He might not come this way.  She hoped—­she trusted Destiny.

She stood by the crossing of the beck.  The flood of yesterday had fallen; the water was again shallow at this spot, but nearly all the stepping-stones had been swept away.  For help at such times, a crazy little wooden bridge spanned the current a few yards above.  Irene brushed through the long grass and the bracken, mounted on to the bridge, and, leaning over the old bough which formed a rail, let the voice of the beck soothe her impatience.

Here one might linger for hours, in perfect solitude; very rarely in the day was this happy stillness broken by a footfall, a voice, or the rumbling of a peasant’s cart.  A bird twittered, a breeze whispered in the branches; ever and ever the water kept its hushing note.