"You need not have done it," she said, "if I hadn't been so proud. But I didn't tell you. Did you think you would never manage for us to meet? And all the time, all the time, I loved him. Oh, why did I not tell you? Forgive me, dear, forgive me. I was unfaithful to him and cruel to you, and now----But how could I reckon with anyone as good as you?" Her head drooped and rested on the woodwork, and she looked down the long avenue of people she had loved and hurt. She lifted her head and beat her hands upon the sill. "But I did love you, and you knew it--at least, I never failed in giving love."
A low tap came on the door, and she opened it to Alexander.
"Yes, I'm coming now." She kissed her father. "Say good-night to him."
He, too, stooped and kissed him. "He was the first man that was ever kind to me."
Speaking seldom, they sat together in the parlour. They were both idle, but Alexander smoked, and now and then they would lift their eyes from the fire and look across the little space dividing them, and through the smoke wreaths Alexander's eyes would soften at the sight of Theresa's smiles. His memory was already stored with them. There was the frank one for friendship, the slow one for thought; the little, twisted, mocking one, the quick one that was an affirmation; and now this wavering one that came with a pale flood of colour, and would not be stilled, and stirred his heart as the lake water stirred the reeds.
Looking at his watch, he bade her to bed at last, and she rose with a strange pleasure in obedience.
"At the end of the passage in what we call the store-room. They've put a bed for me there. Theresa, you are not blaming me?"
Again there came the questioning and again her words outran the answer. "I'll tell you in the morning--in the sunlight, please."
"You know?" She nodded. "In the morning, then. Good-night."
He lighted her to her bedroom door but when she had shut it and heard him go down the stairs she wished the house were not quite so still, and with the wish she heard a low, shuddering moan, and then another. That was Clara Rutherford crying for her dead.
She undressed with fumbling, nervous fingers, and, stealing into bed, she covered her ears to shut out the dreadful quiet punctuated by that sound, yet she sat up again, compelled to listen while, with a regular insistence, the moaning invaded the night. A little later there came a stealthy, bumping sound along the passage, and she was ready to leap out and bolt her door, when Alexander's voice came low and clear.