John did not answer, and his grandmother jeered.
"I see how 'tis! Your nose be out of joint. What did I tell you, Jack? Broken hearts--broken fiddlesticks! Ban't the wench's heart as have broke, anyhow. So her throwed you over for a properer man?"
"You'm minded to let her off her bargain? Then the bigger fool you!"
She hit the truth in her brutal fashion. Lee had not trusted himself to pursue the matter of his attachment; yet, as time progressed, he saw more clearly what Grace strove with might and main to conceal. The accesses of her affection, the thousand little kindly thoughts for him--all wrote truth in letters of fire upon his aching heart. True love had acted differently--had claimed as well as given; and he knew, despite her assurance oftentimes repeated, that her attitude was founded on another impulse. Now, after grief and pain, his thoughts moved slowly to Cecil Stark. In turn he was attracted by and repulsed from the prospect of speech with the young prisoner. Finally he braced himself to the ordeal; yet he knew not what he would say when they stood face to face. He felt as a man in a dream at this period. A most unreal and monstrous task lay before him. Deliberately he was turning his back upon all that made life precious; consciously he was hastening out of day into eternal night. He chafed against the noble impulse that drove him onward; for a season he resisted it; then Grace Malherb's own steadfast purposes warmed his inspiration. Her delicacy, her gentleness, her courage cried to him. Must he prove less brave and more selfish than she?
It was indeed sheer suffering that supported the girl now; but her strength rose superior to it, and only one who knew and loved her as this man knew and loved, had guessed at the things hidden in her heart. The torture simulated Grace to a surface brilliance, as a bird will sing out of pure misery in sight of his robbed nest. Her eyes were ever bright, but unshed tears made them so; her plots and plans were ceaseless and sanguine; but he knew that she rushed into them to escape from her heart. Love, indeed, had found her at last, but she struggled fiercely to shut him out since he had come too late. She never wearied of plans concerning the Malherb amphora, and of the future for John Lee when he should discover it. And he humoured her and himself a little longer, so that she scarcely realised that he had grasped the truth, despite his first sure guess thereat.