"Eva, Eva!" he cried.
She allowed him to drag her to the sofa without making any resistance, happy in his embrace in spite of her hallucination; and there she remained, sitting by him, with his arm round her, cowering against his breast.
"Eva! come, Eva, what is it that ails you?"
"It has passed over," she murmured, almost inaudibly. "Yes, it is gone now—it is gone. It has come over me so often lately; it comes roaring on, slowly and stealthily, and then it breaks over my head, shaking me to the core; and then it goes away, dies away—away— I am in such terror of it; it is like a monster which comes bellowing at me, and it frightens me so! What can it be?"
"I can not tell; overwrought nerves, perhaps," he said, consolingly.
"Oh! hold me close," she said, caressingly; "hold me tightly to you. When I am alone after it is past, I am left in such deadly fear; but now— now I have you—you once more. You will not cast me from you again; you will protect me, your poor little Eva, will you not? Ah! yes, I have you back now. I knew, I felt, I should have you back some day; and I have made papa come to Scheveningen every summer. I had an idea that you must be somewhere in Holland—at The Hague or at Scheveningen; and that if we were ever to meet again it would be here. And now it has happened, and I have you once more. Hold me tightly now —in both arms—both arms. Then I shall not be frightened."
She clung more closely to his breast, her head on his shoulder; and then, in a voice like a child's:
"Look," she said, holding out her wrist.
"What?" asked he.
"That little scar. You did that."
"I did?"
"Yes; you clutched me by the wrists."
He felt utterly miserable, in spite of having found her again, and he covered the line of the scar with little kisses.
She laughed quietly.
"It is a bracelet!" she said lightly.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Presently, however, he started up.
"Eva," he began, suddenly recollecting himself, "how—why—?"
"What is it?" she said, laughing, but a little exhausted after her strange fear of the fancied thunder.
"Those letters. Why did William?—what could they matter to William? Not mere curiosity to see what was in them?"
"He would not have snatched that last one so roughly from Kate, if that had been all. No, no—"
"Then you think he had some interest?"
"I do."
"But what? Why sho.uld he care whether I wrote to you or no?"
"Perhaps he was acting for—"
"Well?"
"For some one else."
"But for whom? What concern could my letters be of anybody's. What advantage could it be to any one to hinder your getting them?"
She sat up and looked at him for some time without speaking, dreading the question she must ask.
"Can you really think of no one?" she said.
"No."
"Did no one know that you had written?"
"No one but Bertie."
"Ah! Only Bertie," said she, with emphasis.
"But Bertie—no! Surely?" he asked her, indignant at so preposterous a suspicion.
"Perhaps," she whispered, almost inaudibly. "Perhaps Bertie."
"Eva! Impossible. Why? How?"
She sank back into her former attitude, her head on his breast, trembling still from the impression of the thunder she had heard. And she went on:
"I know nothing; I only think. I have thought it over day after day for two years; and I have begun to find a great deal that seems mysterious in what had never before been puzzling, but, indeed, sympathetic to me—in Bertie. You know we often used to talk together, and sometimes alone. You were a little jealous sometimes, but you had not the smallest reason for it, for there never was anything to make you so; we were like a brother and sister. We often talked of you— Well, afterward I remembered those talks, and it struck me that Bertie—"
"Yes? That Bertie—"
"That he did not speak of you as a true friend should. I am not sure. While he was talking it never occurred to me, for Bertie had a tone, and a way of saying things. I always fancied then that he meant well by us both, and that he really cared for us, but that he was afraid of something happening—some evil, some catastrophe, if we were married. He seemed to think that we ought not to marry. When afterward I thought over what he had said that was always the impression. He really seemed to think that we—that we ought never to be married."
She closed her eyes, worn out by this effort to solve the enigmas of the past, and she took his hand and stroked it as she held it in her own. He too tried to look into that labyrinth of the past, but he could discern nothing. His memory carried him back to their last days in London; and he did recall something: he recollected Van Maeren's stern tone when he, Westhove, had said he should call at the Rhodeses'; he remembered
