“What do you mean?” he asked apprehensively.
“You heard Mr. Ruggles’s question about the cable dispatch?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said, “our plans have been very much upset by some things he has heard from home. We came on from Algiers ten days earlier than we had intended, and if the reply to Mr. Ruggles’s cable is unfavorable, we are likely to depart for Genoa tomorrow and take the steamer for home on Monday. The reason why I did not send a note to your bankers,” she added, “was that we came on the same boat that I intended to write by; and Mr. Hartleigh’s man has inquired for you every day at Cook’s so that Mr. Hartleigh might know of your coming and call upon you.”
John gave a little exclamation of dismay. Her face was very still as she gazed out over the sea with half-closed eyes. He caught the scent of the violets in the bosom of her white dress.
“Let us sit down,” she said at last. “I have something I wish to say to you.”
He made no rejoinder as they seated themselves, and during the moment or two of silence in which she seemed to be meditating how to begin, he sat bending forward, holding his stick with both hands between his knees, absently prodding holes in the gravel.
“I think,” she began, “that if I did not believe the chances were for our going tomorrow, I would not say it today.” John bit his lip and gave the gravel a more vigorous punch. “But I have felt that I must say it to you some time before we saw the last of each other, whenever that time should be.”
“Is it anything about what happened on board ship?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” she replied, “it concerns all that took place on board ship, or nearly all, and I have had many misgivings about it. I am afraid that I did wrong, and I am afraid, too, that in your secret heart you would admit it.”
“No, never!” he exclaimed. “If there was any wrong done, it was wholly of my own doing. I was alone to blame. I ought to have remembered that you were married, and perhaps—yes, I did remember it in a way, but I could not realize it. I had never seen or heard of your husband, or heard of your marriage. He was a perfectly unreal person to me, and you—you seemed only the Mary Blake that I had known, and as I had known you. I said what I did that night upon an impulse which was as unpremeditated as it was sudden. I don’t see how you were wrong. You couldn’t have foreseen what took place—and—”
“Have you not been sorry for what took place?” she asked, with her eyes on the ground. “Have you not thought the less of me since?”
He turned and looked at her. There was a little smile upon her lips and on her downcast eyes.
“No, by Heaven!” he exclaimed desperately, “I have not, and I am not sorry. Whether I ought to have said what I did or not, it was true, and I wanted you to know—”
He broke off as she turned to him with a smile and a blush. The smile was almost a laugh.
“But, John,” she said, “I am not Mrs. Edward Ruggles. I am Mary Blake.”
The parapet was fifty feet above the terrace. The hedge of box was an impervious screen.
Well, and then, after a little of that sort of thing, they both began hurriedly to admire the view again, for someone was coming. But it was only one of the gardeners, who did not understand English; and confidence being once more restored, they fell to discussing—everything.
“Do you think you could live in Homeville, dear?” asked John after a while.
“I suppose I shall have to, shall I not?” said Mary. “And are you, too, really happy, John?”
John instantly proved to her that he was. “But it almost makes me unhappy,” he added, “to think how nearly we have missed each other. If I had only known in the beginning that you were not Mrs. Edward Ruggles!”
Mary laughed joyously. The mistake which a moment before had seemed almost tragic now appeared delightfully funny.
“The explanation is painfully simple,” she answered. “Mrs. Edward Ruggles—the real one—did expect to come on the Vaterland, whereas I did not. But the day before the steamer sailed she was summoned to Andover by the serious illness of her only son, who is at school there. I took her ticket, got ready overnight—I like to start on these unpremeditated journeys—and here I am.” John put his arm about her to make sure of this, and kept it there—lest he should forget. “When we met on the steamer and I saw the error you had made I was tempted—and yielded—to let you go on uncorrected. But,” she added, looking lovingly up into John’s eyes, “I’m glad you found out your mistake at last.”
XLVIII
A fortnight later Mr. Harum sat at his desk in the office of Harum & Co. There were a number of letters for him, but the one he opened first bore a foreign stamp, and was postmarked “Napoli.” That he was deeply interested in the contents of this epistle was manifest from the beginning, not only from the expression of his face, but from the frequent “wa’al, wa’als” which were elicited as he went on; but interest grew into excitement as he neared the close, and culminated as he read the last few lines.
“Scat my cats!” he cried, and, grabbing his hat and the letter, he bolted out of the back door in the direction of the house, leaving the rest of his correspondence to be digested—any time.
Epilogue
I might, in conclusion, tell how John’s further life in Homeville was of comparatively short duration; how David died of injuries received in
