“How long is it,” Walter asked, “since you wanted to run away and leave us? I won’t ask you why you wanted to go, because my uncle has told me that. My dearest girl, there is no occasion for you to blush and look uncomfortable. I am sure that your motives did you every credit. But we will pass over that. We need never allude to it again. I have spoken to your mother, and what my uncle’s feelings are you know for yourself. All the dangers and troubles have gone now. Everything lies fair and smooth between us. And now, little Vera, when are we to be married?”
Vera turned slowly and thoughtfully. She laid her hands upon Walter’s shoulders, and looked steadily and lovingly into his smiling eyes. Her words were low and sweet.
“Dear old boy,” she said, “we have always been friends, and more than friends, and in my heart of hearts I have ever felt that it must come to this, whatever obstacles stood in the way. I am not so brave as I thought I was, Walter, and I don’t believe I could have left you when it came to the pinch. Oh, I’ll marry you, dear; I’ll marry you gladly and willingly, and be the happiest girl in all the world. But not yet; not till our time is up here; not till I have spent the next two months with my mother. And you won’t love me any the less because I have thought of her as well as you?”
Walter kissed the sweet, serious lips.
“It shall be as you say, sweetheart. And now let us go back, and tell the others all about it.”
“There is only one thing that remains,” Walter said, as he and Lord Ravenspur walked up and down after dinner, with their cigars. “That photo, uncle. The one that you were so worried about, in the studio on the night when Sir James was attacked by Silva in mistake for you. Where did it come from, and why did it agitate you so?”
“I had almost forgotten that,” Ravenspur smiled. “Well, that photo was tied, with a small packet of jewels, round Vera’s neck when I carried her away from Italy. I did not know till lately that it was a photo of her mother. She must have been a lovely woman then. Being an artist, I rather idealised that photograph—indeed, I painted the picture that Silva stole from it. It was only when the picture was finished that I discovered I had made a very strong likeness to Vera; and then I had my doubts. Here was Vera’s mother in the flesh again. Had I done wrong? Had Flavio deceived me? The thing has troubled my conscience ever since. A woman with a face like that to be a fiend! Never. And yet—
“Still, it is all over now. There have been faults on all sides, so that we can all afford to forget and forgive. And that, my dear boy, is all I have to say.”
Colophon
The Midnight Guest
was published in 1907 by
Fred M. White.
This ebook was produced for
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The cover page is adapted from
A Girl’s Head II,
a painting by
Olof Sager-Nelson.
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