But there was another, and Brenda would not confess, even indefinitely in her own thoughts, that she knew it.
At length she laid her book down, and sat gazing softly into the fire. When the bell rang at the end of the long passage beside the kitchen-door, she never moved. When the maid opened the drawing-room door, with the mumbled announcement of a name to whose possessor no door of Mrs. Wylie’s was ever shut, Brenda failed to hear the name, and half turned her head without much welcome in her eyes.
She was preparing to rise politely from her seat when a dark form passed between the window and herself. There, upon the hearthrug, within touch of her black skirt, stood Theo Trist! Theo—quiet, unemotional, strong as ever; Theo—with a brown face, and his bland, high forehead divided into two portions of white and of mahogany, where the fez had rested, keeping off the burning sun, but casting no shadow; Theo—to the fore, as usual, in his calm, reliable individuality, just at the moment when he was required.
Brenda gave a little gasp, and the eyes that met his were, for a second, contracted with some quick emotion, which he thought was fear.
“Theo!” she exclaimed, “Theo!” Then she stopped short, checking herself suddenly, and as she rose he saw the frightened look in her eyes again.
They shook hands, and for a brief moment neither seemed able to frame a syllable. Brenda’s lips were dry, and her throat was parched—all in a second.
He looked round the room as if seeking someone, or the indication of a presence, such as a workbasket, a well-known book, or some similar token. Brenda concluded that he was wondering where Mrs. Wylie might be, and suddenly she found power to speak in a steady, even voice.
“Mrs. Wylie is out!” she said. “I expect her in by teatime.”
He nodded his head—indicated the chair which she had just left—and, when she was seated, knelt down on the hearthrug, holding his two hands to the fire.
“Where is Alice?” he asked, in a peculiar monotone.
“She is out with Mrs. Wylie—Then … you know?”
“Yes, Brenda, I know!” he answered gravely.
The girl sat forward in her low chair, with her two arms resting upon her knees, her slim, white hands interlocked. For a time she was off her guard, forgetting the outward composure taught in the school of which she was so apt a pupil. She actually allowed herself to breathe hurriedly, to lean forward, and drink in with her eager eyes the man’s every feature and every movement. He was not looking towards her, but of her fixed gaze he was well aware. The sound of her quick respiration was close to his ear; her soft, warm breath reached his cheek. With all his iron composure, despite his cruel hold over himself, he wavered for a moment, and the hands held out to the glow of the fire shook perceptibly. But his meek eyes never lost their settled expression of speculative contemplation. Whatever other men might do, whatever women might suffer, Theodore Trist was sufficient for himself. The flame leapt up, and fell again with a little bubbling sound, glowing ruddily upon the two faces. He remained quite motionless, quite cold. It was the face of the great Napoleon again—inscrutable, deep beyond the depth of human soundings, cruel and yet sweet—but the high forehead seemed to suggest an infinite possibility of something else; some lack of energy, or some great negation, which cancelled at one blow the resemblance that lay in lip and chin and profile.
Presently Brenda leant back in the chair. There was a screen on the table near her—Mrs. Wylie’s palm-leaf—and she extended her hand to take it, holding it subsequently between her face and the fire, so that if Trist had turned his head he could not have seen anything but her slim, graceful form, her white hand and wrist, and the screen glowing rosily. He did not turn, however, when he spoke.
“I will tell you,” he said, “how I came to know.”
Before continuing, he rubbed his hands slowly together. Then he rose from his knees and remained standing near the fire close to her, but without looking in her direction. He seemed to be choosing his words.
“I came home,” he said at length, “from Gibraltar in an Indian steamer, a small boat with half a dozen passengers. There was no doctor on board. One evening I was asked to go forward and look at a second-class passenger who was suffering from … from delirium tremens.”
He stopped in an apologetic way, as if begging her indulgence for the use of those two words in her presence.
“Yes …” she murmured encouragingly.
“It was Huston.”
As he spoke he turned slightly, and glanced down at her. She had entirely regained her gentle composure now, and the colour had returned to her face. Her attention was given to his words with a certain suppressed anxiety, but no surprise whatever.
“Did,” she asked at length—“did he recognise you?”
“No.”
“And he never knew, and does not know now, that you were on board?”
It would seem that he divined her thoughts, detecting the hidden importance of her question.
“No,” he answered meaningly, as he turned and looked down at her—“no; but he has not forgotten my existence.”
She raised her eyes quickly, but their glance stopped short suddenly at the elevation of his lips. It was only by an effort that she avoided meeting his gaze.
“I do not know,” she said with a short laugh, in an explanatory way, “much about … about it. Is it like ordinary delirium, where people talk in a broken manner without realizing what they are saying?”
“Yes; it is rather like that.”
She examined the texture of the screen with some attention.
“Do you mind telling me, Theo,” she asked at length evenly, “whether he mentioned your name?”
Trist reflected for a moment. He moved restlessly from one foot to the other, then spoke in a voice which betrayed no emotion beyond regret and a hesitating sympathy.
“He said that Alice had run
