Well, After All. Frank Frankfort Moore

startled as she spoke his name, looking over the hedge. He looked up quickly.

      “Did I say anything that I should not have said just now?” she asked. “Why did you hurry away before our hands had more than met?”

      “Shall I come back?” he said, after looking into her eyes with a curious expression in his. “Will you ask me to return?”

      “I will—I will—I will,” she cried. “Please return and tell me if I said anything that hurt you. I would not do so for the world. Nothing but gratitude and good feeling for you was in my heart. Oh yes, pray return.”

      “If I were wise I should not have returned when you made use of that word 'gratitude,'” said he when he had come beside her, through the small rustic gate which she opened for him from the inside. “Gratitude is the opposite to love, and I love you.”

      With a startled cry she took a step or two back from him, and held up her hands as if instinctively to avert a blow.

      “I have startled you,” he said. “I was rude; but indeed I do not know of any way of saying that I love you except in those words. I have had no experience either in loving or in confessing my love. I came here this morning to say those words to you, but when I looked at you standing beside me under the elm—when I saw how beautiful you were—how full of God's grace, and goodness, and tenderness, and charity, I was so overcome with the thought of my own unworthiness to love such a one as you, that”—

      “Oh no, no; for God's sake, do not say that—do not say that,” she cried, holding out her hands to him in an appealing attitude. “Alas! alas! that word love must never pass between us.”

      “Why should not the word pass, when my heart and soul”—

      “Ah, let me implore of you. I fancied that you knew all—all my story. I forgot that it happened so long ago that people in this neighbourhood had ceased to speak of it years before you came here.”

      “Your story? I will believe nothing but what is good of you.”

      “My story—my life's story is that I have promised to love another man.”

      He gave a gasp. His head fell forward for a moment. Then he clasped his hands behind him and looked at her in all tenderness and without a suggestion of reproach.

      “I had a suspicion of it yesterday,” he said. “The man who is more fortunate than I is Richard Westwood.”

      “No, not Richard Westwood, but Claude Westwood,” she replied, in a low tone, and with her eyes fixed upon the ground.

      A puzzled look was on his face.

      “Claude Westwood—Claude Westwood?” he said. “But there is no Claude Westwood. Was not Claude Westwood the African explorer killed years ago—it must be nearly ten years ago—when trying to reach the Upper Zambesi?”

      “Claude Westwood is the man to whom I have given my promise,” said she in an unshaken voice—the voice of one whose faith remains unshaken. “He is not dead. He is alive and our love lives. Ah, my dear friend”—she put out both her hands frankly to Sir Percival and he took them, tenderly and reverently—“my dear friend, you may think me a fool; you may think that I am wasting my life in waiting for an event that is as impossible as the bringing of the dead back to life; but God has brought the dead back to life, and I trust in God to bring the man whom I love back to my love. At any rate, whatever you may think, I cannot help myself; it is my life, this waiting, though it is weary—weary.”

      She had turned away from him and was looking with wide, wistful eyes across the long sweep of country that lay between the road and the Abbey woods.

      He had not let go her hands. He held them as he said:

      “My poor Agnes! my poor Agnes. I had some hope—yes, a little—when I first saw you. I had never thought of loving a woman before, but then … ah, what is the good of recalling what my thoughts were—my hopes? I am strong enough to face my fate. I am strong enough to hope with all my heart that happiness may come to you—that—that—he may come to you—the man who is blessed with such a love as has blessed few men. You know that I am sincere, Agnes?”

      “I am sure of it,” she said, and now it was her hand that tightened on his. “Ah, my dear, dear friend, I know how good you are—how true! If I were in trouble it is to you I would go for help, knowing that you would never fail me.”

      “I will never fail you,” he said. “There is a bond between us. You will come to me should you ever be in trouble.”

      “I give you my promise,” she said.

      Her eyes were overflowing with tears as she put her face up to his. He kissed her on the forehead very gently, and without speaking a good-bye turned slowly away to the little gate.

      While he was in the act of unlocking it, he started, hearing a cry from the spot where they had been standing a dozen yards away.

      He looked round quickly.

      Agnes was being supported by a servant. He saw that her face was deathly white, and in her hand that fell limply by her side there was an oblong piece of paper. A telegraph envelope had fluttered to the ground.

      He rushed back to her.

      “What has happened?” he asked the servant.

      “A telegram, sir; I brought it out to her—it had just come, and knew that she was out here. She read it and cried out—I was just in time to catch her. I don't think she has quite fainted, Sir Percival.”

      The maid was right. Agnes had not fainted, but she was plainly overcome by whatever news the telegram had conveyed to her.

      She opened her eyes as Sir Percival put his arm about her, supporting her to a garden chair that stood at the side of the tennis lawn.

      “I think I can walk,” she murmured; and she made an effort to step out, but all her strength seemed to have departed. She would have fallen if Sir Percival had not supported her.

      “You are weak,” he said; “but after a rest you will be yourself again. Let me help you.”

      “You are so good!” she said, and with his help she was able to take a few steps. But then she gave a sudden gasp and became rigid when she caught sight of the telegram which was crumpled in her hand. She raised it slowly and stared at it. Then she cried out:

      “Ah, God is good—God is good! It is no dream. He is safe—safe! Claude Westwood is alive.”