Impulsively she took off her hat and turned round to him.
He was looking at her still, and again that awful sense of doubt mastered and possessed her. A great barrier seemed to have sprung up between them. He was formidable, actually formidable. The Guy of old days, impetuous, hot-tempered even, had never been that.
She stood before him, controlling her rising agitation with a great effort. "Why do you look at me like that?" she said. "I feel—you make me feel—as if—you are a total stranger!"
His face changed a little, but still she could not read his look.
"Sit down!" he said. "We must have a talk."
She put out her hand to him. The aloofness of his speech cut her with an anguish intolerable. "What has happened?" she said. "Quick! Tell me! Don't you want to—marry me?"
He took her hand. She saw that in some fashion he was moved, though still she could not understand. "I'm trying to tell you," he said; "but—to be honest—you've hit me in the wind, and I don't know how. I think you have forgotten in all these years what Guy was like."
She gazed at him blankly. Again Jeffcott's words were running in her mind. And something—something hidden behind them—arose up like a menace and terrified her.
"I haven't forgotten," she whispered voicelessly. "I couldn't forget. But go on! Don't—don't mind telling me!"
She was white to the lips. All the blood in her body seemed concentrated at her heart. It was beating in heavy, sickening throbs like the labouring of some clogged machinery.
He put his free hand on her shoulder with an abrupt movement that made him for the moment oddly familiar. "It's a damned shame," he said, and though his voice was low he spoke with feeling. "Look here, child! This is no fault of mine. I never thought you could make this mistake, never dreamed of such a possibility. I'm not Guy at all. I am Burke Ranger—his cousin. And let me tell you at once, we are not much alike now—whatever we have been in the past. Here, don't faint! Sit down!"
He shifted his hand from her shoulder to her elbow, and supported her to a chair. But she remained upon her feet, her white face upraised, gazing at him—gazing at him.
"Not Guy! Not Guy!" She said it over and over as if to convince herself. Then: "But where is Guy?" She clutched at his arm desperately, for all her world was shaking. "Are you going to tell me he is—dead?"
"No." Burke Ranger spoke with steady eyes looking straight into hers. "He is not."
"Then why—then why—" She could get no further. She stopped, gasping. His face swam blurred before her quivering vision—Guy's face, yet with an inexplicable something in it that was not Guy.
"Sit down!" he said again, and put her with quiet insistence into the chair. "Wait till you have had something to eat! Then we'll have a talk and decide what had better be done."
She was shivering from head to foot, but she faced him still. "I can't eat," she said through white lips. "I can't do anything till—till I know—all there is to know."
He stood looking down at her. The fingers of his right hand were working a little, but his face was perfectly calm, even grim.
As he did not speak immediately, she went on with piteous effort. "You must forgive me for making that stupid mistake. I see now—you are not Guy, though there is a strong likeness. You see, I have not seen Guy for five years, and I—I was allowing for certain changes."
"He is changed," said Burke Ranger.
That nameless terror crept closer about her heart. Her eyes met his imploringly.
"Really I am quite strong," she said. "Won't you tell me what is wrong? He—cabled to me to come to him. It was in answer to my cable."
"Yes, I know," said Ranger.
He turned from her abruptly and walked to the window. The darkness had drawn close. It hung like a black curtain beyond the pane. The only light in the room was a lamp that burned on a side table. It illumined him but dimly, and again it seemed to the girl who watched him that this could be no other than the Guy of her dreams—the Guy she had loved so faithfully, for whose sake she had waited so patiently for so many weary years. Surely it was he who had made the mistake! Surely even yet he would turn and gather her to his heart, and laugh at her folly for being so easily deluded!
Ah! He had turned. He stood looking at her across the dimly-lighted space. Her very heart stood still to hear his voice.
He spoke. "The best thing you can do is to go back to the place you came from—and marry someone else."
The words went through her. They seemed to tear and lacerate her. As in a nightmare vision she saw the bitterness that lay behind her, the utter emptiness before. She still stared full at him, but she saw him not. Her terror had taken awful shape before her, and all her courage was gone. She cowered before it.
"I can't—I can't!" she said, and even to herself her voice sounded weak and broken, like the cry of a lost child. "I can't go back!"
He came across the room to her, moving quickly, as if something urged him. She did not know that she had flung out her hands in wild despair until she felt him gather them together in his own.
He bent over her, and she saw very clearly in his countenance that which had made her realize that he was not Guy. "Look here!" he said. "Have a meal and go to bed! We will talk it out in the morning. You are worn out now."
His voice held insistence. There was no softness in it. Had he displayed kindness in that moment she would have burst into tears. But he put her hands down again with a brief, repressive gesture, and the impulse passed. She yielded him obedience, scarcely knowing what she did.
He brought her food and wine, and she ate and drank mechanically while he watched her with his grey, piercing eyes, not speaking at all.
Finally she summoned strength to look up at him with a quivering smile. "You are very kind. I am sorry to have given you so much trouble."
He made an abrupt movement that she fancied denoted impatience.
"Can't you eat any more?" he said.
She shook her head, still bravely smiling. "I can't—really. I think—I think perhaps you are right. I had better go to bed, and you will tell me everything in the morning."
"Finish the drink anyhow!" he said.
She hesitated momentarily, but he pushed the glass firmly towards her and she obeyed.
She stood up then and faced him. "Will you please tell me one thing—to—to set my mind at rest? Guy—Guy isn't ill?"
He looked her straight in the face. "No."
"You are sure?" she said.
"Yes." He spoke with curt decision, yet oddly she wondered for a fleeting second if he had told her the truth.
His look seemed to challenge the doubt, to beat it down. Half shyly, she held out her hand.
"Good night," she said.
His fingers grasped and released it. He turned with her to the door. "I will show you your room" he said.
CHAPTER VII
THE WRONG TURNING
Sylvia slept that night the heavy, unstirring sleep of utter weariness though when she lay down she scarcely expected to sleep at all. The shock, the bewilderment, the crushing dread, that had attended her arrival after the long, long