"It is bitterly unfair on him. He has been brought up to wealth; he was as ignorant as I that the money you squandered was all we had."
Rose Lyndwood flushed.
"We have all been thriftless and careless, my lady," he said. "I the most of any, and if I could have done anything to avert this——"
"Oh, you talk!" she interrupted with a quivering voice. "And that is easy; but you have no right to stand there and tell me you are ruined. How is it with others? You had as fair chances as any."
"By Gad—no!" said the Earl softly. "I had no chance to do anything—but what I did."
My lady's anger could find no direct expression; she wavered from one charge to another.
"You could have married," she cried. "Most gentlemen strengthen their fortunes by a wealthy match. But you—who received your attentions? I forbear to name them! And now it is too late."
"Too late for a fine match—yes," said Rose Lyndwood. "I have not time to hunt an heiress before the bailiffs are in, and——"
"You would not if you could," interrupted the Countess.
"I would rather sell the estates than myself, madam."
"Your bearing is out of joint with your fortune," she returned. "Ye speak proudly. It had been a finer pride that had prevented ye coming to tell your mother ye had disgraced your name thus!"
The Earl looked away from her into the shadows at the far end of the room.
"Prudence was not in my inheritance," he said slowly. "If you take it as a disgrace that my fortune was not equal to my position—" He broke off. "In any case, my lady, 'tis tedious and painful to discuss the matter."
"You have no thought for me!" The Countess flung reproaches at him. "Oh, none at all! Nor what this means to me, or to Marius! Did you ever consider us when you wasted your father's heritage?"
"My father?" repeated the Earl. "I have lived as he lived, only 'tis my misfortune to have faced the consequences."
Lady Lyndwood very tightly clutched the back of the chair; the wavering candle-light sought out her face and showed it wild and sad beneath the loose blonde hair.
Rose Lyndwood suddenly turned his beautiful head and looked at her.
"Have you nothing but bitterness for me, my lady?" he asked.
"I think of Marius," she answered.
The Earl's face hardened again.
"Marius has the world before him."
"You have broken his heart—you! And to-night he came back to me so joyously! Listen! He met a lady abroad; he hoped to marry her."
"At one-and-twenty?" Rose Lyndwood half smiled. "How many marry their first loves, my lady?"
The Countess sank into the chair.
"I did," she murmured in an uncontrolled voice, "and I had nothing but happiness." And she began weeping for the twelve years dead.
"Marius was my lord's heir with you," said the Earl, "and I have brought you nothing but misfortune. Do not shed tears, my lady, and shame me, for maybe I can still sell myself to buy Marius his romance."
The Countess struggled with sick sobs; half under her breath she murmured incoherent railings and feeble complaints. The Earl became paler as he listened to her.
The candle was burning to the socket; the moonlight lay on the floor between them, in a shifting, widening patch.
"I am returning to London to-night," said Rose Lyndwood at last.
My lady got to her feet and supported herself against the side of the desk, holding her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Go when you will," she answered; "nay, go soon, for I have no desire to see you in the house—let me be alone with Marius." A sudden gleam of anger shone through her weak tears. "Nay, I doubt not you have companions in London in whose society ye can soon forget my unhappiness."
He made no answer, nor did he move, and without a look between them the Countess left the room.
As the door closed after her the candle guttered and went out in the gust of air.
For a moment or two the Earl walked up and down in the dark, crossing and recrossing the patch of moonlight.
Then he returned to the withdrawing-room.
It was empty, the window still stood open on to the terrace, and the air was full of the pungent smell of the flowers without.
Rose Lyndwood seated himself at the table where Miss Chressham had written, earlier that evening, the letter whose fragments were now being swirled down the stream into the open country.
He picked up a pen and slowly mended it, pulled out a sheet of Susannah's gilt-edged paper, and paused.
What had happened since he had left London that morning—his meeting with his cousin, the fierce disappointment and anger of Marius, the foolish, bitter reproaches of the Countess—had hardly touched his real feelings, and, personally, moved him not at all.
He had endured these scenes, disdainful of them; he knew that neither his mother nor Marius had ever attempted to avert the ruin that so overwhelmed them, and that they knew nothing of his real position.
To both he was a stranger in all things save blood, and now as he sat alone, his thoughts were where they had been on the ride from London, with the people and things of his own world, though through all was the stinging recollection of his brother's sneers and his mother's tears.
Presently he began to write, slowly but without hesitation.
"Madam—You will remember that I acquainted you with the fact that my affairs approached a crisis, and that I considered accepting the appointment at Venice as a retreat from a life my fortunes would no longer support. You know what other hope I dared to cherish—believe that I have ever held dear the assurances you once gave me, and that in writing this I taste fully the bitterness of poverty.
"I cannot go to Venice, since both my lady and Marius, my brother, find me at fault in this entanglement of my fortunes, and 'tis but decent that I should strive to repair losses that affect them, since they demand it of me.
"More 'tis difficult to say on paper, yet I have no fear that you will not understand since we never found it hard to comprehend one another. When last you wrote you said that you were being pressed in the matter of your betrothal to your cousin Francis—he is one to whom I should have given my esteem in other circumstances, and one whom, even as it is, I cannot hate, though his fortune is more brilliant than mine——"
The Earl broke off and stared out at the night with darkening eyes, then he signed his name and the date.
Without reading the letter through he folded and addressed it to:
Miss Selina Boyle,
Bristol.
As he finished he looked round, for he heard the door softly open.
"Susannah," he said. His intonation held welcome; he half smiled.
Miss Chressham crossed the room; within a little distance of her cousin's chair she paused; he was again gazing out at the night, and she saw only his back, the blue ribbon at his neck, and the long smooth curls that hung beneath it.
"What have they said to you?" she asked.
"That which I might have expected."
He fingered his letter, still with his face from her; she came round his chair, her scarlet dress rippled out of the shadows with colour.
"Of course they cannot forgive," she said intensely.
Now he looked round at her suddenly, and his expression startled