A Woman Martyr

								

repassed.  The little crowds gathered, thickened, dispersed.  She was
disappointedly telling herself that as the shower had temporarily
subsided she ought to be returning home, when her heart gave a leap. A
rider who was trotting towards her was the man--the man strongly if
slightly built, handsome, fair, if stern--who alone among men had
conquered that heart, who, although despair had driven her to hold her
own against him, was her master.
It was all over--fate had decided--they two must once more meet! There
was no escape.
He rode up.  She blanched, but looked him steadily in the face.  He
gazed sadly, beseechingly, yet with that imperious compelling glance
which had so often made her quail--into those beautiful brown eyes.
"We meet again, you see," he said, in a harsh, strained voice.  He felt
on the rack--to him, wildly panting, yearning to take her in his arms
after weary, maddening months of longing, that gulf between them seemed
a very hell.
"So it seems," she said, with a pitiful attempt at a laugh.  "I thought
you were in Kamschatka, or Bombay--or anywhere!"
"I have come back," he returned, lamely, mechanically accompanying her
as she rode out of shelter--she would not, could not, stay there and
bandy words with him!  "I felt--I must know--the worst!"
Involuntarily she reined in, and so suddenly that she startled her
steed, and it was some moments before the mare’s nerves were calmed.
Then she turned a white, set face upon her self-elected escort.
"What do you mean, Lord Vansittart?" she asked scornfully, and her eyes
flashed.
"You--know," he hoarsely said.  "I am not so utterly vain as to think
that where I have failed, other and--and--more attractive fellows may
not succeed!"
"You know, or ought to know, that what you are saying is absurd!" she
faltered. What had she thought, feared?  She hardly knew, she only felt
a tremendous relief. Thank Heaven, even had she been secretly vowed to
the cloister, her conduct since their parting could not have borne
closer scrutiny! "You must remember--what I said--I never, never, intend
to marry--anyone.  I shall never, never, change my mind--about that!"
He said nothing; but glanced at her--a curious glance.  A puzzle to him
since he first had felt encouraged to believe from symptoms which only a
watchful, anxious lover would perceive, that she involuntarily, perhaps
even unconsciously, loved him--she had remained an insoluble problem
during the long days of their separation when he pondered on the subject
the slow, lagging hours through--and, now again, she bid fair to be as
great a problem as ever.  For he felt, he knew, that her reception of
him--her pallor, the strange look in her eyes and the curious pitch of
her voice--why, the veriest fool alive would not have mistaken her
demeanour or one of its details for indifference!
"I--I think you mistake yourself," he began slowly, revolving certain