.

"It's too miserable," she declared in wrathful woe. "Why couldn't he
have said nothing about it and just married you? Oh, I hate it all,
because I love you both. I know people think I'm in love with him, but
I'm not. It's both of you, it's the whole thing; and now it never, never
can go straight. If he got Blent back now by a miracle, it would be just
as bad."

"Worse," said Cecily, "if you mean that then he might----"

"Yes, worse," moaned Mina. "It's hopeless every way. And I believe he's
fond of you."

A scornful smile was Cecily's only but sufficient answer.

"And you love him!" Mina's sorrow made her forget all fear. She said in
this moment what she had never before dared to say. "Oh, of course you
do, or you'd never have told him he mustn't come to Blent. But he won't
understand that--and it would make no difference if he did, I suppose!
Oh, you Tristrams!" Again her old despairing cry of revolt and
bewilderment was wrung from her by the ways of the family with whose
fate she had become so concerned. Southend had felt much the same thing
over the matter of Harry and the viscounty. "So it all ends, it all
ends--and we've got to go back to Blent!"

"Yes, I love him," said Cecily. "That evening in the Long Gallery--the
evening when he gave me Blent--do you know what I thought?" She spoke
low and quickly, lying back quite still in the attitude that Addie
Tristram had once made her own. "I watched him, and I saw that he had
something to say, and yet wouldn't say it. I saw he was struggling. And
I watched, how I watched! He was engaged to Janie Iver--he had told me
that. But he didn't love her--yes, he told me that too. But there was
something else. I saw it. I had come to love him then already--oh, I
think as soon as I saw him at Blent. And I waited for it. Did you ever
do that, Mina--do you remember?"

Mina was silent; her memories gave her no such thing as that. Her sobs
had ceased; she sat listening in tense excitement to the history of the
scene that she had descried, dim and far off, from the terrace of
Merrion on the hill.

"I waited, waited. I couldn't believe--Ah, yes, but I did believe. I
thought he felt bound in honor and I hoped--yes, I hoped--he would break
his word and throw away his honor. I saw it coming, and my heart seemed
to burst as I waited for it. You'd know, if it had ever happened to you
like that. And at last I saw he would speak--I saw he must speak. He
came and stood by me. Sudden