ng myself to patience."

Mallard sat unmoving. His legs were crossed, and he held his soft felt
hat crushed together in both his hands. Elgar glanced at him once or
twice, expecting him to speak, but the other was mute.

"Your judgment of me," Elgar resumed, "is harsh and unfounded. I don't
know how you have formed it. You know nothing of what it means to me to
love such a girl as Cecily. Here I have found my rest. It supplies me
with no new qualities, but it strengthens those I have. You picture me
being unfaithful to Cecily--deserting her, becoming brutal to her?
There must be a strange prejudice in your mind to excite such images."
He examined Mallard's face. "Some day I will remind you of your
prophecies."

Mallard regarded him, and spoke at length, in a strangely jarring,
discordant voice.

"I said that hastily. I make no prophecies. I wished to say that those
seemed to me the probabilities."

"Thank you for the small mercy, at all events," said Elgar, with a
laugh.

"What do you intend to do?" Mallard proceeded to ask, changing his
position.

"I can make no plans yet. I have pretended to only too often. You have
no objection to my remaining here?"

"You must take your own course--with the understanding to which we have
come."

"I wish I could make you look more cheerful, Mallard. I owe it to you,
for you have given me more gladness than I can utter."

"You can do it."

"How?"

"See her to-morrow morning, and then go back to England, and make
yourself some kind of reputable existence."

"Not yet. That is asking too much. Not so soon."

"As you please. We understand each other on the main point."

"Yes. Are you going back to Amalfi?"

"I don't know."

They talked for a few minutes more, in short sentences of this kind,
but did not advance beyond the stage of mutual forbearance. Mallard
lingered, as though not sure that he had fulfilled his mission. In the
end he went away abruptly.

CHAPTER XII

ON THE HEIGHTS

In vain, at each meal, did Clifford Marsh await Cecily's appearance. A
trifling indisposition kept her to her room, was Mrs. Lessingham's
reply to sympathetic inquiries. Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, who were
seriously making their preparations for journeying northward, held
private talk concerning the young lady, and felt they would like to
stay a week longer, just to see if their suspicions would be confirmed.
Mrs. Denyer found it difficult to assume the becoming air when she p