fro, looking like an old,
grey-haired man in the dim grotesqueness of the light. Eugenie
understood. She felt, with mingled dread and pity, that she was in the
presence of a weakness which represented far more than the immediate
emotion; was the culmination, indeed, of a long, disintegrating
process.

She hesitated--moved--wavered--then took courage again.

'Come and sit down,' she said, gently.

And, going up to him, she took him by the arm and led him back to his
chair.

He sank upon it, his eyes hanging on her. She stooped over him.

'Shall I,' she said, uncertainly--'shall I--go first? Oh, I _oughtn't_
to go! Nobody ought to interfere--between husband and wife. But if you
wish it--if I could do any good--'

Her eyes sought the answer of his.

Her face, framed in the folds of her black veil, shone in the
candle-light; her voice was humble, yet brave.

The silence continued a moment. Then his lips moved.

'Be my messenger!' he said, just breathing it.

She made a sign of assent. And he, feebly lifting her hands, brought
them to his lips. Close to them--unseen by her--for the moment
unremembered by him--lay the revolver with which he had meant to take
his life--and the letter in which he had bid her a last farewell.

CHAPTER XIII

Great Langdale was once more in spring. After the long quiet of the
winter, during which these remoter valleys of the Lakes resume their
primitive and self-dependent life, there were now a few early tourists
in the two Dungeon Ghyll hotels, and the road traffic had begun to
revive. Phoebe Fenwick, waiting and listening for the post in an upper
room of Green Nab Cottage, ran hurriedly to the window several times
in vain, drawn by the sound of wheels. The cart which clattered past
was not that which bore Her Majesty's mails.

At the third of these false alarms she lingered beside the open
casement window, looking out into the valley. It was a very weary
woman who stood thus--motionless and drooping; a woman so tired, so
conscious of wasted life and happiness, that although expectation held
her in a grip of torture, there was in it little or nothing of hope.

Twelve years since she had last looked on those twin peaks, those
bare fields and winding river! Twelve years! Time, the inexorable, had
dealt with her, and not softly. All that rounded grace which Fenwick
had once loved to draw had dropped from her, as the bloom drops from
a wild cherry in the night. Phoebe was n