The Doctor of Pimlico | Page 5

modern self-knowledge, modern weariness and modern sadness.
Her beautiful hair, worn plain and smooth, was black as night--wonderful hair. But still more wonderful were those great, dark, velvety eyes, deep and unfathomable. In them the tragedy of life was tumultuously visible, yet they were serene, self-possessed, even steady in their quiet simplicity. To describe her features is not an easy task. They were clear-cut, with a purity of the lines of the nose and brow seldom seen in a woman's face, dark, well-arched eyebrows, a pretty mouth which had just escaped extreme sensuousness. Cheeks soft and delicately moulded, a chin pointed, a skin remarkable for its fineness and its clear pallor, the whole aspect of her face being that of sweetness combined with nobility and majesty. In it there was no dominant expression, for it seemed to be a mask waiting to be stirred into life.
Fetherston had known Sir Hugh slightly for several years, but as Enid had been so much abroad with Mrs. Caldwell, he had never met her until that accidental encounter in Biarritz.
"We've been up here six weeks," she was telling Fetherston. "Father always gets a lot of golf up here, you know, and I'm rather fond of it."
"I fear I'm too much of a foreigner nowadays to appreciate the game," Walter laughed. "Last season some Italians in Rome formed a club--the usual set of ultra-smart young counts and marquises--but when they found that it entailed the indignity of walking several miles they declared it to be a game only fit for the populace, and at once disbanded the association."
The men were discussing the work of the battery, for four of the officers had been invited, and the point raised was the range of mountain guns.
Walter Fetherston glanced at the general through his pince-nez with a curious expression, but he did not join in the conversation.
Enid's eyes met his, and the pair exchanged curiously significant glances.
He bent to pick up his serviette, and in doing so he whispered to her: "I must see you outside for a moment before I go. Go out, and I'll join you."
Therefore, when the meal had concluded, the girl went forth into the secluded garden at the rear of the hotel, where in a few moments the man joined her at a spot where they could not be overlooked.
She turned towards him, separate, remote, incongruous, her dark eyes showing an angry flash in them.
"Why have you come here?" she demanded with indignation. The whole aspect of her face was tragic.
"To see you again," was his brief reply. "Before we parted at Biarritz you lied to me," he added in a hard tone.
She held her breath, staring straight into his eyes.
"I--I don't understand you!" she stammered. "You are here to torment--to persecute me!"
"I asked you a question, Enid, but in response you told me a deliberate lie. Think--recall that circumstance, and tell me the truth," he said very quietly.
She was silent for a moment. Then, with her mouth drawn to hardness, she replied: "Yes, it is true--I lied to you, just as you have lied to me. Remember what you told me that moonlit night when we walked by the sea towards the Grotto of Love. I was a fool to have believed in you--to have trusted you as I did! You left me, and, though I wrote time after time to your club, you refused to send me a single line."
"Because--because, Enid, I dared not," replied her companion.
"Why not?" she demanded quickly. "You told me that you loved me, yet--yet your own actions have shown that you lied to me!"
"No," he protested in a low, earnest, hoarse voice; "I told you the truth, Enid, but----"
"But what?" she interrupted in quickly earnestness.
"Well," he replied after a brief pause, "the fact is that I am compelled to wear a mask, even to you, the woman I love. I cannot tell you the truth--I cannot, dearest, for your own sake."
"And you expect me to believe this lame story--eh?" she laughed. She was pale and fragile, yet she seemed to expand and to dilate with force and energy.
"Enid," he answered in a low voice, with honesty in his eyes, "I would rather sacrifice my great love for you than betray the trust I hold most sacred. So great is my love for you, rather would I never look upon your dear face again than reveal to you the tragic truth and bring upon you unhappiness and despair."
"Walter," she replied in a trembling voice, looking straight into his countenance with those wonderful dark eyes wherein her soul brimmed over with weary emotion and fatigued passion, "I repeat all that I told you on that calm night beside the sea. I love you; I think of you day by day, hour by hour. But you have lied to me,