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242 Both of the women looked at him in the intensest surprise. To Lady Tintagel he had never mentioned Helena's name since the day she had accepted Lord Harlow, while to Jessie, only last night, he had loaded her with the bitterest reproaches, and had spoken of the abject despair and emptiness which had come upon him in consequence of what she had done. And he looked at each of them in turn with that vivid, brilliant glance which had been so characteristic of him.

"Yes, I make a public recantation," he said. "It suddenly dawned on me last night that I have been behaving just about as stupidly as a man can behave. I've said nothing to you, mother, but Jessie knows. I want her to try to forget what, for instance, I said to her last night. I can do better than that, and at any rate I propose to try. All the time that I haven't been mad with resentment I've been dead. Well, I hereupon announce the resurrection of Archibald. That's all I've got to say on the subject."

At that moment, swift as an arrow's flight, and certain as an intuition, there came to Jessie the odd idea that it was not Archie who was speaking at all. It might be his lips and tongue that fashioned the audible syllables, but it was not he in the sense that it had been he down by the lake last night. Savage and bitter as he had been there, he was authentic: now, all that he said, despite the absolute naturalness of his manner, seemed to ring false. She could not account for this impression in the least. It was not the suddenness of the change in his attitude, though that surprised her: it was some remoter quality, which her brain could not analyse. Something more intimate to herself than her brain had perceived it, and mere thought, mere reason, were blind to it.

Archie did not accompany his mother and Jessie to church that morning, but waited for Lord Tintagel's