Page:The Author of Beltraffio, The Middle Years, Greville Fane, and Other Tales (London, Macmillan & Co., 1922).djvu/393

FORDHAM CASTLE Mrs. Magaw's understanding was still in the shade. "But are you sure?"

"Why Fordham Castle settles it. If she wanted to get where she truly belongs she has got there. She belongs at Fordham Castle."

The noble mass of this structure seemed to rise at his words, and his companion's grave eyes, he could see, to rest on its towers. "But how has she become Mrs. Sherrington Reeve?"

"By my death. And also after that by her own. I had to die first, you see, for her to be able to—that is for her to be sure. It's what she has been looking for, as I told you—to be sure. But oh—she was sure from the first. She knew I'd die off, when she had made it all right for me—so she felt no risk. She simply became, the day I became C. P. Addard, something as different as possible from the thing she had always so hated to be. She's what she always would have liked to be—so why shouldn't we rejoice for her? Her baser part, her vulgar part, has ceased to be, and she lives only as an angel."

It affected his friend, this elucidation, almost with awe; she took it at least, as she took everything, stolidly. "Do you call Mrs. Taker an angel?"

Abel had turned about, as he rose to the high vision, moving, with his hands in his pockets, to and fro. But at Mrs. Magaw's question he stopped short—he considered with his head in the air. "Yes—now!"

"But do you mean it's her idea to marry?"

He thought again. "Why for all I know she is married."

"With you, Abel Taker, living?"

"But I ain't living. That's just the point."

"Oh you're too dreadful"—and she gathered herself up. "And I won't," she said as she broke off, "help to bury you!"

This office, none the less, as she practically had 373