Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/244

234 The girl struggled a moment, then lay still upon his breast smiling. She loved him: she knew it in the joy of that embrace.

When Ernest returned home that day he found his brother gone. A telegram had come summoning one of the brothers away on business, and Hugh had gone, half in the despair and depression that followed the scene in the rose garden. He had left the field to his brother.

Well, what matter? If she cared for him, his absence would not make her care less; if she loved his brother, he were better out of the way till she knew her mind. When Hugh returned, he took a three-mile walk from the station sooner than drive, because he feared to learn what had happened in his absence. Yet his feet hurried him quicker than he knew. At the bend of the lonely road near his home he saw two figures in the dusk. The man's arm was about the woman: she leant towards him.

Hugh's heart stood still a moment, then nearly suffocated him with its pulsations. He strode up to the woman, and laid a rough hand upon her shoulder. She screamed, then recognised him.