Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/399

 The Professor said no more. He sat silent, looking out with dim eyes across the sunny land. He did not see the fields stretching hot and parched down to the village; he did not see the grand mountains fading away right and left of him into mist. He saw neither the calm sea shimmering out there beyond the village, nor the exquisite sky of turquoise blue smiling like embodied joy above it. He saw a girl named Phyllis whom in the past he had loved with the intensity of a reserved and yet passionate nature. She had seemed to return his love, and to understand him as few understood the sensitive, reticent student. Assured of her love, convinced by many a token that he was the elect out of many suitors, he had left her one year to join an exploration party in Palestine.

Thither, after a few months' absence, he was followed by news which turned him outwardly to stone, and made his inner life an agony of bitterness and grief. The news was conveyed in a cutting from the London Times, sent to him anonymously. It contained the announcement of Phyllis Wynne's marriage with a Colonel Llewellyn, who had at one time appeared to be a favoured rival for her love, but who had long since ceased to press his suit. A letter in Phyllis's handwriting followed the announcement, but Hugh Morgan tore it to atoms, unread. A second and a third letter shared the same fate. Then the letters ceased. Hugh Morgan remained abroad for a year or two, and on his return buried himself in the obscure corner of Wales in which he had now lived for ten years.

The unmistakable likeness in the faces of these two children, and the fact of one of them bearing the name of his faithless love, set both memory and imagination at work in the mind of the Professor. These were without doubt Phyllis's children. And Phyllis was dead! It was a strange chance that had brought him and Phyllis's children together; strange and sad that from the lips of Phyllis's child he should hear of Phyllis's death.

So out there in the August sunshine, at the foot of the old ruin, the Professor read, as he thought, the last page of the romance of his life. But he was mistaken. There was yet another page to be turned.

Unnoticed by the dreaming Professor or by the children, who, seeing their companion's abstraction, had quietly busied themselves plucking the yellow poppies which grew among the grass, there had come along the road from the village a lady in a black dress. She was close upon them before the children perceived her. With outstretched arms and affectionate outcries they flew to meet her. She caught them to her, and bending down kissed the little uplifted faces with great tenderness.

"My little Kitty and Phyllie!" she cried, "how you have frightened us! Why did you leave Gwennie? Why did you come all this distance alone?"

The Professor, hearing the voice, rose suddenly to his feet. How strangely he was haunted to-day! Surely that was the voice of Phyllis Wynne! And yet Phyllis was dead! His wondering, startled eyes devoured the face of the new-comer, and he held his breath. He saw a woman past her first youth, a woman with blue, sweet eyes, and with brown hair touched too early with grey. In spite of the difference the years had made, in spite of the paleness which had taken the place of the peachbloom of old, and the smoothness of the hair which once had curled so softly about the brow, Hugh Morgan could not but recognise her. This was certainly Phyllis. And yet the children had said she was dead!

"Phyllis!" he cried aloud, unable to contain himself, and his voice broke as he spoke the name which had not passed his lips for more than ten years.

At the sound of that name, spoken by that voice, the lady started as the Professor had