More than once during the week Phyllis had been led to ask herself if she was quite certain that her terrible surmise regarding the influence which dominated Ella's recent actions was true. Now and again she felt an impulse to fall upon her knees and pray, as she had once before prayed, that the sin of that horrible suspicion might be forgiven her. How could it be possible, she thought, that Ella should forget all that a true woman should ever remember!
But now--now, as she sat in the train on her way back to London, there was no room left in her mind for doubt on this matter. The tragic earnestness with which Ella had asked her that question, tightening her fingers upon her wrists? "/Will you give up Herbert Courtland in order to help me?/"--the passionate whisper, the quivering lips--all told her with overwhelming force that what she had surmised was the truth.
She felt that Ella had confessed to her that her infatuation--Phyllis called it infatuation--had not passed away, though she had been strong enough upon that night, when her husband had so suddenly returned, to fly from its consequences. No, her infatuation had not died.
But Herbert Courtland--what of him? He had also had strength--once.
Would he have strength again? He had told her, while they were together in one of the boats drifting down the placid river, that he believed in the influence which a woman could exercise upon a man's life being capable of changing his nature so completely as if a miracle had been formed upon him. She had not had the courage to ask him if he had any particular instance in his mind that impressed this belief upon him.
Had he been led to cast that infatuation--if he had ever been subjected to it--behind him, by reason of her influence over him since she had repeated to him the pathetic words of Mrs. Haddon, and he had gone straight aboard the yacht on that strange cruise?
She could scarcely doubt that he was ready to acknowledge how great had been her influence upon his life. He had shown her in countless ways that she had accomplished all that she had sought to achieve. She had had no need to throw herself at his head--the phrase which Ella suggested her fellow-guests would probably employ in referring to the relative positions of Phyllis and Herbert. No, she had ever found him by her side, and it did not need her to exercise much cleverness to keep him there.
But then, why had he so suddenly hurried away from that pleasant life beside the still waters?
This was the question which was on her mind as the train ran into the station at Paddington. She got out of the carriage, and while her maid went to look after the luggage, she glanced down the platform for the footman. He came up to her in a moment and took her dressing-bag and jewel-case.
"The brougham is here, I suppose?" she said, as she walked down the platform.
It was at the entrance to the station, he told her.
She paused for a moment, and glanced back to see if there had been much luggage in the train which she had left--if her maid would be likely to be kept waiting for long. At that instant a porter, with a portmanteau on his shoulder and a Gladstone bag in his hand, hurrying up by the side of the train which was ready to depart from the next platform, shouted to a group of Eton boys who were blocking the way:
"By your leave, gents!"
She started and took a step to one side, and that instant was sufficient to make her aware of the fact that the portmanteau carried by the porter to the train which was about to leave for Maidenhead was Herbert Courtland's. There was no mistaking it. It bore on one end his initials and his private sign.
She took a few steps nearer the train by which she had come, and followed the porter with her eyes.
He put the portmanteau into the luggage van, and then returned with the Gladstone bag to the side of a compartment. She saw him place it in the network, and touch his cap as he received his /douceur/ from the passenger who sat at the door with an evening paper in his hand.
She saw that that passenger was Herbert Courtland.
She told the footman who stood beside her to take her bag and case to the brougham and then return to help her maid with the rest of the luggage. He followed her down the platform.
In a short time she was being driven home, her maid following with the luggage in another vehicle.
She did not begin to change her traveling dress immediately on retiring to her room. She did not even take off her hat. She stood at the window looking out over a scene very different from that which had been before her eyes every day during the previous week. After a quarter of an hour's listlessness at the window, she spent another quarter of an hour sitting motionless in a chair. Then she rose and looked at herself in a mirror that showed her herself from head to foot. She examined her feet with curious deliberation, and then looked with a critical side glance at the reflection of her face. (She could not fail to have noticed that it was unusually pale.) She removed her hat, surveyed herself once more, then, turning away with an exclamation of impatience, she crumpled up her hat with both her hands and flung it, just as a wicked child would have flung it, across the room.
"Let them both go together to perdition--to perdition--to perdition!" she said with a bitterness that had never previously been in her voice. "Let them go together. I have done my best for them--for her--for her. I give them up now for evermore."
After a minute or two of statuesque passion she went across the room and picked up her bruised hat. She looked at it, turning it round in her hands. Then she dropped it suddenly, and flung herself upon the sofa, crying out in a whirlwind of tears:
"Oh, Ella, Ella, I would have saved you--I meant to save you, indeed!
I would have done everything to save you--everything!"
