“There’s very little more to tell. As you know, Sir Ezekiel’s death sent me on my travels once again—to the States and South America; I was appointed Managing Director, and had to go inspecting, and reorganizing, and so forth. That’s all settled. I’m established now in town—and here, thank God, I am—at old Cragsfoot again!” “You’ve certainly been a good deal mixed up in the affair—by fate or choice,” he said, smiling, “but you’re not the hero, are you? Arsenio claims that _rôle_! Or the heroine! What of her, Julius?” “She came back to England four or five months ago. She’s living in rooms at Hampstead. She’s got the _palazzo_ rent, and she still does her needlework; she gets along pretty comfortably.” “You’ve seen her since you came back, I suppose?” “Yes, pretty nearly every day,” I answered. “She was the first person I went to see when I got back to London; she was the last person I saw before I left London this morning.” He sat rubbing his hands together, and looking into the bright fire of logs that his old body found pleasant now, even on summer evenings; the wind blows cold off the sea very often at Cragsfoot. “You’re telling me the end of the story now, aren’t you, Julius?” “Yes, I hope and think so. Indeed, why shouldn’t I say that I know it? I think that we both knew from the hour of Arsenio’s death. We had been too much together—too close in spirit through it all—for anything else. How could we say good-by and go our separate ways after all that? It would have seemed to us both utterly unnatural. First, my head had grown full of her—in those talks at Ste. Maxime that I told you we’d had; and, when a woman’s concerned, the heart’s apt to follow the head, isn’t it?” “I don’t wonder at either head or heart. She was a delightful child; she seems to have grown into a beautiful woman—yes, she would have—and one that might make a man think about her. There was nothing between you while he lived? No, I don’t ask that question, I’ve no right to—and, I think, no need to.” “With her there couldn’t have been; it was as impossible as it proved in the end for her to marry Waldo. For her it was a virtue in me that I knew it.” “She wasn’t married to Arsenio Valdez when she ran away from Waldo?” “In her own eyes she was, and when he called her—called her back—well, she had to go.” “Ah, I’ve sometimes fancied that there might have been some untold history like that.” “She now wishes that you and Waldo—just you two—should know that there was. Will you tell him, sir? I’d rather not. She thinks it may make you and him feel more gently to her; she’s proud herself, you know, and was sorry to wound others in their pride.” “It’s generous of her. I’ll tell him—what I must; and you need tell me no more than you have. I shouldn’t wonder if the idea isn’t quite new to him either. There are—quarters—from which something of the sort may have been suggested, eh, Julius?”