And was she, Janey, to stand by, and see Roger, her Roger, the straightest man that ever walked, and the most unsuspicious, marry her brother's mistress? Could she connive at such a wicked thing? Would Roger forgive her, would she ever forgive herself, if she coldly held aloof and let him ruin his life, drench it in dishonour, because she was too proud to say a word? It was her duty to speak, her bounden duty. Janey became dizzy under the onslaught of a sudden wild tumult within her. Was it grief? Was it joy? She only knew that it was anguish. Perhaps it was the anguish of one dying of thirst to whom the cup of life is at last held, and who sees even as he stretches his parched lips towards it that the rim is stained with blood. CHAPTER XXV "We sometimes think we might have loved more in kinder circumstances, if some one had not died, or if some one else had not turned away from us. Vain self-deception! The love we _have_ given is all we had to give. If we had had more in us it would have come out. The circumstances of life always give scope for love if they give scope for nothing else. There is no stony desert in which it will not grow, no climate however bleak in which its marvellous flowers will not open to perfection."--M. N. Two days later, when Janey was pacing in the lime walk of the Hulver gardens, Mr. Stirling joined her. She had known him slightly ever since he had become her mother's tenant and their neighbour at Noyes, but her acquaintance with him had never gone beyond the thinnest conventional civility. The possibility that Mr. Stirling might have been an acquisition in a preposterously dull neighbourhood had not occurred to Janey and Roger. They did not find Riff dull, and they were vaguely afraid of him as "clever." The result had been that they seldom met, and he was quickly aware of Janey's surprise at seeing him. He explained that he had been to call on her at the Dower House, and the servant said she had gone up to the gardens, and finding the gate unlocked he had ventured to follow her. She saw that he had come for some grave reason, and they sat down on the green wooden seat which followed the semicircle in the yew hedge. Far off at the other end of the lime walk was another semicircular seat. There had been wind in the night, and the rough grass, that had once been a smooth-shaven lawn, and the long paved walk were strewn with curled amber leaves as if it were autumn already. Mr. Stirling looked with compassion at Janey's strained face and sleepless eyes. "I have come to see you," he said, "because I know you are a friend of Miss Georges." He saw her wince. "I am not sure I am," she said hoarsely, involuntarily. "I am quite sure," he said. There was a moment's silence.