“It seems impossible that only a few weeks ago we were all so happy,” he said at last. “It’s very hard when Life lets you go on being careless and light-hearted for years and years; and then, without any warning, suddenly grips you by the throat and makes you feel half strangled by the weight of it all.” She did not speak, and looking straight before him he ran on: “It seems as if the death of the dear old General would have been enough in itself, but on the top of that comes this awful separation. Do you know, Eileen, sometimes I think it can’t be true—that it is too awful to be true—that The Ghan House should stand here and none of you in it, and that the sounds craning over to the Parsonage should be from other voices than yours. Sometimes I feel I can’t bear it; and yet I know it will have to be borne.” Still she did not speak. She was so tired—so tired—and what was there to say? “And that isn’t all, Eileen,” in a voice that would tremble in spite of himself. “It seems somehow as if it were my fault that you have to go to London, and Paddy must work.” “Your fault!” she asked wonderingly. “Yes, Eileen, in a way. You see if I had taken the opportunities that I might have had for the asking when I was eighteen, I should probably have been doing very well indeed now, and been in a position to do something for you all.” “You are very good, Jack, but it isn’t likely that we should have let you, though we should have loved you for thinking of it.” “I don’t know,” he said. “Everything might have been different.” He paused, then added: “You know. I think I have always loved you, Eileen, ever since you were a solemn-faced little girl; though it is only lately I have realised just all it meant. I know I have generally ran about with Paddy, and been far more with her, but she was like a boy friend, while you were always my ideal of all that is best and sweetest in a woman. It is only lately I have actually understood that all my life I should love you better than the whole world.” “Oh, Jack!” she breathed, in a distressed voice, “please don’t go on.” He smiled down at her, and there was something strangely beautiful in his smile. “Yes, let me go on,” he said. “It does me good to speak of it. I am not one of those men who feel bitter about loving when it is not returned, and too vain to acknowledge that it is so. To me it is such a simple, natural thing to love you; and such an unlikely possibility that you should return my love. Perhaps, if I had been more of a man the last nine years, and had started to make my way in the world, and then come to you with something to offer, it might have been different; but now! ah! that is just the hard part of it all.” “No, no, you mustn’t feel like that,” she cried. “What should we have done without you?—what would the aunties have done?—and I don’t think it would have made any difference, Jack.” He looked at her searchingly.