"Bother your antecedents!" interrupted Miss Craven, with a somewhat shaky laugh. "My dearest girl, Barry isn't going to marry them, he's going to marry you. They can have been anything you like or imagine but it does not alter the fact that their daughter is the one woman on earth I want for Barry's wife." She stooped and gathered the girl into her arms.
"Gillian, can you give us, Barry and me, this great happiness?"
Gently Gillian disengaged herself and rose slowly to her feet. She made a little helpless gesture, swaying as she stood. "What can I say?" she said brokenly. "Do you think it means nothing to me! Don't you know that what I already owe you and Mr. Craven is almost more than I can bear, that I would give my life for either of you? But this--oh, you don't understand--I can't tell you--I can't explain----" She dropped back on the sofa and her voice came muffled and entreatingly from among the silken cushions, "If you knew how I long to repay you for your wonderful goodness, if you knew what your love has meant to me! Oh, dearest, I'd give the world to please you! But I don't know what to do, I don't know what is honest--and you can't help me, nobody can help me. I've got to settle it myself. I've got to think----"
Miss Craven guessed the crying need for solitude conveyed in the last faltering words and rose in obedience to the unspoken request. She stood for a moment, looking tenderly down on the slim prostrate figure, and a fear that grew momentarily stronger came to her that in her endeavour to bring happiness to these two lives she had blundered fatally. She had been a fool, rushing in. And with almost a feeling of dismay she realised it was beyond her ability now to stay what she had put in motion. She was as one who, having wantonly released some complex mechanism, stands aghast and powerless at the consequence of his rashness. And yet, despite the seeming setback to her hopes, the conviction that had urged her to this step was still strong in her; she still had faith in its ultimate achievement. She touched the girl's shoulder in a quick caress. "You are worn out, child. Go to bed and rest now, and think to-morrow," she said soothingly.
For long after she left the room Gillian lay without moving. Then with a long shuddering sigh she sat up. She tried to concentrate on the decision she must make but her thoughts, ungovernable, dwelt persistently on the unknown woman whom she had convinced herself he must have loved, and the passionate envy she had felt before swept her again until the pain of it sent a whispered prayer to her lips for strength to put it from her. Huddled on the side of the sofa, her head supported on her hands, she stared fixedly into the fire as if seeking in the leaping flames the answer to the problem that confronted her. Then in her agony of mind inaction became impossible and she rose and paced the room with hurried nervous tread.