CHAPTER 7 SIR HAROLD’S DEPARTURE
“Here is a letter for you to post, Stimson,” Sir Harold said, two hours later. “Put it into the box with your own hands. To-night I am going to London, and you must join me at the Southwestern Hotel to-morrow afternoon. I have placed my affairs in the hands of my men of business, and I want you to feel perfectly satisfied that you will never regret leaving home, perhaps forever.”
“My home is with you, Sir Harold,” was the fervent response.
“Tell no one whither I am gone, and when you rejoin me, be careful that your movements are not watched by well-meaning friends.”
Stimson gathered a few points of necessary information regarding the luggage required, and one hour later Sir Harold left the park, simply attired in ordinary walking costume and carrying a light cane. To an ordinary observer he appeared to be going for a stroll. There was nothing in his manner to indicate that he was a broken and hopeless man.
Until he reached the end of the avenue, he looked neither to the right nor to the left. Then he paused and gazed over the smiling gardens, now aflame with flowers. The park stood darkly beyond, clothed in its summer dress, and in the shadow of a thousand murmurous trees nestled his beautiful home.
“Oh, Heaven!” he gasped. “What might have been! What might have been!”
He believed that he was alone, but his gesture of despair had been seen by other eyes—his words of agony had reached other ears.
There was the sound of a soft footfall, and he turned to behold the Italian singer.
“Pardon, kind sir,” she said. “I feared that you were in trouble.”
“Trouble!”
He laughed a low, mirthless laugh.
“Trouble, child! Ah, such trouble that never entered another heart! You wonder in your innocence that I—the owner of all these broad lands, of yonder noble home—you wonder what I can know of trouble! For your simple life, even though you know not from one day to another how you are to live, God knows how gladly I would exchange, if the past could be forever blotted out!”
He turned to continue his way, but spoke again.
“You have not told me your name.”
“Theresa Hamilton,” she said, simply.
“Hamilton!” he replied. “That is not an Italian name.”
“No, sir. My father is an Englishman. My dear dead mother was an Italian. My father and I live together at Tenterden, a village twenty miles away. I only sing for money when it is hard to obtain the rent for our pretty cottage. Ah, here comes father! One of the wheels of his harmonium carriage came off, and he has been to the village to have it repaired. We are going home now.” She paused and added in a whisper: “Ah, kind signor, I hope that you will not be long unhappy!”
The musician came toward them, and seemed a little surprised that his daughter should be talking to the lord of this great domain.
