had finished he turned to Olive. She was still looking towards
the Mediterranean, but he knew that she saw nothing.

"You have nothing for which you can blame yourself, Olive," he said,
"you could have done no other."

She did not speak.

"It was a sad day for us when he came into our lives," he continued. "I
know what you feel, my darling. You are laying his death at your own
door, but you are wrong. His end came through the vices which made you
do what you did. Evidently he was a drunkard all the time. He may have
kept his vice in the background when he came to The Beeches,
but--but--this was the inevitable result--of--all the rest."

"Father," she said, "would you mind leaving me alone for a little while,
I want----"

But she did not finish the sentence. Almost mechanically she rose from
her seat, picked up the bundle of newspapers, and went to the hotel,
where she slowly climbed the stairs towards her bedroom. Perhaps,
although the garden was deserted, its very publicity made it impossible
for her to stay there. She wanted to be alone, where she could, in
quietness, think out everything again. She forgot all about Mr.
Sackville's departure, forgot almost where she was. She felt stunned,
and yet in some respects her mind was more than ordinarily clear.

Leicester's death had brought a new and unexpected influence into her
existence. While he was alive, while he showed his real nature by
bandying her name at a public meeting, and by appearing before an
audience in a state of intoxication, she felt that her conduct, in spite
of a feeling which suggested remorse, was excusable; but now he was
dead, all was different. Perhaps in a vague, dim sort of a way she had
felt the possibility of his coming into her life again, although she had
no definite consciousness of it, but now she realised that he was gone
from her life, except as a memory. She pictured him lying on the cold
steps beside the river; she thought of the feelings which must have been
in his heart as he threw himself into its dark, turbid waters. It was
very terrible; ghastly, in fact. She did not consider who sent her the
paper, her mind was absorbed in the fact it contained.

Presently she asked herself what would have happened if she had married
him. Would this dread tragedy have been averted, and would she have been
able, as he had said, to have led him to a noble manhood? Even then her
heart had answered no. The reformation which she thought she had