Frank could not rest. He wrote again to Clara at Fenmarket; the letter went to Mrs Cork’s, and was returned to him. He saw that the Hopgoods had left Fenmarket, and suspecting the reason, he determined at any cost to go home. He accordingly alleged ill-health, a pretext not altogether fictitious, and within a few days after the returned letter reached him he was back at Stoke Newington. He went immediately to the address in Pentonville which he found on the envelope, but was very shortly informed by Mrs Cork that ‘she knew nothing whatever about them.’ He walked round Myddelton Square, hopeless, for he had no clue whatever.

What had happened to him would scarcely, perhaps, have caused some young men much uneasiness, but with Frank the case was altogether different. There was a chance of discovery, and if his crime should come to light his whole future life would be ruined. He pictured his excommunication, his father’s agony, and it was only when it seemed possible that the water might close over the ghastly thing thrown in it, and no ripple reveal what lay underneath, that he was able to breathe again. Immediately he asked himself, however, if he could live with his father and wear a mask, and never betray his dreadful secret. So he wandered homeward in the most miserable of all conditions; he was paralysed by the intricacy of the coil which enveloped and grasped him.

That evening it happened that there was a musical party at his father’s house; and, of course, he was expected to assist. It would have suited his mood better if he could have been in his own room, or out in the streets, but absence would have been inconsistent with his disguise, and might have led to betrayal. Consequently he was present, and the gaiety of the company and the excitement of his favourite exercise, brought about for a time forgetfulness of his trouble. Amongst the performers was a distant cousin, Cecilia Morland, a young woman rather tall and fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely reddish-brown tint on her face, indicative of healthy, warm, rich pulsations. She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality like that of a blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing. She was dressed in a fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was usual in the gatherings at Mr Palmer’s house, and Frank, as he stood beside her at the piano, could not restrain his eyes from straying every now and then a way from his music to her shoulders, and once nearly lost himself, during a solo which required a little unusual exertion, in watching the movement of a locket and of what was for a moment revealed beneath it. He escorted her amidst applause to a corner of the room, and the two sat down side by side.

‘What a long time it is, Frank, since you and I sang that duet together. We have seen nothing of you lately.’

‘Of course not; I was in Germany.’

‘Yes, but I think you deserted us before then. Do you remember that summer when we were all together at Bonchurch, and the part songs which astonished our neighbours just as it was growing dark? I recollect you and I tried together that very duet for the first time with the old lodging-house piano.’

Frank remembered that evening well.

‘You sang better than you did to-night. You did not keep time: what were you dreaming about?’

‘How hot the room is! Do you not feel it oppressive? Let us go into the conservatory for a minute.’

The door was behind them and they slipped in and sat down, just inside, and under the orange tree.

‘You must not be away so long again. Now mind, we have a musical evening this day fortnight. You will come? Promise; and we must sing that duet again, and sing it properly.’

He did not reply, but he stooped down, plucked a blood-red begonia, and gave it to her.

‘That is a pledge. It is very good of you.’

She tried to fasten it in her gown, underneath the locket, but she dropped a little black pin. He went down on his knees to find it; rose, and put the flower in its proper place himself, and his head nearly touched her neck, quite unnecessarily.

‘We had better go back now,’ she said, ‘but mind, I shall keep this flower for a fortnight and a day, and if you make any excuses I shall return it faded and withered.’

‘Yes, I will come.’

‘Good boy; no apologies like those you sent the last time. No bad throat. Play me false, and there will be a pretty rebuke for you—a dead flower.’

Play me false! It was as if there were some stoppage in a main artery to his brain. Play me false! It rang in his ears, and for a moment he saw nothing but the scene at the Hall with Miranda. Fortunately for him, somebody claimed Cecilia, and he slunk back into the greenhouse.

One of Mr Palmer’s favourite ballads was The Three Ravens. Its pathos unfits it for an ordinary drawing-room, but as the music at Mr Palmer’s was not of the common kind, The Three Ravens was put on the list for that night.

‘She was dead herself ere evensong time. With a down, hey down, hey down,
God send every gentleman
Such hawks, such hounds, and such a leman. With down, hey down, hey down.’

Frank knew well the prayer of that melody, and, as he listened, he painted to himself, in the vividest colours, Madge in a mean room, in a mean lodging, and perhaps dying. The song ceased, and one for him stood next. He heard voices calling him, but he passed out into the garden and went down to the further end, hiding himself behind the shrubs. Presently the inquiry for him ceased, and he was relieved by hearing an instrumental piece begin.

Following on that presentation of Madge came self-torture for his unfaithfulness. He scourged himself into what he considered to be his duty. He recalled with an effort all Madge’s charms, mental and bodily, and he tried to break his heart for her. He was in anguish because he found that in order to feel as he ought to feel some effort was necessary; that treason to her was possible, and because he had looked with such eyes upon his cousin that evening. He saw himself as something separate from himself, and although he knew what he saw to be flimsy and shallow, he could do nothing to deepen it, absolutely nothing! It was not the betrayal of that thunderstorm which now tormented him. He could have represented that as a failure to be surmounted; he could have repented it. It was his own inner being from which he revolted, from limitations which are worse than crimes, for who, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?