They began to straggle out, puzzlement on their faces as they looked back again and again, but he paid them no more attention and turning away dropped once more to his knees beside her. For a long minute her eyes remained closed and he watched her, his own breathing almost stopped; at last she looked up at him again.

“Oh—” she sighed. “It’s so quiet now—so peaceful. For a moment I thought I must be—”

“Don’t say it, Catherine! You’re not going to die! You’re going to live—for me, and for your son!”

But she shook her head, a vague almost imperceptible movement. “I have no son, Charles. I know I haven’t. But, oh, I did so want to give you one—I wanted to be part of your life. But now, before very long, I’ll be gone—And when you marry again you’ll have sons—You’ll be happier, and so I’m glad I’m going—”

Charles gave a sudden sob. The tears were streaming from his eyes and his two hands crushed her tiny one between them. “Catherine! Catherine! Don’t talk that way! Don’t say those things! You’ve got to want to live! If you want to you can—And you’ve got to—for me—”

She stared up at him, a new look in her eyes. “For you, Charles? You want me to?” she whispered.

“Yes, I do! Of course I do! My God, whatever made you think—Oh, Catherine, darling, I’m sorry—I’m sorry! But you’ve got to live—for me—Tell me that you’ll try, that you will—”

“Why, Charles—I didn’t know you—Oh, my darling, if you want me to—I can live—Of course I can—”

CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE

IT WAS NOT until after he was dead that Amber realized how much Rex Morgan had meant to her. She missed the sound of his key turning in the lock and the feeling of warmth and happiness he had always brought with him, as though a fire had just been lighted in a cold dark room. She missed waking up in the morning to find him half-dressed and shaving, screwing his face this way and that as he scraped the beard off. She missed the evenings when they had been alone and had played cribbage or crambo and he had listened to her strum her guitar and sing the popular bawdy street ballads. She missed his smile and the sound of his voice and the reassuring adoration in his blue eyes. She missed him in a thousand ways.

But most of all, though she scarcely knew it herself, she missed the comfortable sense of security with which he had surrounded her.

For now she found herself suddenly adrift, lost, and filled with a cold apprehension for the future. She had almost seventeen hundred pounds with Shadrac Newbold; so there was no immediate cause for concern on that score, and she could not be arrested for debt anyway. But even seventeen hundred pounds, she knew, would not last very long if she continued to live on her present scale, and when it was gone she would be at the mercy of the tiring-room gallants.

The thought was not pleasant—for after a year and a half of association she saw them naked now and unvarnished with the gilt of a naive young girl’s illusions. To her they were no longer gallant and gay and valiant, fine gentlemen because they wore fine clothes and could trace their families to followers of William the Conqueror—but only a half-breed species of Frenchified Englishman, shallow, malicious, and absurd. They had all the trappings of cynicism, careless ill-breeding and light-hearted cruelty, which were now the marks of quality. There was not another man like Rex Morgan to be found among them.

“Oh, if I’d only known this would happen!” she thought, over and over again. “I’d never have gone away! And I wouldn’t have gone to the King that time, either. Oh, Rex, if I’d known, I’d have been kinder to you—I’d have made you happy every minute—”

The first visitor she admitted after Rex’s funeral—though many others had come—was Almsbury. He had been there before but she had been unfit to see anyone at all, and so Nan had sent him away. But one afternoon, ten days after the duel, he came again and this time she said that she would see him.

She was sitting on a couch before a burning fire, for the weather was cold and wet, and her head was bent in her arm. She did not even glance up until he sat down and reached over to put one arm about her, and then she looked at him with red and swollen eyes. Her dress was plain black and she wore not a ribbon or a jewel, her hair was tumbled and only carelessly combed, and her face was shiny with tears; her head ached and she looked thinner than she had.

“I’m sorry, Amber,” he said softly, tenderness and sympathy in his eyes and the tone of his voice. “I know how little it means to hear that when you’ve lost someone—but I mean it with all my heart, and please believe me when I say that Bruce—”

She gave him a venomous glare. “Don’t you dare speak of him to me! Much I care how sorry he is! If it hadn’t been for him Rex would still be alive!”

Almsbury looked at her in surprise and an expression of impatience crossed his features, but she had covered her face with her hands and was crying again, wiping at the tears with a wet wadded handkerchief.