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Updated: June 10, 2025
"We did not meet," said Telford dryly. They watched the crowd for a minute. Presently he added, "May I ask the name of the lady who was singing?" There was a slight pause, then, "Certainly Mrs. Fairfax Detlor." Though Telford did not stir a muscle the bronze of his face went grayish, and he looked straight before him without speaking.
"Nothing, on my honor. I did her a service once. She asks me to do another, of which I am as yet ignorant. That is all. Here is her letter." George Hagar was the first to move. He turned and looked at Mrs. Detlor. His mind was full of the strangeness of the situation this man and woman meeting under such circumstances after twelve years, in which no lines of their lives had ever crossed.
"I must go in," she said. "It is late." "Tell me one thing. I want it for my picture as a key to the mind of the girl. What did she say at that painful meeting in the woods to the man?" Mrs. Detlor looked at him as if she would read him through and through. Presently she drew a ring from her finger slowly and gave it to him, smiling bitterly. "Read inside. That is what she said."
Detlor to a landau. Mrs. Detlor asked to be driven to her hotel. "I shall see you this afternoon at the excursion if you are well enough to go," Hagar said to her. "Perhaps," she said with a strange smile. Then, as she drove away, "You have not read your letters this morning." He looked after her for a moment, puzzled by what she said and by the expression on her face.
She had known less still of his life, for since her marriage she had never set foot in Louisiana, and her mother, while she lived, never mentioned his name or told her more than that the Telford plantation had been sold for a song. When Hagar had told him that Detlor was dead, a wild kind of hope had leaped up in him that perhaps she might care for him still and forgive him when he had told all.
"Oh, yes," was his reply, "I want it, if I may paint you in the scene." "You may paint me in the scene," she said quietly. Then, as if it suddenly came to her that she would be giving a secret into this man's hands, she added, "That is, if you want me for a model merely." "Mrs. Detlor," he said, "you may trust me, on my honor."
His eyes, dark and full, were set deep under well hung brows, and a duskiness in the flesh round them gave them softness as well as power. Withal there was a melancholy as striking as it was unusual in him. In spite of herself Mrs. Detlor felt her heart come romping to her throat, for, whatever this man was to her now, he once was her lover. She grew hot to her fingers.
Meneely brought him to the coast, and put him into a hospital, and said he was going to ship him to England right away, though he thinks he can't live. Meneely further remarks that the man is a bounder. And his name is Fairfax Detlor. Was that her husband's name?" Hagar had had a blow. Everything seemed to come at once happiness and defeat all in a moment. There was grim irony in it.
"For God's sake think of what you are saying." "Of course it doesn't sound right to you, and it wouldn't sound right from you; but I'm a rowdy colonial and I'm damned if I take it back! and I like you, Hagar!" and, turning, he hurried out of the house. Mrs. Detlor had not staid at the hotel long; but, as soon as she had recovered, went out for a walk. She made her way to the moor.
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