Kitabı oku: «Elster's Folly», sayfa 14
CHAPTER XV.
VAL'S DILEMMA
It was a mild day in spring. The air was balmy, but the skies were grey and lowering; and as a gentleman strolled across a field adjoining Hartledon Park he looked up at them more than once, as if asking whether they threatened rain.
Not that he had any great personal interest in the question. Whether the skies gave forth sunshine or rain is of little moment to a mind not at rest. He had only looked up in listlessness. A stranger might have taken him at a distance for a gamekeeper: his coat was of velveteen; his boots were muddy: but a nearer inspection would have removed the impression.
It was Lord Hartledon; but changed since you last saw him. For some time past there had been a worn, weary look upon his face, bespeaking a mind ill at ease; the truth is, his conscience was not at rest, and in time that tells on the countenance.
He had been by the fish-pond for an hour. But the fish had not shown themselves inclined to bite, and he grew too impatient to remain. Not altogether impatient at the wary fish, but in his own mental restlessness. The fishing-rod was carried in his hand in pieces; and he splashed along, in a brown study, on the wet ground, flinging himself over the ha-ha with an ungracious movement. Some one was approaching across the park from the house, and Lord Hartledon walked on to a gate, and waited there for him to come up. He began beating the bars with the thin end of the rod, and—broke it!
"That's the way you use your fishing-rods," cried the free, pleasant voice of the new-comer. "I shouldn't mind being appointed purveyor of tackle to your lordship."
The stranger was an active little man, older than Hartledon; his features were thin, his eyes dark and luminous. I think you have heard his name—Thomas Carr. Lord Hartledon once called him the greatest friend he possessed on earth. He had been wont to fly to him in his past dilemmas, and the habit was strong upon him still. A mandate that would have been peremptory, but for the beseeching terms in which it was couched, had reached Mr. Carr on circuit; and he had hastened across country to obey it, reaching Hartledon the previous evening. That something was wrong, Mr. Carr of course was aware; but what, he did not yet know. Lord Hartledon, with his natural vacillation, his usual shrinking from the discussion of unpleasant topics relating to himself, had not entered upon it at all on the previous night; and when breakfast was over that morning, Mr. Carr had craved an hour alone for letter-writing. It was the first time Mr. Carr had visited his friend at his new inheritance; indeed the first time he had been at all at Hartledon. Lord Hartledon seated himself on the gate; the barrister leaned his arms on the top bar whilst he talked to him.
"What is the matter?" asked the latter.
"Not much."
"I have finished my letters, so I came out to look for you. You are not changed, Elster."
"What should change me in so short a time?—it's only six months since you last saw me," retorted Hartledon, curtly.
"I alluded to your nature. I had to worm the troubles out of you in the old days, each one as it arose. I see I shall have to do the same now. Don't say there's not much the matter, for I am sure there is."
Lord Hartledon jerked his handkerchief out of his pocket, passed it over his face, and put it back again.
"What fresh folly have you got into?—as I used to ask you at Oxford. You are in some mess."
"I suppose it's of no use denying that I am in one. An awful mess, too."
"Well, I have pulled you out of many a one in my time. Let me hear it."
"There are some things one does not like to talk about, Carr. I sent for you in my perplexity; but I believe you can be of no use to me."
"So you have said before now. But it generally turned out that I was of use to you, and cleared you from your nightmare."
"All those were minor difficulties; this is different."
"I cannot understand your 'not liking' to speak of things to me. Why don't you begin?"
"Because I shall prove myself worse than a fool. You'll despise me to your heart's core. Carr, I think I shall go mad!"
"Tell me the cause first, and go mad afterwards. Come, Val; I am your true friend."
"I have made an offer of marriage to two women," said Hartledon, desperately plunging into the revelation. "Never was such a born idiot in the world as I have been. I can't marry both."
"I imagine not," quietly replied Mr. Carr.
"You knew I was engaged to Miss Ashton?"
"Yes."
"And I'm sure I loved her with all my"—he seemed to hesitate for a strong term—"might and main; and do still. But I have managed to get into mischief elsewhere."
"Elster's folly, as usual. What sort of mischief?"
"The worst sort, for there can be no slipping out of it. When that fever broke out at Doctor Ashton's—you heard us talking of it last night, Carr—I went to the Rectory just as usual. What did I care for fever?—it was not likely to attack me. But the countess-dowager found it out—"
"Why do they stay here so long?" interrupted Thomas Carr. "They have been here ever since your brother died."
"And before it. The old woman likes her quarters, and has no settled home. She makes a merit of stopping, and says I ought to feel under eternal obligation to her and Maude for sacrificing themselves to a solitary man and his household. But you should have heard the uproar she made upon discovering I had been to the Rectory. She had my room fumigated and my clothes burnt."
"Foolish old creature!"
"The best of it was, I pointed out by mistake the wrong coat, and the offending one is upstairs now. I shall show it her some day. She reproached me with holding her life and her daughter's dirt-cheap, and wormed a promise out of me not to visit the Rectory as long as fever was in it."
"Which you gave?"
"She wormed it out of me, I tell you. I don't know that I should have kept it, but Dr. Ashton put in his veto also; and between the two I was kept away. For many weeks afterwards I never saw or spoke to Anne. She did not come out at all, even to church; they were so anxious the fever should not spread."
"Well? Go on, Val."
"Well: how does that proverb run, about idleness being the root of all evil? During those weeks I was an idle man, wretchedly bored; and I fell into a flirtation with Maude. She began it, Carr, on my solemn word of honour—though it's a shame to tell these tales of a woman; and I joined in from sheer weariness, to kill time. But you know how one gets led on in such things—or I do, if you, you cautious fellow, don't—and we both went in pretty deep."
"Elster's folly again! How deep?"
"As deep as I well could, short of committing myself to a proposal. You see the ill-luck of it was, those two and I being alone in the house. I may as well say Maude and I alone; for the old woman kept her room very much; she had a cold, she said, and was afraid of the fever."
"Tush!" cried Thomas Carr angrily. "And you made love to the young lady?"
"As fast as I could make it. What a fool I was! But I protest I only did it in amusement; I never thought of her supplanting Anne Ashton. Now, Carr, you are looking as you used to look at Oxford; get your brow smooth again. You just shut up yourself for weeks with a fascinating girl, and see if you wouldn't find yourself in some horrible entanglement, proof against such as you think you are."
"As I am obliged to be. I should take care not to lay myself open to the temptation. Neither need you have done it."
"I don't see how I was to help myself. Often and often I wished to have visitors in the house, but the old woman met me with reproaches that I was forgetting the recent death of my brother. She won't have any one now if she knows it, and I had to send for you quietly. Did you see how she stared last night when you came in?"
Mr. Carr drew down his lips. "You might have gone away yourself, Elster."
"Of course I might," was the testy reply. "But I was a fool, and didn't. Carr, I swear to you I fell into the trap unconsciously; I did not foresee danger. Maude is a charming girl, there's no denying it; but as to love, I never glanced at it."
"Was it not suspected in town last year that Lady Maude had a liking for your brother?"
"It was suspected there and here; I thought it myself. We were mistaken. One day lately Maude offended me, and I hinted at something of the sort: she turned red and white with indignation, saying she wished he could rise from his grave to refute it. I only wish he could!" added the unhappy man.
"Have you told me all?"
"All! I wish I had. In December I was passing the Rectory, and saw it dismantled. Hillary, whom I met, said the family had gone to Ventnor. I went in, but could not learn any particulars, or get the address. I chanced a letter, written I confess in anger, directing it Ventnor only, and it found them. Anne's answer was cool: mischief-making tongues had been talking about me and Maude; I learned so much from Hillary; and Anne no doubt resented it. I resented that—can you follow me, Carr?—and I said to myself I wouldn't write again for some time to come. Before that time came the climax had occurred."
"And while you were waiting for your temper to come round in regard to Miss Ashton, you continued to make love to the Lady Maude?" remarked Mr. Carr. "On the face of things, I should say your love had been transferred to her."
"Indeed it hadn't. Next to Anne, she's the most charming girl I know; that's all. Between the two it will be awful work for me."
"So I should think," returned Mr. Carr. "The ass between two bundles of hay was nothing to it."
"He was not an ass at all, compared with what I am," assented Val, gloomily.
"Well, if a man behaves like an ass—"
"Don't moralize," interrupted Hartledon; "but rather advise me how to get out of my dilemma. The morning's drawing on, and I have promised to ride with Maude."
"You had better ride alone. All the advice I can give you is to draw back by degrees, and so let the flirtation subside. If there is no actual entanglement—"
"Stop a bit, Carr; I had not come to it," interrupted Lord Hartledon, who in point of fact had been holding back what he called the climax, in his usual vacillating manner. "One ill-starred day, when it was pouring cats and dogs, and I could not get out, I challenged Maude to a game at billiards. Maude lost. I said she should pay me, and put my arm round her waist and snatched a kiss. Just at that moment in came the dowager, who I believe must have been listening—"
"Not improbably," interrupted Mr. Carr, significantly.
"'Oh, you two dear turtle-doves,' cried she, 'Hartledon, you have made me so happy! I have seen for some weeks what you were thinking of. There's nobody living I'd confide that dear child to but yourself: you shall have her, and my blessing shall be upon you both.'
"Carr," continued poor Val, "I was struck dumb. All the absurdity of the thing rose up before me. In my confusion I could not utter a word. A man with more moral courage might have spoken out; acknowledged the shame and folly of his conduct and apologized. I could not."
"Elster's folly! Elster's folly!" thought the barrister. "You never had the slightest spark of moral courage," he observed aloud, in pained tones. "What did you say?"
"Nothing. There's the worst of it. I neither denied the dowager's assumption, nor confirmed it. Of course I cannot now."
"When was this?"
"In December."
"And how have things gone on since? How do you stand with them?"
"Things have gone on as they went on before; and I stand engaged to Maude, in her mother's opinion; perhaps in hers: never having said myself one word to support the engagement."
"Only continued to 'make love,' and 'snatch a kiss,'" sarcastically rejoined Mr. Carr.
"Once in a way. What is a man to do, exposed to the witchery of a pretty girl?"
"Oh, Percival! You are worse than I thought for. Where is Miss Ashton?"
"Coming home next Friday," groaned Val. "And the dowager asked me yesterday whether Maude and I had arranged the time for our marriage. What on earth I shall do, I don't know. I might sail for some remote land and convert myself into a savage, where I should never be found or recognized; there's no other escape for me."
"How much does Miss Ashton know of this?"
"Nothing. I had a letter from her this morning, more kindly than her letters have been of late."
"Lord Hartledon!" exclaimed Mr. Carr, in startled tones. "Is it possible that you are carrying on a correspondence with Miss Ashton, and your love-making with Lady Maude?"
Val nodded assent, looking really ashamed of himself.
"And you call yourself a man of honour! Why, you are the greatest humbug—"
"That's enough; no need to sum it up. I see all I've been."
"I understood you to imply that your correspondence with Miss Ashton had ceased."
"It was renewed. Dr. Ashton came up to preach one Sunday, just before Christmas, and he and I got friendly again; you know I never can be unfriendly with any one long. The next day I wrote to Anne, and we have corresponded since; more coolly though than we used to do. Circumstances have been really against me. Had they continued at Ventnor, I should have gone down and spent my Christmas with them, and nothing of this would have happened; but they must needs go to Dr. Ashton's sister's in Yorkshire for Christmas; and there they are still. It was in that miserable Christmas week that the mischief occurred. And now you have the whole, Carr. I know I've been a fool; but what is to be done?"
"Lord Hartledon," was the grave rejoinder, "I am unable to give you advice in this. Your conduct is indefensible."
"Don't 'Lord Hartledon' me: I won't stand it. Carr?"
"Well?"
"If you bring up against me a string of reproaches lasting until night will that mend matters? I am conscious of possessing but one true friend in the world, and that's yourself. You must stand by me."
"I was your friend; never a truer. But I believed you to be a man of honour."
Hartledon lifted his hat from his brow; as though the brow alone were heavy enough just then. At least the thought struck Mr. Carr.
"I have been drawn unwittingly into this, as I have into other things. I never meant to do wrong. As to dishonour, Heaven knows my nature shrinks from it."
"If your nature does, you don't," came the severe answer. "I should feel ashamed to put forth the same plea always of 'falling unwittingly' into disgrace. You have done it ever since you were a schoolboy. Talk of the Elster folly! this has gone beyond it. This is dishonour. Engaged to one girl, and corresponding with her; making hourly love for weeks to another! May I inquire which of the two you really care for?"
"Anne—I suppose."
"You suppose!"
"You make me wild, talking like this. Of course it's Anne. Maude has managed to creep into my regard, though, in no common degree. She is very lovely, very fascinating and amiable."
"May I ask which of the two you intend to marry!" continued the barrister, neither suppressing nor attempting to soften his indignant tones. "As this country's laws are against a plurality of wives, you will be unable, I imagine, to espouse them both."
Hartledon looked at him, beseechingly, and a sudden compassion came over Mr. Carr. He asked himself whether it was quite the way to treat a perplexed man who was very dear to him.
"If I am severe, it is for your sake. I assure you I scarcely know what advice to give. It is Miss Ashton, of course, whom you intend to make Lady Hartledon?"
"Of course it is. The difficulty in the matter is getting clear of Maude."
"And the formidable countess-dowager. You must tell Maude the truth."
"Impossible, Carr. I might have done it once; but the thing has gone on so long. The dowager would devour me."
"Let her try to. I should speak to Maude alone, and put her upon her generosity to release you. Tell her you presumed upon your cousinship; and confess that you have long been engaged to marry Miss Ashton."
"She knows that: they have both known it all along. My brother was the first to tell them, before he died."
"They knew it?" inquired Mr. Carr, believing he had not heard correctly.
"Certainly. There has been no secret made of my engagement to Anne. All the world knows of that."
"Then—though I do not in the least defend or excuse you—your breaking with Lady Maude may be more pardonable. They are poor, are they not, this Dowager Kirton and Lady Maude?"
"Poor as Job. Hard up, I think."
"Then they are angling for the broad lands of Hartledon. I see it all. You have been a victim to fortune-hunting."
"There you are wrong, Carr. I can't answer for the dowager one way or the other; but Maude is the most disinterested—"
"Of course: girls on the look-out for establishments always are. Have it as you like."
He spoke in tones of ridicule; and Hartledon jumped off the stile and led the way home.
That Lord Hartledon had got himself into a very serious predicament, Mr. Carr plainly saw. His good nature, his sensitive regard for the feelings of others, rendering it so impossible for him to say no, and above all his vacillating disposition, were his paramount characteristics still: in a degree they ever would be. Easily led as ever, he was as a very reed in the hands of the crafty old woman of the world, located with him. She had determined that he should become the husband of her daughter; and was as certain of accomplishing her end as if she had foreseen the future. Lord Hartledon himself afterwards, in his bitter repentance, said, over and over again, that circumstances were against him; and they certainly were so, as you will find.
Lord Hartledon thought he was making headway against it now, in sending for his old friend, and resolving to be guided by his advice.
"I will take an opportunity of speaking to Maude, Carr," he resumed. "I would rather not do it, of course; but I see there's no help for it."
"Make the opportunity," said Mr. Carr, with emphasis. "Don't delay a day; I shall expect you to write me a letter to-morrow saying you've done it."
"But you won't leave to-day," said Hartledon, entreatingly, feeling an instant prevision that with the departure of Thomas Carr all his courage would ignominiously desert him.
"I must go. You know I told you last night that my stay could only be four-and-twenty hours. You can accomplish it whilst I am here, if you like, and get it over; the longer a nauseous medicine is held to the lips the more difficult it is to swallow it. You say you are going to ride with Lady Maude presently; let that be your opportunity."
And get it over! Words that sounded as emancipation in Val's ear. But somehow he did not accomplish it in that ride. Excuses were on his lips five hundred times, but his hesitating lips never formed them. He really was on the point of speaking; at least he said so to himself; when Mr. Hillary overtook them on horseback, and rode with them some distance. After that, Maude put her horse to a canter, and so they reached home.
"Well?" said Mr. Carr.
"Not yet," answered Hartledon; "there was no opportunity."
"My suggestion was to make your opportunity."
"And so I will. I'll speak to her either to-night or to-morrow. She chose to ride fast to-day; and Hillary joined us part of the way. Don't look as if you doubted me, Carr: I shall be sure to speak."
"Will he?" thought Thomas Carr, as he took his departure by the evening train, having promised to run down the following Saturday for a few hours. "It is an even bet, I think. Poor Val!"
Poor Val indeed! Vacillating, attractive, handsome Val! shrinking, sensitive Val! The nauseous medicine was never taken. And when the Ashtons returned to the Rectory on the Friday night he had not spoken.
And the very day of their return a rumour reached his ear that Mrs. Ashton's health was seriously if not fatally shattered, and she was departing immediately for the South of France.
CHAPTER XVI.
BETWEEN THE TWO
Not in the Rectory drawing-room, but in a pretty little sitting-room attached to her bed-chamber, where the temperature was regulated, and no draughts could penetrate, reclined Mrs. Ashton. Her invalid gown sat loosely upon her shrunken form, her delicate, lace cap shaded a fading face. Anne sat by her side in all her loveliness, ostensibly working; but her fingers trembled, and her face looked flushed and pained.
It was the morning after their return, and Mrs. Graves had called in to see Mrs. Ashton—gossiping Mrs. Graves, who knew all that took place in the parish, and a great deal of what never did take place. She had just been telling it all unreservedly in her hard way; things that might be said, and things that might as well have been left unsaid. She went out leaving a whirr and a buzz behind her and an awful sickness of desolation upon one heart.
"Give me my little writing-case, Anne," said Mrs. Ashton, waking up from a reverie and sitting forward on her sofa.
Anne took the pretty toy from the side-table, opened it, and laid it on the table before her mother.
"Is it nothing I can write for you, mamma?"
"No, child."
Anne bent her hot face over her work again. It had not occurred to her that it could concern herself; and Mrs. Ashton wrote a few rapid lines:
"My Dear Percival,
"Can you spare me a five-minutes' visit? I wish to speak with you. We go away again on Monday.
"Ever sincerely yours,
"Catherine Ashton."
She folded it, enclosed it in an envelope, and addressed it to the Earl of Hartledon. Pushing away the writing-table, she held out the note to her daughter.
"Seal it for me, Anne. I am tired. Let it go at once."
"Mamma!" exclaimed Anne, as her eye caught the address. "Surely you are not writing to him! You are not asking him to come here?"
"You see that I am writing to him, Anne. And it is to ask him to come here. My dear, you may safely leave me to act according to my own judgment. But as to what Mrs. Graves has said, I don't believe a word of it."
"I scarcely think I do," murmured Anne; a smile hovering on her troubled countenance, like sunshine after rain.
Anne had the taper alight, and the wax held to it, the note ready in her hand, when the room-door was thrown open by Mrs. Ashton's maid.
"Lord Hartledon."
He came in in a hurried manner, talking fast, making too much fuss; it was unlike his usual quiet movements, and Mrs. Ashton noticed it. As he shook hands with her, she held the note before him.
"See, Percival! I was writing to ask you to call upon me."
Anne had put out the light, and her hand was in Lord Hartledon's before she well knew anything, save that her heart was beating tumultuously. Mrs. Ashton made a place for him on the sofa, and Anne quietly left the room.
"I should have been here earlier," he began, "but I had the steward with me on business; it is little enough I have attended to since my brother's death. Dear Mrs. Ashton! I grieve to hear this poor account of you. You are indeed looking ill."
"I am so ill, Percival, that I doubt whether I shall ever be better in this world. It is my last chance, this going away to a warmer place until winter has passed."
He was bending towards her in earnest sympathy, all himself again; his dark blue eyes very tender, his pleasant features full of concern as he gazed on her face. And somehow, looking at that attractive countenance, Mrs. Ashton's doubts went from her.
"But what I have said is to you alone," she resumed. "My husband and children do not see the worst, and I refrain from telling them. A little word of confidence between us, Val."
"I hope and trust you may come back cured!" he said, very fervently. "Is it the fever that has so shattered you?"
"It is the result of it. I have never since been able to recover strength, but have become weaker and more weak. And you know I was in ill health before. We leave on Monday morning for Cannes."
"For Cannes?" he exclaimed.
"Yes. A place not so warm as some I might have gone to; but the doctors say that will be all the better. It is not heat I need; only shelter from our cold northern winds until I can get a little strength into me. There's nothing the matter with my lungs; indeed, I don't know that anything is the matter with me except this terrible weakness."
"I suppose Anne goes with you?"
"Oh yes. I could not go without Anne. The doctor will see us settled there, and then he returns."
A thought crossed Lord Hartledon: how pleasant if he and Anne could have been married, and have made this their wedding tour. He did not speak it: Mrs. Ashton would have laughed at his haste.
"How long shall you remain away?" he asked.
"Ah, I cannot tell you. I may not live to return. If all goes well—that is, if there should be a speedy change for the better, as the medical men who have been attending me think there may be—I shall be back perhaps in April or May. Val—I cannot forget the old familiar name, you see—"
"I hope you never will forget it," he warmly interposed.
"I wanted very particularly to see you. A strange report was brought here this morning and I determined to mention it to you. You know what an old-fashioned, direct way I have of doing things; never choosing a roundabout road if I can take a straight one. This note was a line asking you to call upon me," she added, taking it from her lap, where it had been lying, and tossing it on to the table, whilst her hearer, his conscience rising up, began to feel a very little uncomfortable. "We heard you had proposed marriage to Lady Maude Kirton."
Lord Hartledon's face became crimson. "Who on earth could have invented that?" cried he, having no better answer at hand.
"Mrs. Graves mentioned it to me. She was dining at Hartledon last week, and the countess-dowager spoke about it openly."
Mrs. Ashton looked at him; and he, confused and taken aback, looked down on the carpet, devoutly wishing himself in the remote regions he had spoken of to Mr. Carr. Anywhere, so that he should never be seen or recognized again.
"What am I to do?" thought he. "I wish Mother Graves was hanged!"
"You do not speak, Percival!"
"Well, I—I was wondering what could have given rise to this," he stammered. "I believe the old dowager would like to see her daughter mistress of Hartledon: and suppose she gave utterance to her thoughts."
"Very strange that she should!" observed Mrs. Ashton.
"I think she's a little cracked sometimes," coughed Val; and, in truth, he now and then did think so. "I hope you have not told Anne?"
"I have told no one. And had I not felt sure it had no foundation, I should have told the doctor, not you. But Anne was in the room when Mrs. Graves mentioned it."
"What a blessing it would be if Mrs. Graves were out of the parish!" exclaimed Val, hotly. "I wonder Dr. Ashton keeps Graves on, with such a mother! No one ever had such a mischief-making tongue as hers."
"Percival, may I say something to you?" asked Mrs. Ashton, who was devouring him with her eyes. "Your manner would almost lead me to believe that there is something in it. Tell me the truth; I can never be anything but your friend."
"Believe one thing, dear Mrs. Ashton—that I have no intention of marrying anyone but Anne; and I wish with all my heart and soul you'd give her to me to-day. Shut up with those two women, the one pretty, the other watching any chance word to turn it to her own use, I dare say the Mrs. Graveses of the place have talked, forgetting that Maude is my cousin. I believe I paid some attention to Maude because I was angry at being kept out of the Rectory; but my attentions meant nothing, upon my honour."
"Elster's folly, Val! Lady Maude may have thought they did."
"At any rate she knew of my engagement to Anne."
"Then there is nothing in it?"
"There shall be nothing in it," was the emphatic answer. "Anne was my first love, and she will be my last. You must promise to give her to me as soon as you return from Cannes."
"About that you must ask her father. I dare say he will do so."
Lord Hartledon rose from his seat; held Mrs. Ashton's hand between his whilst he said his adieu, and stooped to kiss her with a son's affection. She was a little surprised to find it was his final farewell. They were not going to start until Monday. But Hartledon could not have risked that cross-questioning again; rather would he have sailed away for the savage territories at once. He went downstairs searching for Anne, and found her in the room where you first saw her—her own. She looked up with quite an affectation of surprise when he entered, although she had probably gone there to await him. The best of girls are human.
"You ran away, Anne, whilst mamma and I held our conference?"
"I hope it has been satisfactory," she answered demurely, not looking up, and wondering whether he suspected how violently her heart was beating.
"Partly so. The end was all right. Shall I tell it you?"
"The end! Yes, if you will," she replied unsuspectingly.
"The decision come to is, that a certain young friend of ours is to be converted, with as little delay as circumstances may permit, into Lady Hartledon."
Of course there came no answer except a succession of blushes. Anne's work, which she had carried with her, took all her attention just then.
"Can you guess her name, Anne?"
"I don't know. Is it Maude Kirton?"
He winced. "If you have been told that abominable rubbish, Anne, it is not necessary to repeat it. It's not so pleasant a theme that you need make a joke of it."
"Is it rubbish?" asked Anne, lifting her eyes.
"I think you ought to know that if any one does. But had anything happened, Anne, recollect it would have been your fault. You have been very cool to me of late. You forbid me the house for weeks and weeks; you went away for an indefinite period without letting me know, or giving me the chance of seeing you; and when the correspondence was at length renewed, your letters were cold and formal—quite different from what they used to be. It almost looks as if you wished to part from me."
Repentance was stealing over her: why had she ever doubted him?
"And now you are going away again! And although this interview may be our last for months, you scarcely deign to give me a word or a look of farewell."
