“Frances, my child, I am not a hard-hearted woman, though you seem to think so,—I can understand all that. I am very, very sorry for the poor mother; and for the young man even, who has been led astray: but I don’t see what you can do.”
“What!” cried Frances, her eyes flashing through her tears—“for their son, who is thesame as a brother—for them, whom I have always known, who have helped to bring me up? Oh, you don’t know how people live where there are only a few of them,—where there is no society, if you say that. If he had been ill there, at home, we should all have nursed him, every one. We should have thought of nothing else. We would have cooked for him, or gone errands, or done anything. Perhaps those ladies are better who go to the hospitals. But to tell me that you don’t know what I could do! Oh,” cried the girl, springing to her feet, throwing up her hands, “if I had the money, if I had only the money, I know what I would do!”
Mrs Clarendon was a woman who did not spend money, who had everything she wanted, who thought little of what wealth could procure; but she was a Quixote in her heart, as so many women are where great things are in question, though not in small. “Money?” she said, with a faint quiver of alarm in her voice. “My dear, if it was anything that was feasible, anything that was right, and you wanted it very much—the money might be found,” she said. The position, however, wastoo strange to be mastered in a moment, and difficulties rose as she spoke. “A young man. People might suppose—— And then Sir Thomas—what would Sir Thomas think?”
“That is why I came to you; for he will not give me my own money—if I have any money. Aunt Caroline, if you will give it me now, I will pay you back as soon as I am of age. Oh, I don’t want to take it from you—I want—— If everything could be paid before he is better, before he knows—if we could hide it, so that the General and his mother should never find out. That would be worst of all, if they were to find out—it would break their hearts. Oh, aunt Caroline, she thinks there is no one like him. She loves him so; more than—more than any one here loves anybody: and to find out all that would break her heart.”
Mrs Clarendon rose at this moment, and stood up with her face turned towards the door. “I can’t tell what is the matter with me,” she said; “I can scarcely hear what you are saying. I wonder if I am going to be ill, or what it is. I thought just then I heard a voice. Surely there issome one at the door. I am sure I heard a voice—— Oh, a voice you ought to know, if it was true. Frances—I will think of all that after—just now—— He must be dead, or else he is here!”
Frances, who thought of no possibility of death save to one, caught her aunt’s arm with a cry. The great house was very still—soft carpets everywhere—the distant sound of a closing door scarcely penetrating from below. Yet there was something, that faint human stir which is more subtle than sound. They stood and waited, the elder woman penetrated by sudden excitement and alarm, she could not tell why; the girl indifferent, yet ready for any wonder in the susceptibility of her anxious state. As they stood, not knowing what they expected, the door opened slowly, and there suddenly stood in the opening, like two people in a dream—Constance, smiling, drawing after her a taller figure. Frances, with a start of amazement, threw from her her aunt’s arm, which she held, and calling “Father!” flung herself into Waring’s arms.
“Ifoundhim in the mood; so I thought it best to strike while the iron was hot,” Constance said. She had settled down languidly in a favourite corner, as if she had never been away. She had looked for the footstool where she knew it was to be found, and arranged the cushion as she liked it. Frances had never made herself so much at home as Constance did at once. She looked on with calm amusement while her aunt poured out her delight, her wonder, her satisfaction, in Waring’s ears. She did not budge herself from her comfortable place; but she said to Frances in an undertone: “Don’t let her go on too long. She will bore him, you know; and then he will repent. And I don’t want him to repent.”
As for Frances, she saw the ground cut awayentirely from under her feet, and stood sick and giddy after the first pleasure of seeing her father was over, feeling her hopes all tumble about her. Mrs Clarendon, who had been so near yielding, so much disposed to give her the help she wanted, had forgotten her petition and her altogether in the unexpected delight of seeing her brother. And here was Constance, the sight of whom perhaps might call the sick man out of his fever, who might restore life and everything, even happiness to him, if she would. But would she? Frances asked herself. Most likely, she would do nothing, and there would be no longer any room left for Frances, who was ready to do all. She would have been more than mortal if she had not looked with a certain bitterness at this new and wonderful aspect of affairs.
“I saw mamma’s brougham at the door,” Constance said; “you must take me home. Of course, this was the place for papa to come; but I must go home. It would never do to let mamma think me devoid of feeling. How is she, and Markham—and everybody? I have scarcely had any news for three months. Wemet Algy Muncastle on the boat, and he told us some things—a great deal about Nelly Winterbourn—the widow, as they call her—and about you.”
“There could be nothing to say of me.”
“Oh, but there was, though. What a sly little thing you are, never to say a word! Sir Thomas.—Ah, you see I know. And I congratulate you with all my heart, Fan. He is rolling in money, and such a good kind old man. Why, he was a lover of mamma’sdans les temps. It is delightful to think of you consoling him. And you will be as rich as a little princess, with mamma to see that all the settlements are right.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Frances said abruptly. She was so preoccupied and so impatient, that she would not even allow herself to inquire. She went to where her father sat talking to his sister, and stood behind his chair, putting her hand upon his arm. He did not perhaps care for her very much. He had aunt Caroline to think of, from whom he had been separated so long; and Constance, no doubt, had made him her own too, as she had madeeverybody else her own; but still he was all that Frances had, the nearest, the one that belonged to her most. To touch him like this gave her a little consolation. And he turned round and smiled at her, and put his hand upon hers. That was a little comfort too; but it did not last long. It was time she should return to her mother; and Constance was anxious to go, notwithstanding her fear that her father might be bored. “I must go and see my mother, you know, papa. It would be very disrespectful not to go. And you won’t want me, now you have got aunt Caroline. Frances is going to drive me home.” She said this as if it was her sister’s desire to go; but as a matter of fact, she had taken the command at once. Frances, reluctant beyond measure to return to the house, in which she felt she would no longer be wanted—which was a perverse imagination, born of her unhappiness—wretched to lose the prospect of help, which she had been beginning to let herself believe in, was yet too shy and too miserable to make any resistance. She remembered her mother’s note for Mr Clarendon before she went away, and she made one lastappeal to her aunt. “You will not forget what we were talking about, aunt Caroline?”
“Dear me,” said Mrs Clarendon, putting up her hand to her head. “What was it, Frances? I have such a poor memory; and your father’s coming, and all this unexpected happiness, have driven everything else away.”
Frances went down-stairs with a heart so heavy that it seemed to lie dead in her breast. Was there no help for her, then? no help for him, the victim of Constance and of Markham? no way of softening calamity to the old people? Her temper rose as her hopes fell. All so rich, so abounding, but no one who would spare anything out of his superfluity, to help the ruined and heartbroken. Oh yes, she said to herself in not unnatural bitterness, the hospitals, yes; and Trotter’s Buildings in Whitechapel. But for the people to whom they were bound so much more closely, the man who had sat at their tables, whom they had received and made miserable, nothing! oh, nothing! not a finger held out to save him. The little countenance that had been like a summer day, so innocent and fresh and candid, was clouded over. Prideprevented—pride, more effectual than any other defence—the outburst which in other circumstances would have relieved her heart. She sat in her corner, withdrawn as far as possible from Constance, listening dully, making little response. After several questions, her sister turned upon her with a surprise which was natural too.
“What is the matter?” she said. “You don’t talk as you used to do. Is it town that has spoiled you? Do you think I will interfere with you? Oh, you need not be at all afraid. I have enough of my own without meddling with you.”
“I don’t know what I have that you could interfere with,” said Frances. “Nothing here.”
“Do you want to quarrel with me?” Constance said.
“It is of no use to quarrel; there is nothing to quarrel about. I might have thought you would interfere when you came first to Bordighera. I had people then who seemed to belong to me. But here—you have the first place. Why should I quarrel? You are only coming back to your own.”
“Fan, for goodness’ sake, don’t speak in that dreadful tone. What have I done? If you think papa likes me best, you are mistaken. And as for the mother, don’t you know her yet? Don’t you know that she is nice to everybody, and cares neither for you nor me?”
“No,” cried Frances, raising herself bolt upright; “I don’t know that! How dare you say it, you who are her child? Perhaps you think no one cares—not one, though you have made an end of my home. Did you hear about George Gaunt, what you have done to him? He is lying in a brain-fever, raving, raving, talking for ever, day and night; and if he dies, Markham and you will have killed him—you and Markham; but you have been the worst. It will be murder, and you should be killed for it!” the girl cried. Her eyes blazed upon her sister in the close inclosure of the little brougham. “You thought he did not care, either, perhaps.”
“Fan! Good heavens! I think you must be going out of your senses,” Constance cried.
Frances was not able to say any more. She was stifled by the commotion of her feelings,her heart beating so wildly in her breast, her emotion reaching the intolerable. The brougham stopped, and she sprang out and ran into the house, hurrying up-stairs to her own room. Constance, more surprised and disconcerted than she could have believed possible, nevertheless came in with an air of great composure, saying a word in passing to the astonished servant at the door. She was quite amiable always to the people about her. She walked up-stairs, remarking, as she passed, a pair of new vases with palms in them, which decorated the staircase, and which she approved. She opened the drawing-room door in her pretty, languid-stately, always leisurely way.
“How are you, mamma? Frances has run up-stairs; but here am I, just come back,” she said.
Lady Markham rose from her seat with a little scream of astonishment. “Constance!It is not possible. Who would have dreamed of seeing you!” she cried.
“Oh yes, it is quite possible,” said Constance, when they had kissed, with a prolonged encounter of lips and cheeks. “Surely, you did not think I could keep very long away?”
“My darling, did you get home-sick, or mammy-sick as Markham says, after all your philosophy?”
“I am so glad to see you, mamma, and looking so well. No, not home-sick, precisely, dear mother, but penetrated with the folly of stayingthere, where nothing was ever doing, when I might have been in the centre of everything: which is saying much the same thing, though in different words.”
“In very different words,” said Lady Markham, resuming her seat with a smile. “I see you have not changed at all, Con. Will you have any tea? And did you leave—your home there—with as little ceremony as you left me!”
“May I help myself, mamma? don’t you trouble. It is very nice to see your pretty china, instead of Frances’ old bizarre cups, which were much too good for me. Oh, I did not leave my—home. I—brought it back with me.”
“You brought——?”
“My father with me, mamma.”
“Oh!” Lady Markham said. She was too much astonished to say more.
“Perhaps it was because he got very tired of me, and thought there was no other way of getting rid of me; perhaps because he was tired of it himself. He came at last like a lamb. I did not really believe it till we were on the boat, and Algy Muncastle turned up, and I introduced him to my father. You should have seen how he stared.”
“Oh!” said Lady Markham again; and then she added faintly: “Is—is he here?”
“You mean papa? I left him at aunt Caroline’s. In the circumstances, that seemed the best thing to do.”
Lady Markham leaned back in her chair; she had become very pale. One shock after another had reduced her strength. She closed her eyes while Constance very comfortably sipped her tea. It was not possible that she could have dreamed it or imagined it, when, on opening her eyes again, she saw Constance sitting by the tea-table with a plate of bread and butter before her. “I have really,” she explained seriously, “eaten nothing to-day.”
Frances came down some time after, having bathed her eyes and smoothed her hair. It wasalways smooth like satin, shining in the light. She came in, in her unobtrusive way, ashamed of herself for her outburst of temper, and determined to be “good,” whatever might happen. She was surprised that there was no conversation going on. Constance sat in a chair which Frances at once recognised as having been hers from the beginning of time, wondering at her own audacity in having sat in it, when she did not know. Lady Markham was still leaning back in her chair. “Oh, it’s nothing—only a little giddiness. So many strange things are happening. Did you give your uncle Clarendon my note? I suppose Frances told you, Con, how we have been upset to-day?”
“Upset?” said Constance over her bread and butter. “I should have thought you would have been immensely pleased. It is about Sir Thomas, I suppose?”
“About Sir Thomas! Is there any news about Sir Thomas?” said Lady Markham, with an elaborately innocent look. “If so, it has not yet been confided to me.” And then she proceeded to tell to her daughter the story of Nelly Winterbourn.
“I should have thought that would all have been set right in the settlements,” Constance said.
“So it ought. But she had no one to see to the settlements—no one with a real interest in her; and it was such a magnificent match.”
“No better than Sir Thomas, mamma.”
“Ah, Sir Thomas. Is there really a story about Sir Thomas? I can only say, if it is so, that he has never confided it to me.”
“I hope no mistake will be made about the settlements in that case. And what do you suppose Markham will do?”
“What can he do? He will do nothing, Con. You know, after all, that is therôlethat suits him best. Even if all had been well, unless Nelly had asked him herself——”
“Do you think she would have minded, after all this time? But I suppose there’s an end of Nelly now,” Constance said, regretfully.
“I am afraid so,” Lady Markham replied. And then recovering, she began to tell her daughter the news—all the news of this one and the other, which Frances had never been able to understand, which Constance enteredinto as one to the manner born. They left the subject of Nelly Winterbourn, and not a word was said of young Gaunt and his fever; but apart from these subjects, everything that had happened since Constance left England was discussed between them. They talked and smiled and rippled over into laughter, and passed in review the thousand friends whose little follies and freaks both knew, and skimmed across the surface of tragedies with a consciousness, that gave piquancy to the amusement, of the terrible depths beneath. Frances, keeping behind, not willing to show her troubled countenance, from which the traces of tears were not easily effaced, listened to this light talk with a wonder which almost reached the height of awe. Her mother at least must have many grave matters in her mind; and even on Constance, the consciousness of having stirred up all the quiescent evils in the family history, of her father in England, of the meeting which must take place between the husband and wife so long parted, all by her influence, must have a certain weight. But there they sat and talked and laughed, and shot their little shafts of wit.Frances, at last feeling her heart ache too much for further repression, and that the pleasant interchange between her mother and sister exasperated instead of lightened her burdened soul, left them, and sought refuge in her room, where presently she heard their voices again as they came up-stairs to dress. Constance’s boxes had in the meantime arrived from the railway, and the conversation was very animated upon fashions and new adaptations and what to wear. Then the door of Constance’s room was closed, and Lady Markham came tapping at that of Frances. She took the girl into her arms. “Now,” she said, “my dream is going to be realised, and I shall have my two girls, one on each side of me. My little Frances, are you not glad?”
“Mother——” the girl said, faltering, and stopped, not able to say any more.
Lady Markham kissed her tenderly, and smiled, as if she were content. Was she content? Was the happiness, now she had it, as great as she said? Was she able to be light-hearted with all these complications round her? But to these questions who could give anyanswer? Presently she went to dress, shutting the door; and, between her two girls, retired so many hundred, so many thousand miles away—who could tell?—into herself.
In the evening there was considerable stir and commotion in the house. Markham, warned by one of his mother’s notes, came to dinner full of affectionate pleasure in Con’s return, and cheerful inquiries for her. “As yet, you have lost nothing, Con. As yet, nobody has got well into the swim. As to how the mammy will feel with two daughters to take about, that is a mystery. If we had known, we’d have shut up little Fan in the nursery for a year more.”
“It is I that should be sent to the nursery,” said Constance. “Three months is a long time. Algy Muncastle thought I was dead and buried. He looked at me as if he were seeing a ghost.”
“A girl might just as well be dead and buried as let half the season slip over and never appear.”
“Unless she were a widow,” said Con.
“Ah! unless she were a widow, as you say. That changes the face of affairs.” Markhammade a slight involuntary retreat when he received that blow, but no one mentioned the name of Nelly Winterbourn. It was much too serious to be taken any notice of now. In the brightness of Lady Markham’s drawing-room, with all its softened lights, grave subjects were only discussedtête-à-tête. When the company was more than two, everything took a sportive turn. Of the two visitors, however, who came in later, one was not at all disposed to follow this rule. Sir Thomas said but little to Constance, though her arrival was part of the news which had brought him here; but he held Lady Markham’s hand with an anxious look into her eyes, and as soon as he could, drew Frances aside to the distant corner in which she was fond of placing herself. “Do you know he has come?” he cried.
“I have seen papa, Sir Thomas, if that is what you mean.”
“What else could I mean?” said Sir Thomas. “You know how I have tried for this. What did he say? I want to know what disposition he is in. And what disposition isshein? Frances, you and I have a great deal to do.We have the ball at our feet. There is nobody acting in both their interests but you and I.”
There was something in Frances’ eyes and in her look of mute endurance which startled him, even in the midst of his enthusiasm. “What is the matter?” he said. “I have not forgotten our bargain. I will do much for you, if you will work for me. And you want something. Come, tell me what it is?”
She gave him a look of reproach. Had he, too, forgotten the sick and miserable, the sufferer, of whom no one thought? “Sir Thomas,” she said, “Constance has money; she has stopped at Paris to buy dresses. Oh, give me what is my share.”
“I remember now,” he said.
“Then you know the only thing that any one can do for me. Oh, Sir Thomas, if you could but give it me now.”
“Shall I speak to your father?” he asked.
These words Markham heard by chance, as he passed them to fetch something his mother wanted. He returned to where she sat with a curious look in his little twinkling eyes.“What is Sir Thomas after? Do you know the silly story that is about? They say that old fellow is after Lady Markham’s daughter. It had better be put a stop to, mother. I won’t have anything go amiss with little Fan.”
“Go amiss! with Sir Thomas. There is nobody he might not marry, Markham—not that anything has ever been said.”
“Let him have anybody he pleases except little Fan. I won’t have anything happen to Fan. She is not one that would stand it, like the rest of us. We are old stagers; we are trained for the stake; we know how to grin and bear it. But that little thing, she has never been brought up to it, and it would kill her. I won’t have anything go wrong with little Fan.”
“There is nothing going wrong with Frances. You are not talking with your usual sense, Markham. If that was coming, Frances would be a lucky girl.”
Markham looked at her with his eyes all pursed up, nearly disappearing in the puckers round them. “Mother,” he said, “we know a girl who was a very lucky girl, you and I. Remember Nelly Winterbourn.”
It gave Lady Markham a shock to hear Nelly’s name. “O Markham, the less we say of her the better,” she cried.
There was another arrival while they talked—Claude Ramsay, with the flower in his coat a little rubbed by the greatcoat which he had taken off in the hall, though it was now June. “I heard you had come back,” he said, dropping languidly into a chair by Constance. “I thought I would come and see if it was true.”
“You see it is quite true.”
“Yes; and you are looking as well as possible. Everything seems to agree with you. Do you know I was very nearly going out to that little place in the Riviera? I got all therenseignements; but then I heard that it got hot and the people went away.”
“You ought to have come. Don’t you know it is at the back of the east wind, and there are no draughts there?”
“What an ideal place!” said Claude. “I shall certainly go next winter, if you are going to be there.”
Francesslept very little all night; her mind was jarred and sore almost at every point. The day with all its strange experiences, and still more strange suggestions, had left her in a giddy round of the unreal, in which there seemed no ground to stand upon. Nelly Winterbourn was the first prodigy in that round of wonders. Why, with that immovable tragic face, had she intimated to Lady Markham the tenure upon which she held her fortune? Why had it been received as something conclusive on all sides? “There is an end of Nelly.” But why? And then came her mission to her aunt, the impression that had been made on her mind—the hope that had dawned on Frances; and then the event which swept both hope and impression away,and the bitter end that seemed to come to everything in the reappearance of Constance. Was it that she was jealous of Constance? Frances asked herself in the silence of the night, with noiseless bitter tears. The throbbing of her heart was all pain; life had become pain, and nothing more. Was it that she was jealous—jealousof her sister? It seemed to Frances that her heart was being wrung, pressed till the life came out of it in great drops under some giant’s hands. She said to herself, No, no. It was only that Constance came in her careless grace, and the place was hers, wherever she came; and all Frances had done, or was trying to do, came to nought. Was that jealousy? She lay awake through the long hours of the summer night, seeing the early dawn grow blue, and then warm and lighten into the light of day. And then all the elements of chaos round her, which whirled and whirled and left no honest footing, came to a pause and disappeared, and one thing real, one fact remained—George Gaunt in his fever, lying rapt from all common life, taking no note of night or day. Perhaps thetide might be turning for death or life, for this was once more the day that might be the crisis. The other matters blended into a phantasmagoria, of which Frances could not tell which part was false and which true, or if anything was true; but here was reality beyond dispute. She thought of the pale light stealing into his room, blinding the ineffectual candles; of his weary head on the pillow growing visible; of the long endless watch; and far away among the mountains, of the old people waiting and praying, and wondering what news the morning would bring them. This thought stung Frances into a keen life and energy, and took from her all reflection upon matters so abstract as that question whether or not she was jealous of Constance. What did it matter? so long as he could be brought back from the gates of death and the edge of the grave, so long as the father and mother could be saved from that awful and murderous blow. She got up hastily long before any one was stirring. There are moments when all our ineffectual thinkings, and even futile efforts, end in a sudden determination thatthe thing must be done, and revelation of how to do it. She got up with a little tremor upon her, such as a great inventor might have when he saw at last his way clearly, or a poet when he had caught the spark of celestial fire. Is there any machine that was ever invented, or even any power so divine as the right way to save a life and deliver a soul? Frances’ little frame was all tingling, but it made her mind clear and firm. She asked herself how she could have thought of any other but this way.
It was very early in the morning when she set out. If it had not been London, in which no dew falls, the paths would have been wet with dew; even in London, there was a magical something in the air which breathed of the morning, and which not all the housemaids’ brooms and tradesmen’s carts in the world could dispel. Frances walked on in the stillness, along the long silent line of the Park, where there was nobody save a little early schoolmistress, or perhaps a belated man about town, surprised by the morning, with red eyes and furtive looks, in the overcoatwhich hid his evening clothes, hurrying home—to break the breadth of the sunshine, the soft morning light, which was neither too warm nor dazzling, but warmed gently, sweetly to the heart. Her trouble had departed from her in the resolution she had taken. She was very grave, not knowing whether death or life, sorrow or hope, might be in the air, but composed, because, whatever it was, it must now come, all being done that man could do. She did not hasten, but walked slowly, knowing how early she was, how astonished her aunt’s servants would be to see her, unattended, walking up to the door. “I will arise and go to my father.” Wherever these words can be said, there is peace in them, a sense of safety at least. There are, alas! many cases in which, with human fathers, they cannot be said; but Waring, whatever his faults might be, had not forfeited his child’s confidence, and he would understand. To all human aches and miseries, to be understood is the one comfort above all others. Those to whom she had appealed before, had been sorry; they had been astonished; they had gazed at her withtroubled eyes. But her father would understand. This was the chief thing and the best. She went along under the trees, which were still fresh and green, through the scenes which, a little while later, would be astir with all the movements, the comedies, the tragedies, the confusions and complications of life. But now they lay like a part of the fair silent country, like the paths in a wood, like the glades in a park, all silent and mute, birds in the branches, dew upon the grass—a place where Town had abdicated, where Nature reigned.
Waring awoke betimes, being accustomed to the early hours of a primitive people. It was a curious experience to him to come down through a closed-up and silent house, where the sunshine came in between the chinks of the shutters, and all was as it had been in the confusion of the night. A frightened maid-servant came before him to open the study, which his brother-in-law Clarendon had occupied till a late hour. Traces of the lawyer’s vigil were still apparent enough—his waste-paper basket full of fragments; the little tray standing in the corner, which, even when holding nothing more than soda-water and claret, suggests dissipation in the morning. Waring was jarred by all this unpreparedness. He thought with a sigh of the bookroom in the Palazzo all open to the sweet morning air, before the sun had come round that way; and when he stepped out upon the little iron balcony attached to the window and looked out upon other backs of houses, all crowding round, the recollection of the blue seas, the waving palms, the great peaks, all carved against the brilliant sky, made him turn back in disgust. The mean London walls of yellow brick, the narrow houses, the little windows, all blinded with white blinds and curtains, so near that he could almost touch them—“However, it will not be like this at Hilborough,” he said to himself. He was no longer in the mood in which he had left Bordighera; but yet, having left it, he was ready to acknowledge that Bordighera was now impossible. His life there had continued from year to year—it might have continued for ever, with Frances ignorant of all that had gone before; but the thread of life once broken, could be knitted again no more.He acknowledged this to himself; and then he found that, in acknowledging it, he had brought himself face to face with all the gravest problems of his life. He had held them at arm’s-length for years; but now they had to be decided, and there was no alternative. He must meet them; he must look them in the face. Andher, too, he must look in the face. Life once more had come to a point at which neither habit nor the past could help him. All over again, as if he were a boy coming of age, it would have to be decided what it should be.
Waring was not at all surprised by the appearance of Frances fresh with the morning air about her. It seemed quite natural to him. He had forgotten all about the London streets, and how far it was from one point to another. He thought she had gained much in her short absence from him,—perhaps in learning how to act for herself, to think for herself, which she had acquired since she left him; for he was entirely unaware, and even quite incapable of being instructed, that Frances had lived her little life as far apart from him, and been as independent of him while sitting by his sideat Bordighera, as she could have been at the other end of the world. But he was impressed by the steady light of resolution, the cause of which was as yet unknown to him, which was shining in her eyes. She told him her story at once, without the little explanations that had been necessary to the others. When she said George Gaunt, he knew all that there was to say. The only thing that it was expedient to conceal was Markham’s part in the catastrophe, which was, after all, not at all clear to Frances; and as Waring was not acquainted with Markham’s reputation, there was no suggestion in his mind of the name that was wanting to explain how the young officer, knowing nobody, had found entrance into the society which had ruined him. Frances told her tale in few words. She was magnanimous, and said nothing of Constance on the one hand, any more than of Markham on the other. She told her father of the condition in which the young man lay—of his constant mutterings, so painful to hear, the Red and Black that came up, over and over again, in his confused thoughts, the distracting burden that awaited him ifhe ever got free of that circle of confusion and pain—of the old people in Switzerland waiting for the daily news, not coming to him as they wished, because of that one dread yet vulgar difficulty which only she understood. “Mamma says, of course they would not hesitate at the expense. Oh no, no! they would not hesitate. But how can I make her understand? yet we know.”
“How could she understand?” he said with a pale smile, which Frances knew. “Shehas never hesitated.” It was all that jarred even upon her excited nerves and mind. The situation was so much more clear to him than to the others, to whom young Gaunt was a stranger. And Waring, too, was in his nature something of a Quixote to those who took him on the generous side. He listened—he understood; he remembered all that had been enacted under his eyes. The young fellow had gone to London in desperation, unsettled, and wounded by the woman to whom he had given his love—and he had fallen into the first snare that presented itself. It was weak, it was miserable; but it was not more than a man couldunderstand. When Frances found that at last her object was attained, the unlikeliness that it ever should have been attained, overwhelmed her even in the moment of victory. She clasped her arms round her father’s arm, and laid down her head upon it, and, to his great surprise, burst into a passion of tears. “What is the matter? What has happened? Have I said anything to hurt you?” he cried, half touched, half vexed, not knowing what it was, smoothing her glossy hair half tenderly, half reluctantly, with his disengaged hand.
“Oh, it is nothing, nothing! It is my folly; it is—happiness. I have tried to tell them all, and no one would understand. But one’s father—one’s father is like no one else,” cried Frances, with her cheek upon his sleeve.
Waring was altogether penetrated by these simple words, and by the childish action, which reminded him of the time when the little forlorn child he had carried away with him had no one but him in the world. “My dear,” he said, “it makes me happy that you think so. I have been rather a failure, I fear, in most things; but if you think so, I can’t have beena failure all round.” His heart grew very soft over his little girl. He was in a new world, though it was the old one. His sister, whom he had not seen for so long, had half disgusted him with her violent partisanship, though his was the party she upheld so strongly. And Constance, who had no hold of habitual union upon him, had exhibited all her faults to his eyes. But his little girl was still his little girl, and believed in her father. It brought a softening of all the ice and snow about his heart.
They walked together through the many streets to inquire for poor Gaunt, and were admitted with shakings of the head and downcast looks. He had passed a very disturbed night, though at present he seemed to sleep. The nurse who had been up all night, and was much depressed, was afraid that there were symptoms of a “change.” “I think the parents should be sent for, sir,” she said, addressing herself at once to Waring. These attendants did not mind what they said over the uneasy bed. “He don’t know what we are saying, any more than the bed he lieson. Look at him, miss, and tell me if you don’t think there is a change?” Frances held fast by her father’s arm. She was more diffident in his presence than she had been before. The sufferer’s gaunt face was flushed, his lips moved, though, in his weakness, his words were not audible. The other nurse, who had come to relieve her colleague, and who was fresh and unwearied, was far more hopeful. But she, too, thought that “a change” might be approaching, and that it would be well to summon the friends. She went down-stairs with them to talk it over a little more. “It seems to me that he takes more notice than we are aware of,” she said. “The ways of sick folks are that wonderful, we don’t understand, not the half of them; seems to me that you have a kind of an influence, miss. Last night he changed after you were here, and took me for his mamma, and asked me what I meant, and said something about a Miss Una that was true, and a false Jessie or something. I wonder if your name is Miss Una, miss?” This inquiry was made while Waring was writing a telegram to the parents. Frances,who was not very quick, could only wonder for a long time who Una was and Jessie. It was not till evening, nearly twelve hours after, that there suddenly came into her mind the false Duessa of the poet. And then the question remained, who was Una, and who Duessa? a question to which she could find no reply.
Frances remained with her father the greater part of the day. When she found that what she desired was to be done, there fell a strange kind of lull into her being, which unaccountably took away her strength, so that she scarcely felt herself able to hold up her head. She began to be aware that she had neither slept by night nor had any peace by day, and that a fever of the mind had been stealing upon her, a sort of reflection of the other fever, in which her patient was enveloped as in a living shroud. She was scarcely able to stand, and yet she could not rest. Had she not put force upon herself, she would have been sending to and fro all day, creeping thither on limbs that would scarcely support her, to know how he was, or if the change had yet appeared. She had not feared for his life before, having no tradition of death in her mind; but now an alarm grew upon her that any moment might see the blow fall, and that the parents might come in vain. It was while she stood at one of the windows of Mrs Clarendon’s gloomy drawing-room, watching for the return of one of her messengers, that she saw her mother’s well-known brougham drive up to the door. She turned round with a little cry of “Mamma” to where her father was sitting, in one of the seldom used chairs. Mrs Clarendon, who would not leave him for many minutes, was hovering by, wearying his fastidious mind with unnecessary solicitude, and a succession of questions which he neither could nor wished to answer. She flung up her arms when she heard Frances’ cry. “Your mother! Oh, has she dared! Edward, go away, and let me meet her. She will not get much out of me.”
“Do you think I am going to fly from my wife?” Waring said. He rose up very tremulous, yet with a certain dignity. “In that case, I should not have come here.”
“But, Edward, you are not prepared. O Edward, be guided by me. If you once get into that woman’s hands——”
“Hush!” he said; “her daughter is here.” Then, with a smile: “When a lady comes to see me, I hope I can receive her still as a gentleman should, whoever she may be.”
The door opened, and Lady Markham came in. She was very pale, yet flushed from moment to moment. She, who had usually such perfect self-command, betrayed her agitation by little movements, by the clasping and unclasping of her hands, by a hurried, slightly audible breathing. She stood for a moment without advancing, the door closing behind her, facing the agitated group. Frances, following an instinctive impulse, went hastily towards her mother as a maid of honour in an emergency might hurry to take her place behind the Queen. Mrs Clarendon on her side, with a similar impulse, drew nearer to her brother—the way was cleared between the two, once lovers, now antagonists. The pause was but for a moment. Lady Markham, after thathesitation, came forward. She said: “Edward, I should be wanting in my duty if I did not come to welcome you home.”
“Home!” he said, with a curious smile. Then he, too, came forward a little. “I accept your advances in the same spirit, Frances.” She was holding out her hands to him with a little appeal, looking at him with eyes that sank and rose again—an emotion that was restrained by her age, by her matronly person, by the dignity of the woman, which could not be quenched by any flood of feeling. He took her hands in his with a strange timidity, hesitating, as if there might be something more, then let them drop, and they stood once again apart.
“I have to thank you, too,” she said, “for bringing Constance back to me safe and well; and what is more, Edward, for this child.” She put out her hand to Frances, and drew her close, so that the girl could feel the agitation in her mother’s whole person, and knew that, weak as she was, she was a support to the other, who was so much stronger. “I owe you more thanks still for her—that she never had beentaught to think any harm of her mother, that she came back to me as innocent and true as she went away.”
“If you found her so, Frances, it was to her own praise, rather than mine.”
“Nay,” she said with a tremulous smile, “I have not to learn now that the father of my children was fit to be trusted with a girl’s mind—more, perhaps, than their mother—and the world together.” She shook off this subject, which was too germane to the whole matter, with a little tremulous movement of her head and hands. “We must not enter on that,” she said. “Though I am only a woman of the world, it might be too much for me. Discussion must be for another time. But we may be friends.”
“So far as I am concerned.”
“And I too, Edward. There are things even we might consult about—without prejudice, as the lawyers say—for the children’s good.”
“Whatever you wish my advice upon——”
“Yes, that is perhaps the way to put it,” Lady Markham said, after a pause which looked like disappointment, and with an agitated smile.“Will you be so friendly, then,” she added, “as to dine at my house with the girls and me? No one you dislike will be there. Sir Thomas, who is in great excitement about your arrival; and perhaps Claude Ramsay, whom Constance has come back to marry.”
“Then she has settled that?”
“I think so; yet no doubt she would like him to be seen by you. I hope you will come,” she said, looking up at him with a smile.
“It will be very strange,” he said, “to dine as a guest at your table.”
“Yes, Edward; but everything is strange. We are so much older now than we were. We can afford, perhaps, to disagree, and yet be friends.”
“I will come if it will give you any pleasure,” he said.
“Certainly, it will give me pleasure.” She had been standing all the time, not having even been offered a seat—an omission which neither he nor she had discovered. He did it now, placing with great politeness a chair for her; but she did not sit down.
“For the first time, perhaps it is enough,” she said. “And Caroline thinks it more than enough. Good-bye, Edward. If you will believe me, I am—truly glad to see you: and I hope we may be friends.”
She half raised her clasped hands again. This time he took them in both his, and leaning towards her, kissed her on the forehead. Frances felt the tremor that ran through her mother’s frame. “Good-bye,” she said, “till this evening.” Only the girl knew why Lady Markham hurried from the room. She stopped in the hall below to regain her self-command and arrange her bonnet. “It is so long since we have met,” she said, “it upsets me. Can you wonder, Frances? The woman in the end always feels it most. And then there are so many things to upset me just now. Constance and Markham—say nothing of Markham; do not mention his name—and even you——”
“There is nothing about me to annoy you, mamma.”
Lady Markham smiled with a face that was near crying. She gave a little tap with her finger upon Frances’ cheek, and then she hurried away.
Thedinner, it need scarcely be said, was a strange one. Except in Constance, who was perfectly cool, and Claude, who was more concerned about a possible draught from a window than anything else, there was much agitation in the rest of the party. Lady Markham was nervously cordial, anxious to talk and to make everything “go”—which, indeed, she would have done far more effectually had she been able to retain her usual cheerful and benign composure. But there are some things which are scarcely possible even to the most accomplished woman of the world. How to place the guests, even, had been a trouble to her, almost too great to be faced. To place her husband by her side was more than she could bear, and where else could it be appropriate to place him, unless opposite to her, where the master of the house should sit? The difficulty was solved loosely by placing Constance there, and her father beside her. He sat between his daughters; while Ramsay and Sir Thomas were on either side of his wife. Under such circumstances, it was impossible that the conversation could be other than formal, with outbursts of somewhat conventional vivacity from Sir Thomas, supported by anxious responses from Lady Markham. Frances took refuge in saying nothing at all. And Waring sat like a ghost, with a smile on his face, in which there was a sort of pathetic humour, dashed with something that was half derision. To be sitting there at all was wonderful indeed, and to be listening to the smalltalk of a London dinner-table, with all its little discussions, its talk of plays and pictures and people, its scraps of political life behind the scenes, its esoteric revelations on all subjects, was more wonderful still. He had half forgotten it; and to come thus at a single step into the midst of it all, and hear this babble floating on the air which was charged with somany tragic elements, was more wonderful still. To think that they should all be looking at each other across the flowers and the crystal, and knowing what questions were to be solved between them, yet talking and expecting others to talk of the new tenor and the last scandal! It seemed to the stranger out of the wilds, who had been banished from society so long, that it was a thing incredible, when he was thus thrown into it again. There were allusions to many things which he did not understand. There was something, for instance, about Nelly Winterbourn which called forth a startling response from Lady Markham. “You must not,” she said, “say anything about poor Nelly in this house. From my heart, I am sorry and grieved for her; but in the circumstances, what can any one do? The least said, the better, especially here.” The pause after this was minute but marked, and Waring asked Constance, “Who is Nelly Winterbourn?”
“She is a young widow, papa. It was thought her husband had left her a large fortune; but he has left it to her on the condition that she should not marry again.”
“Is that why she is not to be spoken of in this house?” said Waring, growing red. This explanation had been asked and given in an undertone. He thought it referred to the circumstances in which his own marriage had taken place—Lady Markham being a young widow with a large jointure; and that this was the reason why the other was not to be mentioned; and it gave him a hot sense of offence, restrained by the politeness which is exercised in society, but not always when the offenders are one’s wife and children. It turned the tide of softened thoughts back upon his heart, and increased to fierceness the derision with which he listened to all the trifles that floated uppermost. When the ladies left the room, he did not meet the questioning, almost timid, look that Lady Markham threw upon him. He saw it, indeed, but he would not respond to it. That allusion had spoiled all the rest.
In the little interval after dinner, Claude Ramsay did his best to make himself agreeable. “I am very glad to see you back, sir,” he said. “I told Lady Markham it was theright thing. When a girl has a father, it’s always odd that he shouldn’t appear.”
“Oh, you told Lady Markham that it was—the right thing?”
“A coincidence, wasn’t it? when you were on your way,” said Claude, perceiving the mistake he had made. “You know, sir,” he added with a little hesitation, “that it has all been made up for a long time between Constance and me.”
“Yes? What has all been made up? I understand that my daughter came out to me to——”
“Oh!” said Claude, interrupting hurriedly, “it isthatthat has all been made up. Constance has been very nice about it,” he continued. “She has been making a study of the Riviera, and collecting all sorts ofrenseignements; for in most cases, it is necessary for me to winter abroad.”
“That was what she was doing then—her object, I suppose?” said Waring with a grim smile.
“Besides the pleasure of visiting you, sir,” said Claude, with what he felt to be greattact. “She seems to have done a great deal of exploring, and she tells me she has found just the right site for the villa—and all therenseignements,” he added. “To have been on the spot, and studied the aspect, and how the winds blow, is such a great thing; and to be near your place too,” he said politely, by an after-thought.
“Which I hope is to be your place no more, Waring,” said Sir Thomas. “Your own place is very empty, and craving for you all the time.”
“It is too fine a question to say what is my own place,” he said, with that pale indignant smile. “Things are seldom made any clearer by an absence of a dozen years.”
“A great deal clearer—the mists blow away, and the hot fumes. Come, Waring, say you are glad you have come home.”
“I suppose,” said Claude, “you find it really too hot for summer on that coast. What would you say was the end of the season? May? Just when London begins to be possible, and most people have come to town.”
“Is not that one of therenseignementsConstance has given you?” Waring asked with a short laugh; but he made no reply to the other questions. And then there was a little of the inevitable politics before the gentlemen went up-stairs. Lady Markham had been threatened with what in France is called anattaque des nerfs, when she reached the shelter of the drawing-room. She was a little hysterical, hardly able to get the better of the sobbing which assailed her. Constance stood apart, and looked on with a little surprise. “You know, mamma,” she said reflectively, “an effort is the only thing. With an effort, you can stop it.”
Frances was differently affected by this emotion. She, who had never learned to be familiar, stole behind her mother’s chair and made her breast a pillow for Lady Markham’s head,—a breast in which the heart was beating now high, now low, with excitement and despondency. She did not say anything; but there is sometimes comfort in a touch. It helped Lady Markham to subdue the unwonted spasm. She held close for a moment the arms which were over her shoulders, and she replied to Constance, “Yes, that is true. Iam ashamed of myself. I ought to know better—at my age.”
“It has gone off on the whole very well,” Constance said. And then she retired to a sofa and took up a book.
Lady Markham held Frances’ hand in hers for a moment or two longer, then drew her towards her and kissed her, still without a word. They had approached nearer to each other in that silent encounter than in all that had passed before. Lady Markham’s heart was full of many commotions; the past was rising up around her with all its agitating recollections. She looked back, and saw, oh, so clearly in that pale light which can never alter, the scenes that ought never to have been, the words that ought never to have been said, the faults, the mistakes—those things which were fixed there for ever, not to be forgotten. Could they ever be forgotten? Could any postscript be put to the finished story? Or was this strange meeting—unsought, scarcely desired on either side, into which the separated Two, who ought to have been One, seemed to have been driven without any willof their own—was it to be mere useless additional pain, and no more?
The ladies were all very peacefully employed when the gentlemen came up-stairs. Lady Markham turned round as usual from her writing-table to receive them with a smile. Constance laid down her book. Frances, from her accustomed dim corner, lifted up her eyes to watch them as they came in. They stood in the middle of the room for a minute, and talked to each other according to the embarrassed usage of Englishmen, and then they distributed themselves. Sir Thomas fell to Frances’ share. He turned to her eagerly, and took her hand and pressed it warmly. “We have done it,” he said, in an excited whisper. “So far, all is victorious; but still there is a great deal more to do.”
“I think it is Constance that has done it,” Frances said.
“She has worked for us—without meaning it—no doubt. But I am not going to give up the credit to Constance; and there is still a great deal to do. You must not lay down your arms, my dear. You and I, we have theball at our feet: but there is a great deal still to do.”
Frances made no reply. The corner which she had chosen for herself was almost concealed behind a screen which parted the room in two. The other group made a picture far enough withdrawn to gain perspective. Waring stood near his wife, who from time to time gave him a look, half watchful, half wistful, and sometimes made a remark, to which he gave a brief reply. His attitude and hers told a story; but it was a confused and uncertain one, of which the end was all darkness. They were together, but fortuitously, without any will of their own; and between them was a gulf fixed. Which would cross it, or was it possible that it ever could be crossed at all? The room was very silent, for the conversation was not lively between Constance and Claude on the sofa; and Sir Thomas was silent, watching too. All was so quiet, indeed, that every sound was audible without; but there was no expectation of any interruption, nobody looked for anything, there was a perfect indifference to outside sounds. So much so, that for a momentthe ladies were scarcely startled by the familiar noise, so constantly heard, of Markham’s hansom drawing up at the door. It could not be Markham; he was out of the way, disposed of till next morning. But Lady Markham, with that presentiment which springs up most strongly when every avenue by which harm can come seems stopped, started, then rose to her feet with alarm. “It can’t surely be—— Oh, what has brought him here!” she cried, and looked at Claude, to bid him, with her eyes, rush to meet him, stop him, keep him from coming in. But Claude did not understand her eyes.
As for Waring, seeing that something had gone wrong in the programme, but not guessing what it was, he accepted her movement as a dismissal, and quietly joined his daughter and his friend behind the screen. The two men got behind it altogether, showing only where their heads passed its line; but the light was not bright in that corner, and the new-comer was full of his own affairs. For it was Markham, who came in rapidly, stopped by no wise agent, or suggestion of expediency. He came into the room dressed in light morning-clothes, greenish,grayish, yellowish, like the colour of his sandy hair and complexion. He came in with his face puckered up and twitching, as it did when he was excited. His mother, Constance, Claude, sunk in the corner of the sofa, were all he saw; and he took no notice of Claude. He crossed that little opening amid the fashionably crowded furniture, and went and placed himself in front of the fireplace, which was full at this season of flowers, not of fire. From that point of vantage he greeted them with his usual laugh, but broken and embarrassed. “Well, mother—well, Con; you thought you were clear of me for to-night.”
“I did not expect you, Markham. Is anything—has anything——?
“Gone wrong?” he said. “No—I don’t know that anything has gone wrong. That depends on how you look at it. I’ve been in the country all day.”
“Yes, Markham; so I know.”
“But not where I was going,” he said. His laugh broke out again, quite irrelevant and inappropriate. “I’ve seen Nelly,” he said.
“Markham!” his mother cried, with a toneof wonder, disapproval, indignation, such as had never been heard in her voice before, through all that had been said and understood concerning Markham and Nelly Winterbourn. She had sunk into her chair, but now rose again in distress and anxiety. “Oh,” she cried, “how could you? how could you? I thought you had some true feeling. O Markham, how unworthy of younowto vex and compromise that poor girl!”
He made no answer for a moment, but moistened his lips, with a sound that seemed like a ghost of the habitual chuckle. “Yes,” he said, “I know you made it all up that the chapter was closednow; but I never said so, mother. Nelly’s where she was before, when we hadn’t the courage to do anything. Only worse: shamed and put in bondage by that miserable beggar’s will. And you all took it for granted that there was an end between her and me. I was waiting to marry her when she was free and rich, you all thought; but I wasn’t bound, to be sure, nor the sort of man to think of it twice when I knew she would be poor.”
“Markham! no one ever said, nobody thought——”
“Oh, I know very well what people thought—and said too, for that matter,” said Markham. “I hope a fellow like me knows Society well enough for that. A pair of old stagers like Nelly and me, of course we knew what everybody said. Well, mammy, you’re mistaken this time, that’s all. There’s nothing to be taken for granted in this world. Nelly’s game, and so am I. As soon as it’s what you call decent, and the crape business done with—for she has always done her duty by him, the wretched fellow, as everybody knows——”
“Markham!” his mother cried, almost with a shriek—“why, it is ruin, destruction. I must speak to Nelly—ruin both to her and you.”
He laughed. “Or else the t’other thing—salvation, you know. Anyhow, Nelly’s game for it, and so am I.”
There suddenly glided into the light at this moment a little figure, white, rapid, noiseless, and caught Markham’s arm in both hers. “O Markham! O Markham!” cried Frances, “I am so glad! I never believed it; I alwaysknew it. I am so glad!” and began to cry, clinging to his arm.
Markham’s puckered countenance twitched and puckered more and more. His chuckle sounded over her half like a sob. “Look here,” he said. “Here’s the little one approves. She’s the one to judge, the sort of still small voice—eh, mother? Come; I’ve got far better than I deserve: I’ve got little Fan on my side.”
Lady Markham wrung her hands with an impatience which partly arose from her own better instincts. The words which she wanted would not come to her lips. “The child, what can she know!” she cried, and could say no more.
“Stand by me, little Fan,” said Markham, holding his sister close to him. “Mother, it’s not a small thing that could part you and me; that is what I feel, nothing else. For the rest, we’ll take the Priory, Nelly and I, and be very jolly upon nothing. Mother, you didn’t think in your heart thatYOURson was a base little beggar, no better than Winterbourn?”
Lady Markham made no reply. She sank down in her chair and covered her face with her hands. In the climax of so many emotions, she was overwhelmed. She could not stand up against Markham: in her husband’s presence, with everything hanging in the balance, she could say nothing. The worldly wisdom she had learned melted away from her. Her heart was stirred to its depths, and the conventional bonds restrained it no more. A kind of sweet bitterness—a sense of desertion, yet hope; of secret approval, yet opposition—disabled her altogether. One or two convulsive sobs shook her frame. She was able to say nothing, nothing, and was silent, covering her face with her hands.
Waring had seen Markham come in with angry displeasure. He had listened with that keen curiosity of antagonism which is almost as warm as the interest of love, to hear what he had to say. Sir Thomas, standing by his side, threw in a word or two to explain, seeing an opportunity in this new development of affairs. But nothing was really altered until Frances rose. Her father watched her with a poignant anxiety, wonder, excitement. When she threwherself upon her brother’s arm, and, all alone in her youth, gave him her approval, the effect upon the mind of her father was very strange. He frowned and turned away, then came back and looked again. His daughter, his little white spotless child, thrown upon the shoulder of the young man whom he had believed he hated, his wife’s son, who had been always in his way. It was intolerable. He must spring forward, he thought, and pluck her away. But Markham’s stifled cry of emotion and happiness somehow arrested Waring. He looked again, and there was something tender, pathetic, in the group. He began to perceive dimly how it was. Markham was making a resolution which, for a man of his kind, was heroic; and the little sister, the child, his own child, of his training, not of the world, had gone in her innocence and consecrated it with her approval. The approval of little Frances! And Markham had the heart to feel that in that approval there was something beyond and above everything else that could be said to him. Waring, too, like his wife, was in a condition of mind which offered no defence against the firsttouch of nature which was strong enough to reach him. He was open not to everyday reasoning, but to the sudden prick of a keen unhabitual feeling. A sudden impulse came upon him in this softened, excited mood. Had he paused to think, he would have turned his back upon that scene and hurried away, to be out of the contagion. But, fortunately, he did not pause to think. He went forward quickly, laying his hand upon the back of the chair in which Lady Markham sat, struggling for calm—and confronted his old antagonist, his boy-enemy of former times, who recognised him suddenly, with a gasp of astonishment. “Markham,” he said, “if I understand rightly, you are acting like a true and honourable man. Perhaps I have not done you justice, hitherto. Your mother does not seem able to say anything. I believe in my little girl’s instinct. If it will do you any good, you have my approval too.”
Markham’s slackened arm dropped to his side, though Frances embraced it still. His very jaw dropped in the amazement, almost consternation, of this sudden appearance. “Sir,” he stammered, “your—your—support—your—friendship would be all I could——” And here his voice failed him, and he said no more.
Then Waring went a step further by an unaccountable impulse, which afterwards he could not understand. He held out one hand, still holding with the other the back of Lady Markham’s chair. “I know what the loss will be to your mother,” he said; “but perhaps—perhaps, if she pleases: that may be made up too.”
She removed her hands suddenly and looked up at him. There was not a particle of colour in her cheek. The hurrying of her heart parched her open lips. The two men clasped hands over her, and she saw them through a mist, for a moment side by side.
At this moment of extreme agitation and excitement, Lady Markham’s butler suddenly opened the drawing-room door. He came in with that solemnity of countenance with which, in his class, it is thought proper to name all that is preliminary to death. “If you please, my lady,” he said, “there’s a man below has come to say that the fever’s come to a crisis, and that there’s a change.”
“You mean Captain Gaunt,” cried Lady Markham, rising with a half-stupefied look. She was so much worn by these divers emotions, that she did not see where she went.
“Captain Gaunt!” said Constance with a low cry.