"'A blank, my lord; she never told her love,But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud.Feed on her damask cheek.'"
"'A blank, my lord; she never told her love,But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud.Feed on her damask cheek.'"
"More fool she! Was he well off?"
"But, being a little lady," continues Flo, needless of the interruption, "as proud, shy, sensitive, as she was loving, she did not, Viola-wise, sit, like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief, but moved among her fellow-men with placid unconcern and a heart-whole surface, did her duties bravely, took her pleasures as gayly as any other girl of her age, and even trained herself to smile in the face of the man she loved when the dolt was chanting the praises of another woman. Her mother even did not know her secret."
"And yet she confided in you! You must have a fund of sympathy in reserve somewhere, Flo, that I could never reach."
"She never confided in me. I found it out in an unguarded moment, when she believed herself alone. The man had been twisting a bit of scented weed around his finger, and, when he left her, carelessly threw it into her lap; then she—"
"Glued it to her quivering lips, watered its limpness with her tears,et cætera. A very piteous tale! Flo, the question is, Was the man worth such a Spartan struggle? What was he like? Had he twelve thousand a year?"
"The man?" she repeats carelessly. "Oh, well, he wouldn't have caused me a heart-ache! He was much like other men, commonplace, selfish, yet good-natured in the main, young, fairly good-looking, and worth about three thousand a year. You know him better than I."
"Do I?"—stifling a yawn.
"Yes, for that man's father is your father's son."
"Let me see. Sisters and brother I have none, but that man's father is my father's son. That's a disputed problem, Flo; it disturbed the intellects of the Royal Nutshire for three hours at mess. The real answer is 'My son,' you know."
"You have no son, I believe."
"Then the solution is myself—eh? You mean to intimate that I am the hero of this touching minor tale. Who is Viola, pray?
"Find out."
"Not I," he says, with a short laugh. "I don't believe in her existence. Come along, Flo; we're missing a capital waltz."
They revolve in silence. When the music ceases, he leads her to a retired corner of the refreshment-room, and, while they are sipping ices, he says, with a sneaky tone of would-be indifference—
"Well, you might as well tell me who she is, Flo."
"Who is who?" she asks, turning her head aside to hide her triumphant smile. "Oh, Viola! What is the good of telling you anything about her if you believe she is a myth?"
"I should have the opportunity of proving the truth of your flattering tale."
"But why should I betray the secret she has guarded so gallantly? It is very mean and unmanly of you to try to worm it out of me, Jack."
"Why did you tell me anything about it? I gave you no opening for the anecdote," he says rather warmly.
"I told you, old boy," Miss Flo replies, laying her hand with a sisterly gesture on his shoulder, "because I like you and—and wish to do you good. I fancied that the contemplation of another's disappointment might alleviate yours, and perhaps distract your mind from—from other people," she winds up rather lamely.
"I see—I see. You're a good girl, Flo—thanks, thanks, my dear—but you must have thought me a precious fool to accept a legend of the kind as gospel, to fancy any woman nourishing a hopeless passion for a commonplace, selfish, soft-headed simpleton with an income of only three thousand a year!"
"Believe it or not as you like," she answers hotly. "What I tell you is true and the girl is here in this room—not a dozen yards from us."
He looks eagerly to right and left, and shrugs his shoulder impatiently.
"There are about forty smiling virgins within a dozen yards of me. How am I to pick out the stricken one? As you have gone so far, Florrie," he whispers coaxingly, "you might as well commit yourself altogether."
"Well, Jack," she answers, with well-feigned reluctance, "whatever your faults may be, you are a gentleman, and—and, if I do you'll take no advantage, or betray—"
"Of course not. What do you take me for?"
"The girl is Cicely Deane."
"Cicely Deane!" he echoes, with an incredulous laugh. "Well, Flo, I think you might have made a better shot than that. Cicely Deane! Why, she looks on me as a sort of elder brother! I've known her since she was a baby. It's too preposterous, you know. Why, I should rather suspect you,ma belle, of falling in love with—with me than that self-possessed, cold-blooded little saint, the legitimate prey of the Church!"
"The Church has not had much success as yet. Last week she refused the Honorable and Reverend Basil Wendrop, Lord Hareford's second son, a divine with the profile of an Antoninus and the tongue of a Chrysostom; her parents are in despair about it. Ah, there is my partner at the door looking for me—Major Newton! I want you to look at him rather particularly, Jack, because I'm half contemplating matrimony with that lucky individual."
"Newton? O, I know him well! He's a very good fellow—just returned from India, has he not?"
"Yes; he has been away six years. He turned up the other day and calmly informed me that I had solemnly promised long ago to marry him if he could make a certain competence—a most ridiculous sum! I don't think I could have mentioned it, even in the school-room. Seven thousand pounds—absurd, you know! I don't remember the circumstance—in fact, I could scarcely recall the poor man's existence when he first appeared; but it seems he has been living on that promise for the last six years in one of the most unhealthy holes in India, starving and screwing to make up that wretched sum; and—now—now—if you please, he wants me to marry him and share it with him. He fell in love with me when I was a great fat-faced tomboy in the school-room, and has never thought of any one since—ridiculous man!"
"And you think of rewarding his fidelity? Do you like him, Flo?"
"Yes," she answers, with a faint blush, "I—I think I rather like him. He—he is nothing much to look at, of no particular position, not well off, and—and I suppose—in fact, I know—I could do better; but—"
"Yes?"
"Six years! A long time, wasn't it, Jack?" she says a little wistfully. "Six years—and—and I scarcely thought of him once after he left—poor Claud! All the others whom I jilted, or who jilted me, were on their legs a month or two afterward. I don't think, Jack, I have a very bounteous store of affection to bestow on any man, I don't think I have it in me to care for any one as I care for myself; still six years, you know—"
"Is a good spell. I would marry him if I were you. You have knocked about long enough now, Flo. I shouldn't be surprised if you found matrimony a pleasant change. Anyhow, you'll have my best wishes," says Everard heartily.
"Don't congratulate me yet," she answers flurriedly. "I—I haven't made up my mind in the least. After all, matrimony is a desperate plunge; once you're in, you can never get out again; and—and I could do so much better—so much better. There's Pelham Windsor. I had a great case with him at Brighton before Christmas, and he has asked mother and me down to his place in Hampshire next month—the Towers—a regular show-place—stabling for forty horses—"
"Pelham Windsor! He's a most insufferable little snob, Flo—scarcely up to your shoulder—and was divorced from his first wife."
"I know, I know," she answers petulantly. "But it was all her fault; she—"
"Of course, of course—it always is!"
"Flor—Miss Wynyard, I have been looking for you everywhere. This is our dance, I believe."
Major Newton stands before them, a man of about thirty-six, with a lean yellow face, sad brown eyes, and a long gaunt body emaciated by fever—a most incongruous cavalier for the lively florid Miss Wynyard, who however rises at once and lays her handa little nervously on his arm, whispering to her cousin before she goes—
"Remember, Jack, I have your promise; not a word, a look, a sign to betray—"
"Oh, stuff, Florrie!" he answers impatiently. "Do you fancy I gave your nonsense a second thought? Absurd!"
Nevertheless, absurd as it seems, the nonsense does occupy his thoughts a good deal during the remainder of the evening, and, instead of following Lady Saunderson's conquering movements with stealthy feverish glance, as he has been doing hitherto, he finds himself watching little Cicely taking her pleasure, with an interest and a curiosity she has never roused in him before.
But, watch as closely as he may, he can detect no confirmatory sign, not even when he is bending over her, whispering pretty compliments in her ear. When his arm encircles her waist, her face within a few inches of his own, whirling round the room, her breath comes none the faster, her color does not change, her eye does not sink under his puzzled animated scrutiny.
"Flo," he whispers to his cousin, when he is cloaking her on her departure about two hours later, "you were out, my dear—quite out. You are either grossly mistaken, or were willfully misleading me. I've watched her, and there's not a sign of truth in your revelation—not a sign. I've watched her."
"Oh, if you have, Jack, of course that settles the question! I was grossly mistaken. Who could deceive your gimlet-eyes?"
"Not you,ma belle, not you, at any rate!" he retorts quickly, smiling into the girl's handsome sparkling face. "You've taken the plunge, Florrie! I thought you would. Come behind the curtain until I congratulate you on the spot."
Just as their lips are meeting in frank cousinly good-will, the drapery parts, and Major Newton, with no very pleasant expression, glares in on them.
Miss Wynyard, with the experience of many past misconceptions, hastens to explain the position of affairs, which herfiancéaccepts amicably; and for the first time in the annals of her checkered career the course of Miss Wynyard's love runs smooth into the sea of matrimony about two months later.
She makes the major an excellent wife; and, though, as the years roll on, their means do not increase in proportion to their family, Mrs. Newton is never heard to complain or taunt her sober husband with the fact that she might have done better—not even when Madame Armine loses her custom altogether, and necessity has trained her hitherto idle fingers to turn her dresses and darn her children's stockings. The friendship between her and Lady Saunderson does not prosper, for their paths naturally diverge somewhat widely, and, when they meet again, after the lapse of some years, those erst kindred spirits find they have scarce a thought, a wish, a pleasure in common.
Pauline looks upon Florrie with contempt, as having degenerated into a dowdy, baby-ridden drudge, and Florrie pities Lady Saunderson's unloved and childless lot, chained to a man whom she despises and dislikes, with no light ahead to relieve the gray drearinessof coming age, when her beauty and her social triumphs will be things of the past.
Forthree months Mr. Everard puzzles over the flattering yet almost incredible revelation of Miss Cicely's attachment to him, during which time he leaves no stone unturned, no device unburied to lure the wily damsel into some sign of self-betrayal. He haunts the Rectory night and day, dropping in at most inopportune moments, until Lady Emily Deane, a most energetic and methodical housewife, declares him a worse infliction than half a dozen school-boys home for the holidays, and sighs for the racing season that will take him away from Nutshire for a time.
But all Jack's watchings, spyings, ruses, and maiden traps are of no avail. Cicely shows him neither more nor less favor than she has done all her life, treats him with the same careless sisterly regard, smiles when she welcomes him, but does not sigh when she bids him good-by, and betrays no annoyance, pain, or pettishness when he flirts in her presence, any more than when his love for Pauline was at its fever height. So at the end of the three months he has to acknowledge himself just as puzzled and as excited as he was the first evening.
In the meantime, rather to his dismay, he begins to find many charms and attractions in the demure brown-eyed little lady which were hidden to him before. He finds a strange soothing pleasure in watching her, as he lies stretched on the old fashioned school-room sofa, busy over her endless household work, stitching, painting, making up accounts, cutting out clothes for the poor, overlooking her young sister's school-tasks,et cætera, as seemingly undisturbed, callously unconscious of his presence, as if he had been a stone effigy of idleness.
Her voice "grows" on him likewise; its music, which he has listened to carelessly, mechanically for so many years, stirs his heart at last, as it has stirred many men before him, who have been chilled by the cold graciousness of the girl's face and manner—for, when Cicely sings, she pours forth her whole soul, and speaks of love human and divine with an unrestrained, anentraînantpassion which no art could have taught her.
Many a time during the sweet chill nights of early spring, when Everard hangs over her as she sits at the piano, her voice quivering through the still room with harmonious pain, her eyes glowing, her whole sober being startled into spiritual life, the young man thinks that the supreme moment has come, that his presence has helped to awake the sentimental tumult, only to be cruelly undeceived, when the last note has vibrated, by some commonplace disenchanting remark that makes him long to shake her.
"A pretty song, is it not, Jack?" she asks one night, while his every nerve is thrilling with responsive fervor. "Do you like it in the higher or lower key best? May Bennet sings it in sharps; but I like flats best—don't you?"
"You sing of love almost as if you felt it, Cicely," he whisperstentatively. "Sappho could not have put more expression into her dying lay than you did just now into that 'Adieu.'"
"I like mournful music," she says, her fingers wandering silently over the keys.
"Yes; your songs always tell of death and parting and broken faith—blighted blossoms."
"'Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.' So says the poet, Jack; and, you see, my life is so full of bright and pleasant things, so happy and commonplace, that, when I sing, I like to wander in soul among the royally afflicted."
"You are happy, Cicely?" he asks wistfully, laying his hot hand with a timid appealing touch on her straying fingers. "You want nothing in your life?"
"Nothing, Jack—nothing. What could I want more than I have?" she answers, in a mild Sunday-school tone of reproof. "Heaven has laden me with benefits; I have had few crosses."
"Well, I have not the same complaint, goodness knows!" he says, moving away sullenly.
Occasionally he meets Lady Saunderson in society, where she is now beginning to take a prominent lead, the term of her sojourn in Coventry having been summarily curtailed by the rumor that she is going to give a big ball, which brings young ladies to their senses and fills the dowagers' bosoms with Christian feelings toward the beautiful culprit; but Jack and she do not speak to each other again until one evening, riding home, his horse dead-beat after two hard runs, he hears a gay clear voice address him in the gloom—a voice that brings the blood to his face and sets his pulses throbbing.
"Is the road wide enough for you and me to walk abreast, Jack Everard?"
He looks up and sees that she has reined in at a cross-road, and is waiting to join him.
"May I ride by your side as far as the Park gates? I am quite alone—my husband is dining with the Hussars at Kelvick."
"I shall be happy to escort you, Lady Saunderson," he answers stiffly.
"Dear, dear!" cries Pauline, with a free careless laugh. "So we are riding the high horse still! Get down, Jack, get down; the animal does not suit you in the least. Get down, and let us be friends again. I always liked you, Jack—always."
"We need not try to analyze the nature of your attachment, Lady Saunderson. I think I ought to understand it perfectly now."
"I doubt if you do," she says, with a slight break in her voice, her small gloved hand caressing his horse's steaming shoulder. "You never judged me fairly, Everard. With you I was always either an angel or an offspring of Jezebel, whereas I am but just something of an ambitious, selfish, yet not wholly heartless woman. It—it cost me a pang, I can tell you, to treat you as I did. But something told me I should not make you happy, or you me; and I am more sure of it even now than I was then. And you, dear boy, is it not so with you?" she asks, leaning forward until her breath fans his face, her great dark eyes, half wistful, half contemptuous, lifted to his averted ones. "Have you not learned to thank Providence for your escape?"
"Yes, Pauline," he answers gravely, "I have indeed—and from my heart."
"Good boy, good boy. So we can cry quits. Give me your hand. What? Are you afraid to touch me? What harm can I do you, Jack? You have sowed your wild oats, and I am a respectable British matron; we—we couldn't flirt now even if we tried, could we? But we could be friends and comforting neighbors, and sometimes, in the long winter evenings ahead, if you should feel the sanctity of your fireside a little overpowering, if the flannel petticoats, the soup-societies, the cardinal virtues, should prove a little oppressive, why, you could steal up to me and distend your lungs with the breath of frivolity, freedom, and—"
"Lady Saunderson," he says huskily, struggling to resist the spell she is weaving about him, "I—I do not understand what you mean."
"No? Then come up to the Park and dine with me to-night, and I'll tell you. We—we can't flirt, you know; but we can sit and watch the young moon rise from behind Broom Hill while we talk over the giddy days of our youth. My husband will be so glad to see you; he is most anxious that we should be friends, and would even go the length of offering you an apology for past unpleasantness, only he does not know how you would receive it. Come, Jack—come!"
They are just outside the Rectory gates, from which a party are issuing for a late practice—Cicely, with a roll of music, two or three of her sisters, and a tall curate carrying a lantern, which he suddenly lifts, hearing the horses hoofs, thus revealing to the astonished group Everard's disturbed face within a foot of Lady Saunderson's, cool and undaunted, her hand still resting familiarly on the pommel of his saddle. The curate looks away hastily from the evil tableau, but Cicely bows gravely, and then moves on up the winding hill at the top of which her father's church is picturesquely situated.
Everard reins in, and looks after them with frowning brow; his companion also turns round in her saddle, laughing tantalizingly.
"Which is it to be, Jack? The broad smooth road that leads to destruction and the Park, or the narrow briery path—"
"I'll follow the light. Good-night, Lady Saunderson," he says quickly, wheeling his horse round.
"The light!"—her voice comes back to him mockingly through the gloom. "Take care,mon cher; the curate is swinging it rather knowingly to-night."
On the following morning, when Everard appears at the Rectory, he finds the household in a state of anxious commotion. The bishop is coming the next day, and Lady Emily has been called upon to provide an elaborate breakfast for thirty guests at desperately short notice.
Jack is in every one's way, of course—in the way of the rector, receiving a deputation of church-wardens in his study, in the way of the servants' brooms and dusters, in the way of his hostess, sorting out her best glass and china, superintendingsoufflés, andmayonnaises.
"You are not hunting to-day, are you, Jack?" she says, with a sigh of irritation which she cannot repress, when a handsome cut-glassdecanter slips from his meddlesome fingers to the floor. "What a pity! The day is perfect, is it not?"
"I dare say you wish I were, Lady Emily," he answers, with an awkward laugh; "but, unfortunately for you, it's a blind day. I wonder where Cicely is; I have been looking for her everywhere. She asked me to get her some ferns a few days ago; and I don't know if they're the right sort."
"Cicely?"—briskly. "I think she's gone down to the church to practice the newTe Deum. I have not seen her for some time; you'll surely find her there, or up at the school-house."
"No; I've tried both unsuccessfully. Old Crofts said she had returned home. I can't imagine where she has hidden herself."
However, some five minutes later he runs her to earth in the old day-nursery, where she has taken refuge from the prevailing bustle to copy some music.
"May I come in?" he asks wistfully. "Shall I be as much in the way here as I seem to be everywhere else, Cicely?"
"Not it you sit quite still and do not expect to be entertained," she answers composedly. "I have to make out five copies of this wretchedTe Deumbefore afternoon practice. Oh, dear, I do wish amateur organists would be content with Mozart, Haydn, and Co., and not force their compositions on the public! It is weary work."
"How neatly you do it! What clever fingers you have, Miss Deane!" he says, throwing himself into a chair, and leaning his arms on the table.
She puts a slim finger to her lips in warning reply.
Twenty minutes pass by in profound silence. Everard takes up a pen, for which he finds swift employment. To his horror, the young man becomes aware that he has been illustrating the margin of one of Miss Deane's finished copies with skeleton hunting-sketches, adding arms and legs to the crotchets and quavers, giving features to the open notes.
"What are you trying to do, Jack?" she asks, leaning across the table to reach a book, and steadying herself with the help of his bent shoulder.
"Trying to do?" he repeats, one hand quickly veiling the work of desecration, the other imprisoning his companion's. "I am trying to make love to you, Cicely. Is it any good?"
For an instant she remains motionless; then she snatches her hand from his shoulder as if it had been stung, crimsons to the roots of her hair, and says, her voice quivering with pain and anger—
"Jack Everard, how—how dare you make me an answer like that? You know how I dislike flippant speeches of the kind."
"Flippant!" he answers hotly. "I did not mean it to be so. Nobody as much in earnest as I am could be flippant. I love you, Cicely Deane, and, though I know I am not worthy of you, I ask you to be my wife on my knees, if you like. Do you think I am in earnest now?"
"Yes," she says, panting a little, and raising her eyes, gleaming, wrathful, defiant, to his eager face. "I believe you are in earnest; and I wish you to understand that I am in earnest too, thoroughly in earnest, when I beg of you, Jack Everard, if you value my esteem,my friendship, never to speak to me on such a subject or in that tone. It—it is eminently painful and distasteful to me."
"Thank you, Miss Deane; you—you speak to the point. I will not incur the risk of losing your esteem and friendship ever again, you may be sure. Good-morning."
He walks from the room without another word, down the stairs and out of the house, forgetting to take his hat and stick from the hall. He stands for a moment leaning against the garden gate, his blue eyes moist, his lips quivering with pain and cruel disappointment, a heavy shower falling on his uncovered head.
At that moment Lady Saunderson's brougham flashes past. She looks out and gives him a brilliant smile, half questioning, half pitying, a smile that goads him to a feeling of impotent desperation.
"I am a lucky fellow—by the powers I am!" he mutters fiercely, with clinched fists.
"Jack, Jack, where are you going? Where's your hat? What's the matter?"
Little Emily Deane's astonished voice recalls him to his senses. He puts up his hand to his sleek dripping head and retraces his steps mechanically, Emily trotting by his side.
"Is there anything the matter with you, Jack? You look so hot and funny! Have you been fighting with Cissy?—for she looks so funny too. Her face is like fire, she would scarcely speak to me, and, when I leaned over her, I saw she was crying like anything."
"Crying?" he says quickly. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. She didn't want me to notice, and pushed me away quite crossly; but I saw great fat tears splashing down on the music she was copying, and swelling out the notes. Did you say anything to annoy her? Cissy never cries, you know—not even when she had two big teeth pulled out, or when she was reading the death of Little Nell. Bill says she's the dryest girl he ever met."
Everard stands for a moment hesitating, hat in hand; then he walks back quickly and stealthily to the room where Cicely sits, her face hidden on her outstretched arms, shedding the bitterest, most shamefaced tears of her life. The poor child does not doubt but that she betrayed her secret to him from whom she would have guarded it at the cost of her life, and that he, actuated by a sense of pitiful kindness, resolved to assure her happiness at the expense of his own.
She feels sore, wounded, insulted, all the sunshine gone from her sky. She knows that she can never again look with anything but shame and pain into the bright face she loves so well, never again listen in peace to the only voice that can ever reach her heart. She knows she has lost her lover, her friend, her self-respect, at one blow; and the cross she is called upon thus suddenly to bear seems too heavy for her slight shoulders.
At this crisis Everard steals in softly, closing the door, drops upon his knees by her side, put his arms round her neck, his face close to hers, and whispers eagerly, before she can repulse him—
"Don't cry, don't cry, Cissy darling! I was a fool, a presumptuous fool, to think you could ever learn to—to care for me. What woman could love me, I should like to know? Forget my presumption,dear, and, when I am gone, remember me only as the friend of your childhood, the boy whom you loved as a brother—nothing more."
"You are—are going—where?" she asks, weakly trying to free herself from his clasp.
"I do not know yet—anywhere—anywhere far away from you. Will you give me a kiss, Cissy, to let me know you bear me no ill-will—a farewell kiss, dear? 'It may be for years, and it may be forever,'et cætera—you can not grudge me that."
He gently lifts the shielding arm and puts his lips to her shrinking face. She shivers slightly, and raises her heavy eyes with a sort of piteous protest to his. He kisses away the tears from her eyelashes, whispering mournfully the single word—
"Farewell."
They remain for a few moments locked in each other's arms.
"Love," he says, at last, "won't you say farewell?"
Her lips part, her breath comes quickly, she tries to speak, but all sound dies in her throat.
"Cissy, Cissy, can't you speak? I am waiting. Is it so hard to say the word 'Farewell,' little friend?"
"Yes, yes," she stammers, "it is hard. Let me go, Jack—let me go! I—I will say it presently—presently—presently."
"I am in no great hurry to hear it, dear; it is such a wailing sort of word—it has the ring of death. Yet I can not go until you say it."
"You are stifling me!" she says passionately. "Let me go, let me go; I can not breathe!"
"Say 'Farewell!'"
He waits, waits on patiently; but she never says it.
"Six for me—all Christmas-cards—hurrah, hurrah! Three for you, Aunt Jo; two for you, Robert; none for you, Mr. Armstrong; none for you, Hal."
It is Christmas-time, nearly two years since the Lefroys have left Nutsgrove. The boys are spending the festive season at Leamington. Mr. Armstrong has also reluctantly accepted Miles Darcy's pressing invitation, for these meetings are painful to him. Although his lost wife's name is never mentioned, yet there is always a suggestion of her existence in the old lady's depressed flurried manner, and in her anxiety to propitiate him and seem at ease in his presence; moreover, Lottie, who has cast aside all her delicacy and is growing up a plump rosy-cheeked lass, at times is so like her unfortunate sister that he turns away his eyes from her with a sense of sore repugnance.
"Two letters for me, Goggles? Then hand them over at once."
"Here they are, Bob. One of them is a bill, and the other is from foreign parts. What a lot of postmarks it has, to be sure! Whom is it from, Bob?"
He takes up the letter carelessly, then drops it with a quick exclamation.
Miss Darcy, who is seated beside him at the breakfast-table, turns suddenly. Her eyes fall on the upturned address; she springs to her feet with a cry.
"At last—at last! Quick, Robert, quick—open it, my boy!"
But Robert rises deliberately, his face white and set, walks over to the fire, and thrusts the unopened letter into the blazing coal. His aunt stares for a second paralyzed, then rushes forward to snatch it out; but she is stopped by Robert, whose strong young arms pinion hers powerless to her side. She struggles fiercely, and then appeals to Armstrong, who is staring in much astonishment at the extraordinary scene.
"Tom—Tom Armstrong, save it, save it! For the love of Heaven, save it! It's from her—from your unfortunate wife! Oh, save it!"
Without a moment's hesitation he thrusts his hand into the fire, burning himself smartly; but he is too late—all that he rescues is a quivering sheet that crumbles to ashes in his grasp. Miss Darcy bursts into tears; she turns to Robert, her voice husky with bitterness and anger.
"Heaven will punish you—oh, Heaven will punish you, you wicked, heartless boy, for this morning's deed! Christmas morning, the morning of peace on earth and love and forgiveness, when that poor wandering sinner, probably weary of the ways of sin, thought she might reach your heart of stone—she, Robert Lefroy, who crept to your bedside, when you were thought to be dying of an infectious fever, and nursed you night and day! Oh, Heaven will punish you for this!"
"I can not help it," Robert sullenly replies. "I have done this before, and so has my sister Pauline, and I will do it again and again."
"Leave my house, leave my house, all of you! I will have no feasting here. This to me is a day of mourning, not of rejoicing. Thomas Armstrong, you came to me to-day against your will, I know. I thank you for your goodness in so humoring an old woman; but you may go now. I will not ask you to come here again. Good-by, good by! You are a just, generous, and honest man, and have treated me and mine well; but I wish I had never seen your face. I do not want to see it any more. The object of my life is taken from me to-day. I have no further motive in dragging out my weary life, or in struggling to—"
"My dear lady," breaks in Armstrong gently. "There is no reason for you to take so hopeless a view of the case; the disaster is not irretrievable. You will probably hear from—from your niece again."
But Miss Darcy, heedless of the interruption, goes on, in whining soliloquy—
"I loved her, I loved her! She was to me as my own child; her first cry was uttered in my arms, and I wanted to save her from eternal death, to bring her here and on her knees to receive your pardon, Thomas Armstrong, and then to take her away with me to some quiet corner of the world, where she could live down the memory of her sin and spend her days in preparation to meet her Judge. But my hope is gone. Something tells me that we shall never hear of her again, that she will sink too low for even a voice from heaven to reach her in the mist of coming death. We shall never hear of her again—never! Go from me now, all of you; you can say nothing, do nothing, to comfort me. Go and leave me to my grief!"
They obey her silently. Robert takes his brother back with him to town, where they dine with some military acquaintances. Lottie spends a merry evening at the house of a neighboring school-friend, winding up with snap-dragon and an impromptu dance. Armstrong, returning home to a solitary dinner, is met at the station by Everard, who carries him off to Broom Hill, where he is most heartily welcomed by its new mistress, the late Miss Cicely Deane, who makes a most charming hostess, and her husband the happiest man in the parish. The whole party from the rectory spend the day with the bride and bridegroom; and late in the evening, when the young people are tired of romping and laughing, Cicely sings some sweet old-fashioned carols breathing of love and fireside peace, and the music of her rare voice brings to Armstrong's hardened heart a softening touch; he thinks with gentleness, almost with pity, of her who has wronged him past retrieval.
But Miss Darcy's forebodings prove true; no other letter comes from across the sea, and Adelaide's name is not mentioned again.
Twoyears more go by. The Lefroys, though enjoying both health and prosperity, are no longer banded together in family union as in days of yore. Lady Saunderson, whose social engagements are increasing day by day, is spending the winter and early spring in Rome; Robert is with his regiment at Sheffield, Hal on board a training-ship at Portsmouth, and Lottie finishing her education in an advanced collegiate academy in South Kensington. They are all doing well in the world, and growing out of the passionate attachment they once had for their old home, which still remains desolate and untenanted.
One night, Armstrong takes Lottie and a school-friend to the theater.
"You have enjoyed yourself, my dear?" he asks, when he is taking them home.
"Oh, I don't think I ever enjoyed anything so much in my life before! Feel my handkerchief, Mr. Armstrong. Wouldn't you think I had soaked it in a tub of water? And I'm sure Susie Arthur's sobs were quite heartrending. Oh, we've enjoyed ourselves tremendously."
"It was quite too awfully touching. Thank you so much, Mr. Armstrong, for bringing us," chimes in the sensitive Miss Arthur.
"I'm so glad we decided on 'Jo,' instead of 'Hamlet.' Shakespeare is such a grind sometimes; isn't he, Susie? And now, if we knew some kind friend who would take us to see the Kendals, I think we should die happy, shouldn't we Susie?"
And Lottie lifts her round bonny face, framed in a white hood, appealingly to Armstrong, who smiles negatively and turns away his head. The brougham stops, and with a sigh the two blooming school-girls descend, and Armstrong drives back to his hotel in Piccadilly, where, after knocking about a few billiard-balls, he lights a cigar and strolls out again. This time he unconsciously wends his way eastward, his mind absorbed in a semi-political,semi-commercial speculation in which he is much interested, having invested a large sum of money and allowed his name to appear at the head of the list of directors. Heedless of time or distance, he walks on, with knitted brow and absorbed senses, until he is vigorously recalled to reality by a grimy hand making a snatch at his watch-chain, which, however, he is expert enough to rescue; but the would-be thief wriggles himself out of his grasp. On looking round he finds that he has strayed into the back slums of Shoreditch, into a regular labyrinth of reeking streets, dark lanes, and courts, from which egress seems almost impossible. He seeks in vain for a policeman to direct him, makes inquiries right and left, but receives only slangy, insulting, and sometimes almost threatening answers. At last he turns to a weather-beaten motherly-looking old lady presiding over a sugar-stick stall at a corner of a lane, who responds by throwing her arms protectingly around him, and murmuring words soothing but tipsy toned.
"Losh yer way, did shye, me love? Mile-En' Road, to b'shure; bring ye there insh jiffy. Come 'long, come 'long, me lamb! Mile-En' Road—insh jiffy"—leading him at the same moment to the open door of a public-house opposite.
He tries laughingly to shake her off; but she clings to him with a grasp of iron. Being unwilling to use her roughly, he is about to put his hand into his pocket to purchase freedom, when a sudden drunken sortie from the house in question hurls them both off the footpath and effects his purpose. The row soon looks rather alarming, people crowding from all parts, and the night becomes hideous with shrieks and imprecations. Armstrong stands by, watching a scene to which he was well accustomed in his earlier days, until he notices that two policemen, pluckily trying to restore order, are getting rather badly handled; then he begins pushing his way to give them help, when an unexpected backward movement of the crowd obliges him to retreat, and a woman, who has been feebly struggling to get away, is thrown heavily against his shoulder, where she lies without movement. He throws his strong arm around her and plows his way to an open hall door a few yards further down, where he leans panting for a moment against the wall.
"Are you hurt?" he asks gently; but, as she makes no answer, he raises the hanging head, and the dismal yellow light of a gas-jet in the street outside falls on the face of Adelaide Armstrong—a face livid, worn, ghastly, from which the bloom and life of youth have fled.
Armstrong does not recognize her in the least; nevertheless he remains gazing with a startled fascination into the unconscious face until she opens her heavy eyes and looks straight into his.
"Thomas Armstrong!" she says dreamily.
"Great Heaven," he cries, "is it you?"
He starts back, shaking her from him; she sways, tries to save herself, and is on the point of falling when he puts out his hand, and she grasps it feverishly.
"I—I think I must have been crushed a little in the crowd; I feel faint," she says gaspingly. "Will you—help me up to my room? It is in the next house to this." Then, seeing that he hesitates, sheadds, with a hard laugh, "You can take a bath—wash off my touch—afterward, you know."
Gravely he puts out his arm, and they toil slowly and silently up the rotting evil-smelling stairway to a garret furnished with one chair, a table, and a litter in one corner, dimly suggesting a bed. She sinks upon the chair exhausted.
"There is a bit of candle on the table. If you have a match, will you strike it?"
He obeys her mechanically. When the dismal tallow light reveals the bare hideousness of the room she leans her arms on the table and looks full into his stern face with unabashed, and, to him, crime-hardened glance.
"How well you wear, Thomas Armstrong! How strong and big and full of life you are! It gives me breath to look at you."
"You are ill?" he says abruptly.
"Ill! Well, I am not exactly in what you call robust health; I haven't been for many a day. I wish I could get into the consumptive hospital. A woman on the landing below me, a French-polisher, said she'd try to get me in when she came back from a job in the country; she has been a long time away."
"You are alone?"
"Yes; he left me three weeks ago to attend some Newmarket meeting, and he has not returned since. I suspect he doesn't mean to do so either, though he has left an old portmanteau in my charge. I—I am not what you call a cheerful or fascinating companion for any man—am I? You—you would not like to escort me down Regent Street, would you, Mr. Armstrong?"
He answers not a word.
"Do you know, I passed my brother Robert Lefroy in the Strand a week ago. When I uttered his name he sprung off the footpath to avoid my touch, and jumped into a passing hansom, as if to get out of the very air I was breathing; he looked almost ill when he saw me. You bore the shock better; but then you are made of stronger stuff than he, and, besides, you sprung from the depths into which I have sunk. You are acclimatized. Won't you sit down? I haven't a second chair; but the corner of the table near the door will bear your weight."
"Have you no one to help you? Are you destitute?" he asks, bringing out his words with a jerk.
"He left me seven-and-sixpence when he went away, saying he would be back in a few days. I have had nothing since; and yet he knew I was dying and friendless. I wrote to my sister Lady Saunderson when I first landed, and asked her, for the love of Heaven, for the sake of the same mother who bore us, to give me help, to let me die somewhere out of this hole of pestilence and crime; but she never answered my letter." She stops, then says, with a peevish querulous gesture, "Thomas Armstrong, why don't you say something to me, instead of staring as if I were a ghost, a ghoul?"
"What can I say, woman?" he answers roughly. "What words are needed to emphasize the retribution of your sin to me? If you want money I will give it to you as freely as I would to any needy sufferer, as freely as I will give you pity and pardon; but whyshould I seek to moralize on your pitiful fate, to reproach you when Heaven has so terribly avenged my wrongs?"
"Heaven?" she interrupted, with a touch of the old fire in her thin wailing voice. "Where is Heaven? Heaven exists only when one is young and happy and healthy, free from care and sorrow when the sun is shining and the blood warm with hope and youth and love; with a body worn with disease, gnawed with want, and a soul sick with the sight of pain and misery and sin that never can be relieved, who can feel that there is a heaven? Ah, who can believe in heaven then, I ask? Come to my bedside every day Thomas Armstrong, with Bible, bell, and candle, whisper words of hope, of promise in my dying ears, and yet, if you speak with the tongue of an angel, and not of a man, you will not be able to lift the shroud from my soul, nor kindle one spark of heaven-born fire in my breaking heart. I defy you—I defy you!"
"Yet I will try."
"Too late, too late—you come too late!" she murmurs, her voice dying away in a dry choking sob.
He tries to utter some hackneyed refutation, but the commonplace words die on his lips, and a heavy silence follows as his eyes, in which all wrath and repugnance have now made way for pain and pity infinite, rest on the cowering wreck of womanhood whom he has loved with a love that comes to men of his metal only once in a life.
An angry curse, followed by a woman's coarse laugh, breaks the stillness. There is the sound of stumbling footsteps on the stairs, and the next moment the door is burst open, and a tall, gaunt-looking man, past the prime life, with dark gleaming eyes, and a thin chiseled face scarred with the ravages of fast living and squalid dissipation, stands on the threshold.
"Adelaide"—he speaks in a sweet thrilling voice that sounds so incongruous coming from the hard sensual mouth—"are you here? Quick, my girl—give me those deeds I left behind. I'm off to Antwerp in half an hour. Infernal run of luck throughout! I'll write for you when—Eh, whom have you here? Who is this?"—starting back with lowering brow when he catches sight of Armstrong's flaming face.
"I'll introduce you," says Addie rising quickly and turning to her husband. "This is, I believe, the only member of our estimable family whose acquaintance you have not yet made. My father, Colonel Lefroy—Mr. Armstrong of Kelvick."
But, before the words have left her mouth, Colonel Lefroy, with an angry oath, has disappeared, and is stumbling frantically down the stairs.
For fully two minutes Armstrong, with dazed face, remains staring at the spot where he stood; then he turns slowly to Addie.
"Is that—that man your father?" he asks.
She nods bitterly.
"You have been living with him lately?"
"I have lived with him ever since I left you—four years ago."
"Since you left me—since you left me!" he repeats stupidly. "And—and your lover—where is he? What did you do with him?
"My lover?"—a faint flush stealing into her own cheek. "Whatdo you mean, Thomas Armstrong? Something insulting, I—I suppose. Well, I do not care; I have not much feeling left now—not enough blood in my veins to resent a sting, a blow from you as I once did. My lover!"
"Yes, I repeat, your lover—the man you loved before you knew me, with whom you sailed to Melbourne in the 'Chimborazo' four years ago—your cousin, Teddy Lefroy."
To this statement she makes no reply whatever; her head sinks forward on her outstretched arm. After waiting a moment, his blood on fire, his every nerve quivering, he leans over her, thinking she has fainted; but he sees that her eyes are wide open and tearless, and that there is a strange smile on her pinched mouth.
"Go away, go away!" she cries querulously. "Can't you let me die in peace? I am so tired—so tired of you all—of husbands, lovers, father, brothers, sisters. Oh, go away—go away, all of you! I want peace."
"Adelaide," he says sharply, using her name for the first time. "you must answer me—you must speak. Did you sail to Melbourne with your cousin as his wife?"
"How—how dare you ask me such a question?"
"I have dared, and I will dare again and again, until you answer me."
"No," she says fiercely, "I did not! How could I do such a thing when I was your wife? I have not seen my Cousin Teddy Lefroy since I was a girl of sixteen. I heard he married, four years ago, a barmaid of some theater-restaurant, and went to Australia with her—that is all I know about him. And now—now will you go? You have done your worst, have offered me the grossest insult a husband could offer a wife. Will you follow my father?"
Armstrong draws a mighty breath, and passes his hand over his brow with a scared helpless gesture. He walks to the window, which he pulls open, thrusts his hot head out into the night, and then comes back to the table, and, leaning over the sick girl, asks, in a choking whisper:
"Why did you do it—why did you do it, Adelaide, my wife? Why did you make me, your brothers and sisters, believe that you—you were worthless—oh, why—in Heaven's name, why?"
"I don't know—I can't remember; it was so long ago! What does it matter now?" she answers wearily, her eyes closing. "I feel so ill, so tired. I can't talk any more."
He drops upon his knees by her side, and brings his head on a level with hers.
"Adelaide, Adelaide, by the love I once bore you, by all the pain, the trouble you brought into my life, I implore you to answer me!"
The quivering earnestness of the appeal rouses her. She rubs her eyes and struggles into an upright position.
"Let me think—let me think—it is so long ago. I did not let them believe anything but the truth. I wrote almost at once—before I went to America—and told them whom I was with and why I was going. I wrote many times to Robert and to Pauline, with letters inclosed for Aunt Jo and the others; but they never answered me."
"They burned them unread. Oh, Heaven forgive them, Heaven forgive them, for I can not!" he mutters hoarsely.
But Addie betrays no indignation, no surprise, no regret.
"Did they?" she murmurs indifferently. "That would explain."
"Addie, Addie, why did you leave me—my love, my love?"
A flush spreads over her face and a sparkle comes to her eye which almost brings back her youth again.
"Why did I leave you? Because you had learned to hate, to despise me, because I—we were all making your life unbearable, and I saw no other means by which I could free your home, give you back peace; and I left you because I loved you—loved you, oh, a thousand times better than you ever loved me!"
"Oh, child, child!"
"I saw you had learned to hate, to loathe me—I saw it in your eyes when—when—I asked you for that wretched money."
"The money—the money," he says eagerly, "you wanted for your father?"
"Yes; he had forged a check for that amount, hoping to be able to refund the money before his crime should be discovered; but, finding he could not, and seeing ruin staring him in the face, he came to me, having heard that I had married a rich man, and asked me to get it from you. I promised, and for a whole week I tried—tried to ask you; but I found I couldn't; and when at the end of the week I told him so, he held a loaded revolver to his temple and was about to blow his brains out on the spot. But I wrenched the weapon from his hand, ran straight into the house, and got the money from you. I got the money; but—but it cost me home—home, happiness, youth and life. I knew that we two could carry on the farce no longer, that the same roof could not shelter us again. I told my father that you had discarded me forever and that he must keep me with him. We sailed for America, and lived a hand-to-mouth existence there in the lowest haunts of Bohemianism among gamblers, sharpers, reprobates of all nations and classes until two months ago when we came home. What a life—what a life! I—I tried to get away many times, to support myself free from him; but my health was against me from the start, so I had to stay with him or starve, though he tried to shake me off often enough. I—I could have taken a—a husband before my looks went; but I didn't—I didn't because I thought the husband I had left would come to rescue me. I lived on this hope for two years; every morning when I woke I said, 'He will come to-day; he must come to-day!' I longed for you, Tom, I hungered for you, and I hoped—always hoped—for every night you used to whisper to me in my sleep that you were coming to take me home again. But you never came—ah, you never came! And then the great longing for you died in me; disease was wasting me. I became torpid, callous, and I thought no more of you or—Tom, Tom, what is the matter? Why, you are crying! How funny to see a man cry! You are sorry for me? Don't, please, don't—I—I don't like it."
He is kneeling on the ground before her, sobbing wildly, kissing her feet, the hem of her dress, moaning forth inarticulate cries of love, remorse, pain, and pity infinite.
She leans forward, and looks at him for a few moments with cold sparkling eyes; then her better nature reasserts itself, and, after making several unsuccessful efforts to rouse him, she lays her hot thin fingers on his swelling neck and whispers in his ear—
"Tom, listen! I—I am hungry, dear. I have not eaten anything to-day."
He rises to his feet, stares at her with filmy eyes, then seizes her in his arms, with her pale face strained to his breast, and carries her down the rotting stairway, away from darkness, pain, and want, to warmth, peace, care, and love unsleeping, that are to be her lot while her days are yet of earth.
Armstrong wants at first to carry off his wife to Madeira, Nice, Algiers; but the doctors are of unanimous opinion that her strength is not sufficient to bear the fatigue of such a journey, but that later on in the season, after a few months' rest and care, she may be moved to a warmer climate.
"Then tell me—tell me," he asks feverishly, "what I am to do for her in the meantime. I—I want to cure her quickly; what am I to do?"
"Take her where she wishes to go, within moderate distance; give her whatever she fancies, keep up her spirits, keep her mind undisturbed, and do not leave her much alone."
"But medicine—what medicine is she to get? Surely you will give her something to strengthen her?" pleads Armstrong, an icy chill creeping over him at the vagueness of the prescription.
"Certainly, certainly," says Dr. Gibson, one of the greatest authorities on lung disease in the United Kingdom, seizing a sheet of paper and writing hurriedly; "but remember, Mr. Armstrong, that good nutriment, complete rest of mind and body, and cheerful companionship will do more to restore your wife's health than all the medicine in an apothecary's shop."
With despair in his heart and a smile on his lips Armstrong kneels by his wife's chair, tells her that he has medical leave to take her away from the close crowded city, and asks whither she would like to go—to Brighton, Bournemouth, Cheltenham, the Isle of Wight?
Addie shakes her listless head—she has no wish, no fancy in the matter—wherever Tom wishes; she does not mind—it is all the same to her. He sighs noiselessly; everything is the same to her now, all the life, the vivacity, the eager pretty willfulness that charmed him, are gone. She lies all day with half-closed eyes, silent, torpid, enjoying the good things he heaps upon her with a dumb animal appreciation, taking no interest in any earthly matter, asking no questions or explanations, unmoved by—seemingly unaware of—the yearning anguished eyes that never leave her face, the hot and restless hands that always hover round her, anticipating her lightest want, holding to her lips food and medicine, from which she turns aside with childish distaste.
"But you used to like the sea, don't you remember, Addie?" he pleads wistfully. "Bournemouth is, I believe, a lovely place. I think we'll decide on it."
"Yes," she answers indifferently. "But I hope it is not too far away; I feel so tired still. Are there not primroses in the room?Hold them to my face, Tom. How sweet they are—primroses! Why, it must be spring again, and the grove all yellow with them! And the white lilac too must be coming into bloom outside the school-room window."
"Addie," he says quickly, "would you like me to take you home, my darling?"
"Yes," she answers slowly, drawing a long breath; "I think I should like to spend another spring at home. Yes, take me home."
Home! Is she going home only to die? is the question ever present to the penitent and remorseful husband.
Mr. Armstrongtelegraphs to Mrs. Turner, who is still in occupation at Nutsgrove, and the old place is dusted, swept, aired, and garnished. One soft April day Addie comes home again, and walks heavily through the familiar rooms, leaning on her husband's arm. Almost from the first day he notices a change for the better in her appearance and manner; her step gains firmness, her appetite improves; and one night, about a week after their return, when she stands by the drawing-room window, her face buried in a bunch of lilac-blossoms, there comes a radiance to her eyes, an eager softness to her voice that thrills him with wild hope.
"I'm glad we came home; aren't you, Tom?" she whispers, nestling close to him. "Let us never go away again. I'm tired of wandering; and I shall get well here, I know, without going to Madeira or Algiers. I feel to-night that I should like to live. Things are coming back to me again that I once loved—you amongst them, Tom. I am growing fond of you again—oh, yes, life is coming to me with the summer, and even good looks also! Look!" she cries gayly, pulling him to a glass and putting her face close to his swarthy one. "Am I not almost pretty to-night? You'd know me if you met me in the streets now, wouldn't you, Tom? Why, I want only a little red in my cheeks, a few freckles on the bridge of my nose, and some curliness in my fringe to be myself again—quite my old self again!"
"You can do without the fringe, young lady," says Armstrong, who has the old-fashioned male distaste for the modern style of hairdressing, pushing back two or three lank locks from her forehead.
"No, no; I must have a fringe, a regular Skye-terrier one too; my face looks so bald and hard without it. It's all that horrible cod-liver oil that's coming out in my hair and making it so thin and straight! I won't take any more of it, Tom; it's of no use trying to force me," she adds, with a low soft laugh that comes to him like a strain of sweetest music. "I'm going to get well without it—you'll see."
Later on that evening she startles him by alluding for the first time to her sisters and brothers, quite casually too, as if the thought of them had just struck her incidentally. She has been looking over an old photographic album, and, stopping before one of her sisters—Pauline—she says lightly—
"The others, Tom? They are doing well, aren't they—dear old Jo and Polly and Bob and Hal and Lottchen?"
"Yes, yes, love," he answers eagerly. "They are all doing well, every one of them."
"I should like to see them again," she says, after a pause—"to see them all together sitting here around me as in the old days. Will you ask them to come, Tom?"
"Yes, if you think you feel quite—quite rested enough, dear, after your journey," he answers reluctantly.
So they all come in haste and trembling, Lady Saunderson giving up two important appointments with Worth, traveling up from London with her elder brother, who seems paralyzed by the news that he had heard so unexpectedly.
Armstrong interviews them first, and in a few stern impressive words gives them the outline of their sister's story, and warns them against exciting her with ill-timed emotion in her critical state.
So with smiling faces and cheerful words they welcome her back as if she has been on a pleasant trip. There are no passionate tears, no hysterical kisses, no entreaties for forgiveness, no remorseful appeals. The meeting which Armstrong has been dreading opens and closes in sunshine, and Addie, propped up with cushions, greets them with glistening unresentful glance and gentle loving words.
"How well they look! Don't they, Tom?" she cries, turning a beaming face to her husband, against whose shoulder she is resting. "And, take them all in all, what a good-looking family they are to be sure! Why, Lottie, what an immense girl you have grown! And you've got all the doubtful bloom of my teens, roses, flesh, and freckles—all. I don't suppose it would become me to call you pretty, would it? Polly, what a swell you are—just like pictures fromLe Follet. But your face hasn't changed much. Bob, I won't believe that mustache is genuine until I pull it. Come over here, sir, and face the light at once! What! You are afraid? I thought so," she adds with a gay laugh, as the boy turns away swiftly to hide the burning tears he can not keep from his eyes.
They sit together all the afternoon, chatting merrily, recalling old family jokes, making plans for the future; and, when tea is brought in, Addie insists on pouring it out, her husband's large hand covering hers and guiding the spout to the tea-pot. She makes them all drink her health, declares she has never felt so well and happy in her life, and sends a loving message to poor Aunt Jo, who is laid up with rheumatic fever, which Lottie promises to deliver without fail. Then she makes engagements to spend a week with Bob at Aldershot during the maneuvers, to visit Hal at the Naval College, to stop a month at the Park with Pauline, and to take Lottie for a trip abroad during the holidays. Toward evening she seems a little tired; so, at a signal from Armstrong, the family withdraw by degrees, and she sinks into a light doze, from which she awakes with an uneasy start.
"Tom, Tom, where are you?"
"Here, here, where I always am—by your—side, sweetheart."
"They have all gone?"
"Yes, for the present."
She raises herself up, puts her warm arms round his neck, and whispers—
"And now only you—only you to the end!"
Seeing the spasm of pain that crosses his dark face, she turns the sob into a laugh, and, taking a pink anemone from a glass on the table, begins to fray it childishly.
"'Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, plowboy, apothecary—' Apothecary! Oh, you stupid, empty-headed flower—much you know about it! I wish I had a daisy—a big milky-petaled daisy; they always tell the truth—always."
"What did they tell you, love?"
"That I was to marry a gentleman, Tom—a gentleman. I consulted them every day nearly for three weeks before I married you, and they always gave me the same answer. If—if I were going to die—which I have not the slightest intention of doing—I should ask you, Tom, to plant only daisies on my grave."
"I think it would be more to the point," he answers lightly, "if I made the request of you, considering that I am almost twenty years your senior, and that I, not you, my dear, was the object of the pointed and persistent compliment."
"Very well then," she says, laughing; "I'll plant your grave all with big daisies, Tom Armstrong, gentleman, and I'll come and water them every evening—when you're dead."