CHAPTER XXVIII.
Mrs. Laurens was not a hard woman, but she could not help being very angry with the girl who had deceived her son, and she felt, although she would not have openly admitted it, that she would not be sorry if the accident that the physician was trying to prevent should happen.
“Cecil would not have to take her back to spoil his life further,” she said to herself, and no pity came to her for the girl whose young life was spoiled also by the sin into which her love had led her.
Anger and resentment were too strong to admit sweet pity into her breast.
“I must not wish that she should die, yet that would be the best thing that could happen for her and for us all,” she thought more than once.
So it happened that she took no part in nursing the invalid beyond the mere cold duty calls she made morning and night for the sake of appearances.
But the accident for which she could not help hoping did not occur, owing to the care of the physician, and the good nursing of Phebe. Molly began to get gradually better and to look with hollow, restless orbs for the return of the proud, angry husband who had repudiated and forsaken her when he discovered her treachery.
“Will he never come again, Phebe?” she would moan restlessly when two weeks had passed and neither Doctor Charley nor his brother had returned to London.
“Doctor Laurens will be sure to bring him as soon as he finds him. Try to be patient, dearie,” Phebe would reply, tenderly, but Molly would sob hopelessly, believing that fate had done its worst for her, and that Cecil would never return.
“I can never tell Lady Madelon and her parents the truth now. They would be ashamed of me, they would not acknowledge me,” she thought, with bitter pain, and when Lady Trueheart and her daughter who in common with the rest of the world were ignorant of the tragedy at The Acacias, called to see their young favorite, Molly was so silent anddistraitthat they thought her even sicker than she was, and went away with the gravest apprehension for her life.
Three weeks passed, and Molly was well enough to sit up in her easy-chair, well enough to walk from her bed to the window, but no tidings came from Cecil, nothing but the invariable note that Charley sent every few days, saying simply:
“I am following on his trail, but I have not found him yet!”
“I am following on his trail, but I have not found him yet!”
Oh, that cruel suspense; how it fretted Molly’s heart and nerves; how it maddened her with misery!
“Gracious Heaven! am I not atoning tenfold for my folly?” she sighed over and over in those weary weeks, each one of which seemed longer than a year.
In those days of suspense, illness, and despair, the girl became only a wan shadow of the lovely madcap who had won Cecil Laurens in spite of himself, and made him for almost a year the happiest of men.
The soft hue of happiness faded from her face that had lost all its pretty dimples and childish plumpness;the sweet lips took on an anguished droop, and the plaintive sorrow in the hollow dark eyes was enough to move the hardest heart.
Every day she had a long, hard, hysterical spell of weeping in Phebe’s arms, and the maid declared afterward that these bitter sobs and tears had saved her young mistress from madness or death from a broken heart.
“They kind of relieve her feelings, those tears,” she said, knowingly.
And if she had been as cultured as she was wise, she would have exclaimed with the poet:
“Benign restorer of the soul!Whoever fliest to bring relief,When first we feel the rude controlOf love or pity, joy or grief!”
“Benign restorer of the soul!Whoever fliest to bring relief,When first we feel the rude controlOf love or pity, joy or grief!”
“Benign restorer of the soul!Whoever fliest to bring relief,When first we feel the rude controlOf love or pity, joy or grief!”
“Benign restorer of the soul!
Whoever fliest to bring relief,
When first we feel the rude control
Of love or pity, joy or grief!”
Molly did not know that those tears were saving her, for it seemed as if her heart would burst when she shed them on Phebe’s motherly breast. But they relieved her pent-up agony all the same, and made her calmer and more patient for the rest of each long weary day as it glided slowly into the irrevocable past.