CHAPTER XI.
After this affair happened Richard visited me more openly, and my pupils, when by chance they met him, were charmed with the stranger. He was only known as “Mr. Richard.” “Call me that, Agnes, I hate the name of Bristed. Introduce me to your friends as Mr. Richard,” he said, and I had done so.
About this time he explained satisfactorily, to my credulous mind, the cause of his sudden retreat from Bristed Hall, and gave me reason to believe that the statements his brother had made concerning him were untrue and evil in design.
“My brother, as you have surely discovered, Agnes, is a cold, proud man, and as I was not his equal in wealth or position he selected an heiress, both old and disagreeable, whom he designed me to marry. Your youth and beauty he intended to appropriate to himself. I feared if I made him acquainted with my purpose to unite myself to you he would frustrate all my wishes, and when I discovered that he knew of my plans, I determined to forestall him by making you my wife that very night. I intended to have gone through the form of marriage, which the next day could have been legalized, for I feared the influence of his wealth and position upon your unsophisticated mind.
“However, you refused to trust me, and I left your room maddened by anger and the fear of losing you.
“I met my brother in the hall-way; he said Herbert was ill, and I accused him of trying to injure the boy that he might defraud me. Sharp words passed between us. I left him, and in blind haste mounted my horse, thinking I would ride over to N., a distance of some twenty miles, to get the clergyman of the parish, an intimate friend of mine, to drive with me to the Hall and perform the important ceremony.
“The ride I accomplished in a few hours, but I found my friend absent from home. The excitement and disappointment, added to the severe cold to which I was exposed, broke me down, and I was taken suddenly ill. When I recovered, I returned to Bristed Hall only to find my priceless bird flown, and no clue to be had to her whereabouts.
“As to the tale about Herbert, that is all a _ruse_; he is not my son, and only distantly connected with either of us. He is heir to a considerable estate, and Mr. Bristed is managing so that upon Herbert’s decease (and poor child, he cannot live long) the inheritance will fall to his lot.”
Such was his version of the story, and as I loved him I believed it willingly.