CHAPTER XVIII.TURNED OUT-OF-DOORS.

CHAPTER XVIII.TURNED OUT-OF-DOORS.

Mrs. Judson drew back from her niece, gathering the folds of her dress around her, as if she feared those quivering little hands might impart shame to her person.

“Oh!” she said, with bitter emphasis, “lost, is it? When? where?”

“I don’t know. It was in my bosom when I was taken ill; but after that I remember nothing about it.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the aunt, and the unpleasant gleam broke fiercely into her eyes; “and as you lost the certificate,” she added, “what was the clergyman’s name who married you?”

“I don’t remember. He told me that the paper was right, and I never troubled myself to read it. Butheknows, of course.”

“Oh, of course,heknows,” echoed the proud woman, disdainfully. “But the place? In what place was this wonderful marriage performed, did you say?”

“In Philadelphia.”

“Well, the street—in what street did this clergyman, with the forgotten name, live?”

“I never knew,” answered the weeping girl; “but, oh! aunt, do not doubt me; for, as Heaven is my witness, we were married.”

“Oh, yes! the proofs are conclusive,” answered the lady, with bitter irony.

“Aunt, aunt, do believe me!” cried the girl, moving forward on her knees, and holding up her clasped hands. “Hewill tell you how true it is;hewill get another certificate. He cannot be away much longer; let me live with you till he comes.”

“When he comes to own you, in my presence, you shall have shelter here. Till then, never enter my door again. Go now, and live, if you can, on this falsehood and its shamelessness.”

“Oh! aunt, aunt!” cried the wretched girl, “I am his wife—I am his wife! Look at me; do I blush? Do my eyes sink? Aunt, I am innocent of wrong as you are, and as truly a wedded wife as you ever were!”

It was painful to see the cold, stern pride which rose and swelled in that woman’s bosom, lifting her form haughtily upward, and quenching the color from her lips on which the last cruel words of that interview were forming.

“Leave the room; leave my house forever!” she cried, pointing to the door. “Go, hide your infamy, and tell those romances among your proper associates.”

“I shall neither disgrace nor use any name with which you have been connected,” she said in a voice so steady and low that it fell upon the ear with singular impressiveness. “In my misfortunes you will find no record which can wound your pride or bring disgrace on the name of my mother. I have no permission to use the name of my husband; but he will return, and standing by my side call on you to retract the insults you have heaped upon me. Until then I will perish in the streets, rather than look you in the face or darken your door.

“Oh, aunt!” she continued with a burst of feeling, “you have been very cruel to me, terribly cruel in your doubts, for I am honorably married and as honestly loved as you ever were.”

Mrs. Judson drew herself back with haughty uprightness, and pointed her finger at the girl.

“You compare yourself with me!” she exclaimed,—“withme?”

“No,” answered the girl, standing before her aunt, pale and proud as herself, but with a pride that had a relenting dignityin it, that sprung from the womanliness of her nature so fearfully outraged,—“no, aunt, I do not compare myself with you,—not for a moment. Let that Great Being make the comparison, who looks upon us both as we stand: you, a rich, proud woman, turning your sister’s child with insult into the street; I, a poor, friendless girl, feeble from sickness, tortured with anxiety, without shelter, and without a human being to care for me—let God make the comparison between you and me. Let him judge us two!”

The young woman turned, as she spoke, and walked from the room, leaving her aunt standing like a statue in the clear gas-light. The passion of that young creature had paralyzed her. She, so unused to contradiction, so imperial in her household, had she lived to be thus braved? What right had that miserable wanderer to call upon the God thatsheprofessed to worship? She would not have been more astonished had a pauper knelt beside her on the velvet-clad steps from which she monthly communed, in the most fashionable church of the city.

Thus astounded and overwhelmed, the woman stood, till the quick footsteps of her niece were lost upon the stairs; then, with a deep breath, she sat down to compose herself, and even had recourse to an enamelled vinagrette that lay upon the toilet-table, so much had her nerves been shaken. All this had the desired effect, and in a few moments the lady was arranging the golden acorns over her dark tresses, gathering them in clusters where the silver threads lay thickest, and stood longer than usual, regarding herself in the mirror with a sort of wonder that any one had dared to address such words to her.

Directly a waiting-woman entered in answer to a touch that she had given to the bell. “Rachel, there was a girl came here just now; did you see her? is she gone?”

“No, madam, she fainted in the front-hall—fell down like a dead creature before any one had time to show her out the other way.”

“And where is she now?”

“Lying there white as snow, and as cold as ice; the girls have been doing their best, but they cannot bring her to.”

One gentle impulse did arise in the woman’s bosom, as she heard this. She seized the flask that had just soothed her own nerves, and moved a step toward the door; but a cold after-thought drew her back. “The girl might speak, might proclaim her relationship before the household if she were brought to consciousness under that roof. Nay, so little did she seem to be ashamed of the past, the girl might proclaim her pauper condition before the assembled menials.” She laid down the flask and turned to the glass, a little paler than before, but with marvellous self-possession.

“Send for a carriage, and have her carried to the nearest dispensary; there should be plenty of doctors there; it is their duty to see to such persons.”

“But she is insensible, madam,” persisted the waiting-woman, who had some feeling.

“That is nothing,” was the reply; “we cannot leave a strange girl lying in the hall.”

The woman went out muttering to herself, and with angry moisture in her eyes.

The lady seated herself once more, and began to arrange the lace of her undersleeves with considerable nervousness. Something of human feeling was at work in her bosom, and from time to time she arose and looked out of the window, always with increasing agitation. At last, a carriage drove up; and grasping the silken curtain hard with her hand, she half dragged it over her, afraid to be seen watching. She saw, through the dim light, a group of persons carrying a prostrate form down the steps leading to her own door. The carriage-lamps flashed upon a pale face as it was lifted upward. The woman caught one glance and drew back with a thrill of dismay. The face gleamed upward so deathly in its whiteness that she crept from the window,and cowered down in her sofa-cushions, tormented with the vague fear that the dead was appealing to heaven against her cruelty. For the moment, that proud woman had the sensation of a murderess.

She shook off this uncomfortable sensation, with a great effort walking the floor up and down, and muttering to herself,—

“Bellevue—Bellevue. Another from that place! have they all turned paupers? Thank heaven, however, this girl is gone. I could not have endured another scene like that. I did right; no man or woman can blame me for refusing to be disgraced. How those De Markes haunt me!”

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