off trying to coax him, and nursed her misery and displeasure in a silence as unbroken as his own. It was dusk when they opened the broken gate hanging on one hinge more like a gap than a guard between the dilapidated fences, and passed up the weed grown path lying by the side of the potato patch and the cabbages, in full view of the windows of the sitting-room. As they came up Edgar's quick eyes saw a figure dressed in grey, with a dead-white face, pass swiftly by the window; and as he knocked at the door he heard an inner door hastily locked. Stories of murderers and maniacs flashed across Adelaide's mind, who also had seen the flitting figure and heard the hasty locking of the inner door. She clung to Edgar tremulously. "Shall we venture in?" she whispered. "Do you desire not?" he asked. your service." "Shall we go farther? I am at She looked at him angrily. The cold politeness of his tone seemed to divorce them more than the rudest anger would have done, and she resented his resentment as an offence which might well annoy her. "No," she said haughtily. me if there is any danger." "We will go in. You can take care of "And if I have to take care of myself?" he asked, with a certain mocking accent that was, to say the least of it, unpleasant. "Your first duty is to me," replied Adelaide with intense insolence and command. Besides, though a coward, she was dead tired at the moment; and of the two fatigue was stronger than fear. Red-armed, red-haired, touzled Jenny opened the door on the two battered dripping strangers standing in the dusk without. She glowered at them as if they had been spirits fashioned by the mist, ghosts of the dead newly risen; or as if they had been brigands and burglars with designs on her own poor savings and her mistress's fabulous hoards. "We have lost our way on the mountains; can you give us shelter?” asked Edgar in that rich voice which was one of his personal charms, and with that indescribable accent of an English gentleman accustomed to command. "I'll ast t' mistress," was Jenny's reply, the door held cautiously ajar. "Jenny!" cried Miss Gryce from some unknown depths, "what's astir? What's to do at the street door? Who are you chattering with? Come away, I say! It's no kind of night to be havering at the street door with a pack of idle vagabones. Come in, I say, and shut up." "We have lost our way on the moor," said Edgar in a louder voice. "Cannot you give us shelter?" And Adelaide's smaller treble added, "You must not shut the door. You must let us in!" At the sound of a woman's voice, Miss Gryce, who had a heart though it had to be somewhat skilfully dug for, came out from the kitchen where she had been spending the last hour in economising the fraction of a farthing, and went to the door to see and judge of these new comers for herself. And Leam upstairs in her own room, standing rigid, struck to stone by her bedside, heard Edgar Harrowby and Adelaide Birkett brought into the house, and preparations set afloat for their fit shelter and reception. Locked in her own room she was left in peace. She was not of much use at any time when practical work was about; and since this strange weakness which had taken such possession of her, she was even of less use than before. Miss Gryce therefore left her to herself, hoping that she slept. But she heard all that happened as clearly as if she had been on the spot. Her senses, sharpened to unnatural activity, told her everything that was said and done, as if no such impediments as closed doors or hindering walls stood between them. She heard all that Edgar said by way of explanation to Miss Gryce; how that they had left the carriage at a certain part of the road to join it again by a short cut over the fell; how that then the mist had come up and enveloped them; and how that they had wandered they knew not how, nor where, nor whence, till they had fallen on this place; she knew how Miss Gryce looked when she took snuff and their measure at the same time; and how Edgar looked-bold, commanding, manful— with Adelaide's fair, impassive face quietly accepting homage as her due and care and protection as her right. And then she heard Adelaide's feet on the stairs, and knew when she was ushered into the room-next her own-where she was to take her rest and forget the fatigues and fears of her adventurous walk. She heard her fretful complaints and peevish bemoanings at the shortcomings of the accommodation, with Jenny's unintelligible replies, which only annoyed her more. She seemed to see as well as hear, and pictured the whole scene visibly-even to Jenny's kneeling on the floor and taking by main force the soaked boots from off the swollen blistered feet. Then the bewailings ceased. Adelaide, comforted by food, slept; and Edgar downstairs waited for a while before he too should take his rest, and forget for a few hours the new chapter of the heart which this walk in the mist had opened for his instruction. It was a chapter that he might have learnt slowly, by quiet unexciting passages ; a thing to grow into like old age, or dyspepsia; or perhaps a thing to never learn, concealed as it would be by habit. But now that he had read, had learnt, he could not forget; and the lines would be on his memory for ever, the text on which his life would be reasoned and transacted from now to the end of time. Ah! Leam Dundas had loved him! Even that flattering, smoothtongued Violet, venal Violet whom he had left so suddenly these seven years ago, mad with jealousy and rage at what he believed to be her treachery-even she had loved him better than this!-but Leam, proud, shy, loyal Leam-Leam, so full of fire, so single-hearted, and so honourable, how she had loved him! Oh that this black spot had never been on her young soul!—that he might have loved her to her life's end, as he had loved her for those few hours, and received from her for all time what she had given him then! So, thinking of Leam, beloved if accursed and abandoned, he fell into a light kind of slumber, sitting by the little window looking on to the broken gate and the rising ground beyond. By this time the moon had risen white and wan. The thin vapour that yet hung about the frosty air was like a silver film of exquisite purity and delicate power, giving that ethereal, almost mournful beauty to everything on which it fell, such as one involuntarily associates with past sorrows and dead loves, with spiritual forms and a life beyond and higher than the coarse material life of the world. The house was as still as the grave. Everyone was in bed except Edgar and Leam; and all were sleeping but Leam. Leam opened her mother's jewel-case. A fancy took her to touch once more the withered leaves of that spray of lemon plant, crumbled now to dust, which Edgar Harrow by had drawn playfully over her face under the cut-leaved hornbeam on the lawn. She took it in her hands ; pressed it against her face; kissed it as if it had life and feeling to respond to her own; then softly unlocked her door and stole downstairs. She would see him once, just once, at a distance, reverently, humbly; not intruding on his notice, only worshipping at a distance at the shrine which she had been too vile to keep as her own. There was no harm in it. She did not imagine that Adelaide was his wife. She took her presence there with him naturally, as that of a favourite friend and companion; and yet if, as she believed, only as a friend and companion, a pang seized her to think how soon he had forgotten her even so far ; and yet, again, what was she that she should not be forgotten? It was right and good that he had set her aside so quickly. It was part of her punishment and she must bear it. Adelaide at the least was free from crime, and Adelaide loved him. Enlightened by her own heart, she knew now that the reason why the rector's daughter had hated her was because she had loved Edgar; her hatred had meant jealousy of his love, not hatred of herself, Leam apart from him. Yes, she loved him; but neither Adelaide nor anyone loved him as did she herself, poor outcast Leam! But she was a leper and he was a king, and the gulf between them was impassable. Yet she must see him just this once more, herself unseen-she must offer for one little moment the voiceless worship of her secret love, and then go back into the darkness for ever-the darkness closing very near about her now! Noiseless as a falling shadow she stole downstairs, and came to the door of the sitting-room where Edgar was. It stood ajar. She pushed it cautiously open, and saw Edgar Harrowby sitting by the window, his head on his hand, dreaming of her. The candle had burnt itself out, only the veiled moonlight streamed over the fell and moor, and cast a pale reflection into the room. It showed his noble head resting on his hand, his face pale and beautiful as a tired god's. That beloved face! What pain and pleasure commingled it was to see him! She felt like one dead come back to earth watching the beloved, unseen of them and unsuspected. He was asleep. He would not feel her; he would not see nor know her; and shrouded as she was in the shadow, he could not recognise her if even he should awake. She must go near to him and do him reverence. He was her god, and she was a sinner kneeling before him. She glided across the room; knelt for a minute by his side, and bent her lips on the hand resting on his knee. Edgar stirred drowsily in his sleep. What was this?—a touch, a perfume, a presence he seemed to remember! Who was there? He started up and roused himself. Did his eyesight mock him? Surely he saw a grey figure steal through the open doorway in the shadow; the scent of lemon-plant was about him; and on his hand-what was this! a tear? whose? But he heard and knew no more. His dreams had given him Leam; only his dreams! Then he sighed and shook himself clear of the haunting thought, and so wearily went upstairs; only a thin partition separating him, sleeping, from Leam Dundas, waking-Leam, who recognised then the fact, which she had not understood before, that he and Adelaide were man and wife. Forgotten, discarded, so soon indeed! Poor Leam! Now for the first time she felt that the bitterness of her punishment almost equalled the shame of her guilt. CHAPTER XXIV. THE DAY OF REST. THE church-clock sounded one, and the land had entered into the Sabbath of its rest; but there was no rest for Leam. She could not go to bed, for she dared not trust herself to sleep even if she could have slept ; and she felt as if she should die of suffocation if she attempted to lie down. She sat in her quiet tense way by the window, looking out on the moonlight and the frosty vapour; and then she turned again to her mother's jewel-case and took out the spray of lemon-plant, now turned to dust like her hopes, her happiness, intending to destroy it for ever; for how should she keep a love relic of Adelaide's husband?—and in taking it out she lifted some of her mother's jewels. That beloved mother! how vividly she remembered her, how passionately she loved her still! Perhaps she loved her even more in that she had committed this crime for her, in that she had sacrificed her life here and her soul hereafter, for the false thought, if the true feeling, of guarding and protecting her. How well she remembered the day when she wore these coral beads-and that when she hung her, Leam's, little neck and arms with these strings of pearls! She heard her say again when her father gave her these golden coins, and when her husband, that false-hearted Sebastian, mockery of a saint, had bought those rubies and those sapphires. For an hour and more Leam handled these jewels to chase away the consciousness of Edgar in memories of her mother; but at last the effort became more than she could bear, and the attempt died out in a sob. As she was putting away the sapphires, she inadvertently touched the secret spring, which had got strained and weakened and of the existence of which she had hitherto been ignorant, and thus dropped the division which hid the back of the case from the ordinary looker-in. There fell forward, with the division, a large and heavy green velvet pocketbook, with the initials V. E. H. embroidered in raised gold-work on the cover. 66 Surprised, she opened the book and came upon letters written in Edgar's handwriting to a certain "beloved Violet ". -a certain Mrs. Harrington whom he called "love," and "life," and "darling wife," and "best beloved;" to a photograph of himself inscribed to his "darling Violet; " to a photograph of Madame-not in weeds-subscribed also darling Violet"; to one of himself and Madame in a confiding attitude together; and to one of Fina, when she was about five months old, with "For her father, Edgar Harrowby," in Madame's handwriting. She read the first letters, half bewildered, scarcely understanding the full meaning of her discovery; not taking in what she read, but seeming to herself to be reading some horrible nightmare story. Then by slow degrees the truth came to her, burning itself into her brain, mounting in crimson to her cheeks; shame, horror, despair, all battling in her poor heart together as she grew to a clear understanding of Madame's shameful secret and Edgar's hidden life. And she she had been really nothing to him!-only a plaything, an occasion like the rest! First Madame, then herself, now Adelaide! Is this the kind of thing men call love? It would seem so, judging from him and from her own father. But it was not what Leam, in the narrow limits of her ignorant purity, cared to dignify by that name. Love was something single, true, and pure; and this! She had no word by which to call it. Neither her experience nor her vocabulary compassed the life and sentiments of such a man as Edgar Harrowby; nor could she understand how, with such a life, such sentiments, could exist any nobleness or manly worth. How could it have been? He, so good and great as he always seemed, how could he have lived this hideous life of falsehood and treachery and deceit ?-pretending love now here, now there, first to one and then to another-pretending what he could not possibly feel! These swift changes, these facile inconstancies, to a girl like Leam, so tenacious and single-hearted, were inexpiable crimes; and in such a to her imagination Edgar Harrowby was-knightly hero, noble saint, a very demigod-utterly incomprehensible. Edgar, when man as |
