THE REVELATION.
Next morning, at breakfast, Captain Danton was back; but Reginald's
handsome face, and easy flow of conversation, were missing. George
Howard, it appeared, was going on a skating excursion some miles off,
that day, and had prevailed on Mr. Stanford to remain and accompany him.
Rose felt about as desolate as if she had been shipwrecked on a desert
island. There was a pang of jealousy mingled with the desolation, too.
Emily Howard was a sparkling brunette, a coquette, an heiress, and a
belle. Was it the skating excursion or Emily's big black eyes that had
tempted him to linger? Perhaps Emily would go with them skating, and
Rose knew how charming piquant little Miss Howard was on skates.
It was a miserable morning altogether, and Rose tormented herself in
true orthodox lover-like style. She roamed about the house aimlessly,
pulling out her watch perpetually to look at the hour, and sighing
drearily. She wondered at Kate, who sat so placidly playing some song
without words, with the Scotch baronet standing by the piano, absorbed.
"What does she know of love?" thought Rose, contemptuously. "She is as
cold as a polar iceberg. She ought to marry that knight of the woeful
countenance beside her, and be my lady, and live in a castle, and eat
and sleep in velvet and rubies. It would just suit her."
Doctor Danton came up in the course of the forenoon, to make a
professional call. His patient was better, calmer, less nervous, and
able to sit up in a rocking-chair, wrapped in a great shawl. Grace
persuaded him to stay to luncheon, and he did, and tried to win Miss
Rose out of the dismals, and got incontinently snubbed for his pains.
But there was balm in Gilead for Rose. Just after luncheon a little
shell-like sleigh, with prancing ponies and jingling bells, whirled
musically up to the door. A pretty, blooming, black-eyed girl was its
sole occupant; and Rose, at the drawing-room window, ran out to meet
her.
"My darling Emily!" cried Rose, kissing the young lady she had been
wishing at Jericho all day, "how glad I am to see you! Come in! You will
stay to dinner, won't you?"
"No, dear," said Miss Howard, "I can't. I just came over for you; I am
alone, and want you to spend the evening. Don't say no; Mr. Stanford
will be home to dinner with George, and he will escort you back."
"You pet!" cried Rose, with another rapturous kiss. "Just wait five
minutes while I run up and dress."
Miss Howard was not very long detained. Rose was back, all ready, in
half an hour.
"Would your sister come?" inquired Miss Howard, doubtfully, for she was
a good deal in awe of that tall majestic sister.
"Who? Kate? Oh, she is out riding with Sir Ronald Keith. Never mind her;
we can have a better time by ourselves."
The tiny sleigh dashed off with its fair occupants, and Rose's depressed
spirits went up to fever heat. It was the first of March, and March had
come in like a lamb--balmy, sunshiny, brilliant. Everybody looked at
them admiringly as the fairy sleigh and the two pretty girls flew
through the village, and thought, perhaps, what a fine thing it was to
be rich, and young, and handsome, and happy, like that.
Miss Howard's home was about half a mile off, and a few minutes brought
them to it.
The two girls passed the afternoon agreeably enough at the piano and
over new books, but both were longing for evening and the return of the
gentlemen. Miss Howard was only sixteen, and couldn't help admiring Mr.
Stanford, or wishing she were her brother George, and with him all day.
The March day darkened slowly down. The sun fell low and dropped out of
sight behind the bright, frozen river, in a glory of crimson and purple.
The hues of the sunset died, the evening star shone steel-blue and
bright in the night-sky, and the two girls stood by the window watching
when the gentlemen returned. There was just light enough left to see
them plainly as they drew near the house, their skates slung over their
arms; but Mr. George Howard came in for very little of their regards.
"Handsome fellow!" said Miss Howard, her eyes sparkling.
"Who?" said Rose, carelessly, as if her heart was not beating time to
the word. "Reginald?"
"Yes; he is the handsomest man I ever saw."
Rose laughed--a rather forced laugh, though.
"Don't fall in love with my handsome brother-in-law, Em. Kate won't like
it."
"They are to be married next June, are they not?" asked Emily, not
noticing the insinuation, save by a slight colour, which the twilight
hid.
"So they say."
"They will be a splendid-looking pair. George and all the gentlemen say
that she is the only really beautiful woman they ever saw."
"Tastes differ," said Rose with a shrug. "I don't think so. She is too
pale, and proud, and cold, and too far up in the clouds altogether. She
ought to go and be a nun; she would make a splendid lady-abbess."
"She will make a splendid Mrs. Stanford."
"Who?" said Mr. Stanford himself, sauntering in. "You, Miss Howard?"
"No; another lady I know of. What kind of a time had you skating?"
"Capital," replied her brother; "for an Englishman, Stanford knocks
everything. Hallo, Rose! who'd have thought it?"
Rose emerged from the shadow of the window curtains, and shook hands
carelessly with Master George.
"I drove over for her after you went," said his sister, "come, there's
the dinner-bell, and Mr. Stanford looks hungry."
"And is hungry," said Mr. Stanford, giving her his arm. "I shall
astonish Mrs. Howard by my performance this evening."
They were not a very large party--Mr. and Mrs. Howard, their son and
daughter, Mr. Stanford and Rose--but they were a very merry one. Mr.
Stanford had been in India once, three years ago, and told them
wonderful stories of tiger hunts, and Hindoo girls, and jungle
adventures, and Sepoy warfare, until he carried his audience away from
the frozen Canadian land to the burning sun and tropical splendours and
perils of far-off India. Then, after dinner, when Mr. Howard, Senior,
went to his library to write letters, and Mrs. Howard dozed in an
easy-chair by the fire, there was music, and sparkling chit-chat, racy
as the bright Moselle at dinner, and games at cards, and fortune-telling
by Mr. Howard, Junior; and it was twelve before Rose thought it
half-past ten.
"I must go," said Rose, starting up. "I had no idea it was so late. I
must go at once."
The two young ladies went upstairs for Miss Danton's wraps. When they
descended, the sleigh was waiting, and all went out together. The bright
March day had ended in a frosty, starlit, windless night. A tiny moon
glittered sparkling overhead, and silvering the snowy ground.
"Oh, what a night!" cried Emily Howard. "You may talk about your blazing
India, Mr. Stanford, but I would not give our own dear snow-clad Canada
for the wealth of a thousand Indies. Good-night, darling Rose, and
pleasant dreams."
Miss Howard kissed her. Mr. Howard came over, and made an attempt to do
the same.
"Good-night, darling Rose, and dream of me."
Rose's answer was a slap, and then Reginald was beside her, and they
were driving through the luminous dusk of the winter moonlight.
"You may stop at the gate, my good fellow," said Mr. Stanford to the
driver; "the night is fine--we will walk the rest of the way--eh, Rose?"
Rose's answer was a smile, and they were at the gates almost
immediately. Mr. Stanford drew her hand within his arm, and they
sauntered slowly, very slowly, up the dark, tree-shaded avenue.
"How gloomy it is here!" said Rose, clinging to his arm with a delicious
little shiver; "and it is midnight, too. How frightened I should be
alone!"
"Which means you are not frightened, being with me. Miss Rose, you are
delightful!"
"Interpret it as you please. What should you say if the ghost were to
start out from these grim black trees and confront us?"
"Say? Nothing. I would quietly faint in your arms. But this is not the
ghost's walk. Wasn't it in the tamarack avenue old Margery saw it?"
"Let us go there!"
"It is too late," said Rose.
"No it is not. There is something delightfully novel in promenading with
a young lady at the witching hour of midnight, when graveyards yawn, and
gibbering ghosts in winding-sheets cut up cantrips before high heaven.
Come."
"But Mr. Stanford--"
"Reginald, I tell you. You promised, you know."
"But really Reginald, it is too late. What if we were seen?"
"Nonsense! Who is to see us! And if they do, haven't brothers and
sisters a right to walk at midnight as well as noonday if they choose?
Besides, we may see the spectre of Danton Hall, and I would give a
month's pay for the sight any time."
They entered the tamarack walk as he spoke--bright enough at the
entrance, where the starlight streamed in, but in the very blackness of
darkness farther down.
"How horribly dismal!" cried Rose, clinging to him more closely than
ever. "A murder might be committed here, and no one be the wiser."
"A fit place for a ghostly promenade. Spectre of Danton, appear! Hist!
What is that?"
Rose barely suppressed a shriek. He put his hand over her mouth, and
drew her silently into the shadow.
As if his mocking words had evoked them, two figures entered the
tamarack walk as he spoke.
The starlight showed them plainly--a man and a woman--the woman wrapped
in a shawl, leaning on the man's arm, and both walking very slowly,
talking earnestly.
"No ghosts those," whispered Reginald Stanford. "Be quiet, Rose; we are
in for an adventure."
"I ought to know that woman's figure," said Rose, in the same low tone.
"Look! Don't you?"
"By--George! It can't be--Kate!"
"It is Kate; and who is the man, and what does it mean?"
Now Rose, maliciously asking the question, knew in her heart the man was
Mr. Richards. She did not comprehend, of course, but she knew it must be
all right; for Kate walked with him there under her father's sanction.
Mr. Stanford made no reply; he was staring like one who cannot believe
his eyes.
Kate's face shown in profile was plainly visible as they drew nearer.
The man's, shrouded by coat-collar and peaked cap, was all hidden, save
a well-shaped nose.
"It is Kate," repeated Mr. Stanford, blankly. "And what does it mean?"
"Hush-sh!" whispered Rose; "they will hear you."
She drew him back softly. The two advancing figures were so very near
now that their words could be heard. It was Kate's soft voice that was
speaking.
"Patience, dear," she was saying; "patience a little longer yet."
"Patience!" cried the man, passionately. "Haven't I been patient?
Haven't I waited and waited, eating my heart out in solitude, and
loneliness, and misery? But for your love, Kate, your undying love and
faith in me--I should long ago have gone mad!"
They passed out of hearing with the last words. Reginald Stanford stood
petrified; even Rose was desperately startled by the desperate words.
"Take me away, Reginald," she said trembling. "Oh, let us go before they
come back."
Her voice aroused him, and he looked down at her with a face as white as
the frozen snow.
"You heard him?" he said. "You heard her? What does it mean?"
"I don't know. I am frightened. Oh, let us go!"
Too late! Kate and her companion had reached the end of the tamarack
walk, and were returning. As they drew near, she was speaking; again the
two listeners in the darkness heard her words.
"Don't despair," she said earnestly. "Oh, my darling, never despair!
Come what will, I shall always love you--always trust you--always--"
They passed out of hearing again--out of the dark into the lighted end
of the walk, and did not return.
Reginald and Rose waited for a quarter of an hour, but they had
disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared.
"Take me in," reiterated Rose, shivering. "I am nearly frozen."
He turned with her up the walk, never speaking a word, very pale in the
light of the stars. No one was visible as they left the walk; all around
the house and grounds was hushed and still. The house door was locked,
but not bolted. Mr. Stanford opened it with a night-key, and they
entered, and went upstairs, still in silence. Rose reached her room
first, and paused with her hand on the handle of the door.
"Good-night," she said shyly and wistfully.
"Good-night," he answered, briefly, and was gone.