THE next morning Carrington called at the Department and announced his
acceptance of the post. He was told that his instructions would be ready
in about a fortnight, and that he would be expected to start as soon as
he received them; in the meanwhile, he must devote himself to the study
of a mass of papers in the Department. There was no trifling allowable
here.
Carrington had to set himself vigorously to work. This did not, however,
prevent him from keeping his appointment with Sybil, and at four o'clock
they started together, passing out into the quiet shadows of Rock Creek,
and seeking still lanes through the woods where their horses walked side
by side, and they themselves could talk without the risk of criticism
from curious eyes. It was the afternoon of one of those sultry and
lowering spring days when life germinates rapidly, but as yet gives no
sign, except perhaps some new leaf or flower pushing its soft head
up against the dead leaves that have sheltered it. The two riders had
something of the same sensation, as though the leafless woods and
the laurel thickets, the warm, moist air and the low clouds, were a
protection and a soft shelter. Somewhat to Carrington's surprise, he
found that it was pleasant to have Sybil's company. He felt towards her
as to a sister--a favourite sister.
She at once attacked him for abandoning her and breaking his treaty so
lately made, and he tried to gain her sympathy by saying that if she
knew how much he was troubled, she would forgive him. Then when Sybil
asked whether he really must go and leave her without any friend whom
she could speak to, his feelings got the better of him: he could not
resist the temptation to confide all his troubles in her, since there
was no one else in whom he could confide. He told her plainly that he
was in love with her sister.
“You say that love is nonsense, Miss Ross. I tell you it is no such
thing. For weeks and months it is a steady physical pain, an ache about
the heart, never leaving one, by night or by day; a long strain on one's
nerves like toothache or rheumatism, not intolerable at any one instant,
but exhausting by its steady drain on the strength. It is a disease to
be borne with patience, like any other nervous complaint, and to be
treated with counter-irritants. My trip to Mexico will be good for it,
but that is not the reason why I must go.”
Then he told her all his private circumstances; the ruin which the war
had brought on him and his family; how, of his two brothers, one
had survived the war only to die at home, a mere wreck of disease,
privation, and wounds; the other had been shot by his side, and bled
slowly to death in his arms during the awful carnage in the Wilderness;
how his mother and two sisters were struggling for a bare subsistence
on a wretched Virginian farm, and how all his exertions barely kept them
from beggary.
“You have no conception of the poverty to which our southern women
are reduced since the war,” said he; “they are many of them literally
without clothes or bread.” The fee he should earn by going to Mexico
would double his income this year. Could he refuse? Had he a right to
refuse? And poor Carrington added, with a groan, that if he alone were
in question, he would sooner be shot than go.
Sybil listened with tears in her eyes. She never before had seen a man
show suffering. The misery she had known in life had been more or less
veiled to her and softened by falling on older and friendly shoulders.
She now got for the first time a clear view of Carrington, apart from
the quiet exterior in which the man was hidden. She felt quite sure, by
a sudden flash of feminine inspiration, that the curious look of patient
endurance on his face was the work of a single night when he had held
his brother in his arms, and knew that the blood was draining drop by
drop from his side, in the dense, tangled woods, beyond the reach of
help, hour after hour, till the voice failed and the limbs grew stiff
and cold. When he had finished his story, she was afraid to speak. She
did not know how to show her sympathy, and she could not bear to seem
unsympathetic. In her embarrassment she fairly broke down and could only
dry her eyes in silence.
Having once got this weight of confidence off his mind, Carrington felt
comparatively gay and was ready to make the best of things. He laughed
at himself to drive away the tears of his pretty companion, and obliged
her to take a solemn pledge never to betray him. “Of course your sister
knows it all,” he said; “but she must never know that I told you, and I
never would tell any one but you.”
Sybil promised faithfully to keep his confidence to herself, and she
went on to defend her sister.
“You must not blame Madeleine,” said she; “if you knew as well as I do
what she has been through, you would not think her cold. You do know how
suddenly her husband died, after only one day's illness, and what a nice
fellow he was. She was very fond of him, and his death seemed to stun
her. We hardly knew what to make of it, she was so quiet and natural.
Then just a week later her little child died of diphtheria, suffering
horribly, and she wild with despair because she could not relieve it.
After that, she was almost insane; indeed, I have always thought she was
quite insane for a time. I know she was excessively violent and wanted
to kill herself, and I never heard any one rave as she did about
religion and resignation and God. After a few weeks she became quiet and
stupid and went about like a machine; and at last she got over it, but
has never been what she was before. You know she was a rather fast
New York girl before she married, and cared no more about politics and
philanthropy than I do. It was a very late thing, all this stuff.
But she is not really hard, though she may seem so. It is all on the
surface. I always know when she is thinking about her husband or child,
because her face gets rigid; she looks then as she used to look after
her child died, as though she didn't care what became of her and she
would just as lieve kill herself as not. I don't think she will ever
let herself love any one again. She has a horror of it. She is much more
likely to go in for ambition, or duty, or self-sacrifice.”
They rode on for a while in silence, Carrington perplexed by the problem
how two harmless people such as Madeleine and he could have been made
by a beneficent Providence the sport of such cruel tortures; and Sybil
equally interested in thinking what sort of a brother-in-law Carrington
would make; on the whole, she thought she liked him better as he was.
The silence was only broken by Carrington's bringing the conversation
back to its starting-point: “Something must be done to keep your sister
out of Ratcliffe's power. I have thought about it till I am tired. Can
you make no suggestion?”
No! Sybil was helpless and dreadfully alarmed. Mr. Ratcliffe came to the
house as often as he could, and seemed to tell Madeleine everything
that was going on in politics, and ask her advice, and Madeleine did not
discourage him. “I do believe she likes it, and thinks she can do some
good by it. I don't dare speak to her about it. She thinks me a child
still, and treats me as though I were fifteen. What can I do?”
Carrington said he had thought of speaking to Mrs. Lee himself, but he
did not know what to say, and if he offended her, he might drive her
directly into Ratcliffe's arms. But Sybil thought she would not be
offended if he went to work in the right way. “She will stand more from
you than from any one else. Tell her openly that you--that you love
her,” said Sybil with a burst of desperate courage; “she can't take
offence at that; and then you can say almost anything.”
Carrington looked at Sybil with more admiration than he had ever
expected to feel for her, and began to think that he might do worse
than to put himself under her orders. After all, she had some practical
sense, and what was more to the point, she was handsomer than ever, as
she sat erect on her horse, the rich colour rushing up under the warm
skin, at the impropriety of her speech. “You are certainly right,” said
he; “after all, I have nothing to lose. Whether she marries Ratcliffe or
not, she will never marry me, I suppose.”
This speech was a cowardly attempt to beg encouragement from Sybil,
and met with the fate it deserved, for Sybil, highly flattered at
Carrington's implied praise, and bold as a lioness now that it was
Carrington's fingers, and not her own, that were to go into the fire,
gave him on the spot a feminine view of the situation that did not
encourage his hopes. She plainly said that men seemed to take leave of
their senses as soon as women were concerned; for her part, she could
not understand what there was in any woman to make such a fuss about;
she thought most women were horrid; men were ever so much nicer; “and
as for Madeleine, whom all of you are ready to cut each other's throats
about, she's a dear, good sister, as good as gold, and I love her with
all my heart, but you wouldn't like her, any of you, if you married her;
she has always had her own way, and she could not help taking it; she
never could learn to take yours; both of you would be unhappy in a week;
and as for that old Mr. Ratcliffe, she would make his life a burden--and
I hope she will,” concluded Sybil with a spiteful little explosion of
hatred.
Carrington could not help being amused by Sybil's way of dealing with
affairs of the heart. Emboldened by encouragement, she went on to attack
him pitilessly for going down on his knees before her sister, “just as
though you were not as good as she is,” and openly avowed that, if she
were a man, she would at least have some pride. Men like this kind of
punishment.
Carrington did not attempt to defend himself; he even courted Sybil's
attack. They both enjoyed their ride through the bare woods, by the
rippling spring streams, under the languid breath of the moist south
wind. It was a small idyll, all the more pleasant because there was
gloom before and behind it. Sybil's irrepressible gaiety made Carrington
doubt whether, after all, life need be so serious a matter. She had
animal spirits in plenty, and it needed an effort for her to keep them
down, while Carrington's spirits were nearly exhausted after twenty
years of strain, and he required a greater effort to hold himself up.
There was every reason why he should be grateful to Sybil for lending
to him from her superfluity. He enjoyed being laughed at by her. Suppose
Madeleine Lee did refuse to marry him! What of it?
“Pooh!” said Sybil; “you men are all just alike. How can you be so
silly? Madeleine and you would be intolerable together. Do find some one
who won't be solemn!”
They laid out their little plot against Madeleine and elaborated it
carefully, both as to what Carrington should say and how he should say
it, for Sybil asserted that men were too stupid to be trusted even in
making a declaration of love, and must be taught, like little children
to say their prayers. Carrington enjoyed being taught how to make a
declaration of love.
He did not ask where Sybil had learned so much about men's stupidity. He
thought perhaps Schneidekoupon could have thrown light on the subject.
At all events, they were so busily occupied with their schemes and
lessons, that they did not-reach home till Madeleine had become anxious
lest they had met with some accident. The long dusk had become darkness
before she heard the clatter of hoofs on the asphalt pavement, and she
went down to the door to scold them for their delay. Sybil only laughed
at her, and said it was all Mr. Carrington's fault: he had lost his way,
and she had been forced to find it for him.
Ten days more passed before their plan was carried into effect. April
had come. Carrington's work was completed and he was ready to start on
his journey. Then at last he appeared one evening at Mrs. Lee's at the
very moment when Sybil, as chance would have it, was going out to
pass an hour or two with her friend Victoria Dare a few doors away.
Carrington felt a little ashamed as she went. This kind of conspiracy
behind Mrs. Lee's back was not to his taste.
He resolutely sat down, and plunged at once into his subject. He was
almost ready to go, he said; he had nearly completed his work in the
Department, and he was assured that his instructions and papers would be
ready in two days more; he might not have another chance to see Mrs. Lee
so quietly again, and he wanted to take his leave now, for this was what
lay most heavily on his mind; he should have gone willingly and gladly
if it had not been for uneasiness about her; and yet he had till now
been afraid to speak openly on the subject. Here he paused for a moment
as though to invite some reply.
Madeleine laid down her work with a look of regret though not of
annoyance, and said frankly and instantly that he had been too good
a friend to allow of her taking offence at anything he could say; she
would not pretend to misunderstand him. “My affairs,” she added with a
shade of bitterness, “seem to have become public property, and I would
rather have some voice in discussing them myself than to know they are
discussed behind my back.”
This was a sharp thrust at the very outset, but Carrington turned it
aside and went quietly on:
“You are frank and loyal, as you always are. I will be so too. I can't
help being so. For months I have had no other pleasure than in being
near you. For the first time in my life I have known what it is to
forget my own affairs in loving a woman who seems to me without a fault,
and for one solitary word from whom I would give all I have in life, and
perhaps itself.”
Madeleine flushed and bent towards him with an earnestness of manner
that repeated itself in her tone.
“Mr. Carrington, I am the best friend you have on earth. One of these
days you will thank me with your whole soul for refusing to listen to
you now. You do not know how much misery I am saving you. I have no
heart to give. You want a young, fresh life to help yours; a gay, lively
temperament to enliven your despondency; some one still young enough to
absorb herself in you and make all her existence yours. I could not do
it. I can give you nothing. I have done my best to persuade myself that
some day I might begin life again with the old hopes and feelings, but
it is no use. The fire is burned out. If you married me, you would
destroy yourself You would wake up some day, and find the universe dust
and ashes.”
Carrington listened in silence. He made no attempt to interrupt or to
contradict her. Only at the end he said with a little bitterness: “My
own life is worth so much to the world and to me, that I suppose it
would be wrong to risk it on such a venture; but I would risk it,
nevertheless, if you gave me the chance. Do you think me wicked for
tempting Providence? I do not mean to annoy you with entreaties. I have
a little pride left, and a great deal of respect for you. Yet I think,
in spite of all you have said or can say, that one disappointed life may
be as able to find happiness and repose in another, as to get them by
sucking the young life-blood of a fresh soul.”
To this speech, which was unusually figurative for Carrington, Mrs. Lee
could find no ready answer. She could only reply that Carrington's life
was worth quite as much as his neighbour's, and that it was worth so
much to her, if not to himself, that she would not let him wreck it.
Carrington went on: “Forgive my talking in this way. I do not mean to
complain. I shall always love you just as much, whether you care for
me or not, because you are the only woman I have ever met, or am ever
likely to meet, who seems to me perfect.”
If this was Sybil's teaching, she had made the best of her time.
Carrington's tone and words pierced through all Mrs. Lee's armour as
though they were pointed with the most ingenious cruelty, and designed
to torture her. She felt hard and small before him. Life for life,
his had been, and was now, far less bright than hers, yet he was her
superior. He sat there, a true man, carrying his burden calmly, quietly,
without complaint, ready to face the next shock of life with the same
endurance he had shown against the rest. And he thought her perfect!
She felt humiliated that any brave man should say to her face that he
thought her perfect! She! perfect! In her contrition she was half ready
to go down at his feet and confess her sins; her hysterical dread of
sorrow and suffering, her narrow sympathies, her feeble faith, her
miserable selfishness, her abject cowardice. Every nerve in her body
tingled with shame when she thought what a miserable fraud she was; what
a mass of pretensions unfounded, of deceit ingrained. She was ready to
hide her face in her hands. She was disgusted, outraged with her own
image as she saw it, contrasted with Carrington's single word: Perfect!
Nor was this the worst. Carrington was not the first man who had thought
her perfect. To hear this word suddenly used again, which had never been
uttered to her before except by lips now dead and gone, made her brain
reel. She seemed to hear her husband once more telling her that she was
perfect. Yet against this torture, she had a better defence. She had
long since hardened herself to bear these recollections, and they
steadied and strengthened her.
She had been called perfect before now, and what had come of it? Two
graves, and a broken life! She drew herself up with a face now grown
quite pale and rigid. In reply to Carrington, she said not a word, but
only shook her head slightly without looking at him.
He went on: “After all, it is not my own happiness I am thinking of but
yours. I never was vain enough to think that I was worth your love, or
that I could ever win it. Your happiness is another thing. I care so
much for that as to make me dread going away, for fear that you may
yet find yourself entangled in this wretched political life here, when,
perhaps if I stayed, I might be of some use.”
“Do you really think, then, that I am going to fall a victim to Mr.
Ratcliffe?” asked Madeleine, with a cold smile.
“Why not?” replied Carrington, in a similar tone. “He can put forward
a strong claim to your sympathy and help, if not to your love. He can
offer you a great field of usefulness which you want. He has been very
faithful to you. Are you quite sure that even now you can refuse him
without his complaining that you have trifled with him?”
“And are you quite sure,” added Mrs. Lee, evasively, “that you have not
been judging him much too harshly? I think I know him better than you.
He has many good qualities, and some high ones. What harm can he do me?
Supposing even that he did succeed in persuading me that my life could
be best used in helping his, why should I be afraid of it?”
“You and I,” said Carrington, “are wide apart in our estimates of Mr.
Ratcliffe. To you, of course, he shows his best side. He is on his good
behaviour, and knows that any false step will ruin him. I see in him
only a coarse, selfish, unprincipled politician, who would either drag
you down to his own level, or, what is more likely, would very soon
disgust you and make your life a wretched self-immolation before his
vulgar ambition, or compel you to leave him. In either case you would
be the victim. You cannot afford to make another false start in life.
Reject me! I have not a word to say against it. But be on your guard
against giving your existence up to him.”
“Why do you think so ill of Mr. Ratcliffe?” asked Madeleine; “he always
speaks highly of you. Do you know anything against him that the world
does not?”
“His public acts are enough to satisfy me,” replied Carrington, evading
a part of the question. “You know that I have never had but one opinion
about him.”
There was a pause in the conversation. Both parties felt that as yet no
good had come of it. At length Madeleine asked, “What would you have me
do? Is it a pledge you want that I will under no circumstances marry Mr.
Ratcliffe?”
“Certainly not,” was the answer; “you know me better than to think
I would ask that. I only want you to take time and keep out of his
influence until your mind is fairly made up. A year hence I feel certain
that you will think of him as I do.”
“Then you will allow me to marry him if I find that you are mistaken,”
said Mrs. Lee, with a marked tone of sarcasm.
Carrington looked annoyed, but he answered quietly, “What I fear is
his influence here and now. What I would like to see you do is this: go
north a month earlier than you intended, and without giving him time
to act. If I were sure you were safely in Newport, I should feel no
anxiety.”
“You seem to have as bad an opinion of Washington as Mr. Gore,” said
Madeleine, with a contemptuous smile. “He gave me the same advice,
though he was afraid to tell me why. I am not a child. I am thirty years
old, and have seen something of the world. I am not afraid, like Mr.
Gore, of Washington malaria, or, like you, of Mr. Ratcliffe's influence.
If I fall a victim I shall deserve my fate, and certainly I shall have
no cause to complain of my friends. They have given me advice enough for
a lifetime.”
Carrington's face darkened with a deeper shade of regret. The turn which
the conversation had taken was precisely what he had expected, and both
Sybil and he had agreed that Madeleine would probably answer just in
this way.
Nevertheless, he could not but feel acutely the harm he was doing to
his own interests, and it was only by a sheer effort of the will that he
forced himself to a last and more earnest attack.
“I know it is an impertinence,” he said; “I wish it were in my power to
show how much it costs me to offend you. This is the first time you
ever had occasion to be offended. If I were to yield to the fear of
your anger and were to hold my tongue now, and by any chance you were
to wreck your life on this rock, I should never forgive myself the
cowardice. I should always think I might have done something to prevent
it. This is probably the last time I shall have the chance to talk
openly with you, and I implore you to listen to me. I want nothing for
myself If I knew I should never see you again, I would still say the
same thing. Leave Washington! Leave it now!--at once!--without giving
more than twenty-four hours' notice! Leave it without letting Mr.
Ratcliffe see you again in private! Come back next winter if you please,
and then accept him if you think proper. I only pray you to think long
about it and decide when you are not here.”
Madeleine's eyes flashed, and she threw aside her embroidery with an
impatient gesture: “No! Mr. Carrington! I will not be dictated to! I
will carry out my own plans! I do not mean to marry Mr. Ratcliffe. If I
had meant it, I should have done it before now. But I will not run away
from him or from myself. It would be unladylike, undignified, cowardly.”
Carrington could say no more. He had come to the end of his lesson. A
long silence ensued and then he rose to go. “Are you angry with me?”
said she in a softer tone.
“I ought to ask that question,” said he. “Can you forgive me? I am
afraid not. No man can say to a woman what I have said to you, and be
quite forgiven. You will never think of me again as you would have done
if I had not spoken. I knew that before I did it. As for me, I can only
go on with my old life. It is not gay, and will not be the gayer for our
talk to-night.”
Madeleine relented a little: “Friendships like ours are not so easily
broken,” she said. “Do not do me another injustice. You will see me
again before you go?”
He assented and bade good-night. Mrs. Lee, weary and disturbed in mind,
hastened to her room. “When Miss Sybil comes in, tell her that I am not
very well, and have gone to bed,” were her instructions to her maid, and
Sybil thought she knew the cause of this headache.
But before Carrington's departure he had one more ride with Sybil,
and reported to her the result of the interview, at which both of them
confessed themselves much depressed. Carrington expressed some hope that
Madeleine meant, after a sort, to give a kind of pledge by saying that
she had no intention of marrying Mr. Ratcliffe, but Sybil shook her head
emphatically:
“How can a woman tell whether she is going to accept a man until she is
asked?” said she with entire confidence, as though she were stating the
simplest fact in the world. Carrington looked puzzled, and ventured to
ask whether women did not generally make up their minds beforehand on
such an interesting point; but Sybil overwhelmed him with contempt:
“What good will they do by making up their minds, I should like to
know? of course they would go and do the opposite. Sensible women don't
pretend to make up their minds, Mr. Carrington. But you men are so
stupid, and you can't understand in the least.”
Carrington gave it up, and went back to his stale question: Could Sybil
suggest any other resource? and Sybil sadly confessed that she could
not. So far as she could see, they must trust to luck, and she thought
it was cruel tor Mr. Carrington to go away and leave her alone without
help. He had promised to prevent the marriage.
“One thing more I mean to do,” said Carrington: “and here everything
will depend on your courage and nerve. You may depend upon it that Mr.
Ratcliffe will offer himself before you go north. He does not suspect
you of making trouble, and he will not think about you in any way if you
let him alone and keep quiet. When he does offer himself you will know
it; at least your sister will tell you if she has accepted him. If she
refuses him point blank, you will have nothing to do but to keep her
steady. If you see her hesitating, you must break in at any cost, and
use all your influence to stop her. Be bold, then, and do your best. If
everything fails and she still clings to him, I must play my last card,
or rather you must play it for me. I shall leave with you a sealed
letter which you are to give her if everything else fails. Do it before
she sees Ratcliffe a second time. See that she reads it and, if
necessary, make her read it, no matter when or where. No one else must
know that it exists, and you must take as much care of it as though it
were a diamond. You are not to know what is in it; it must be a complete
secret. Do you understand?”
Sybil thought she did, but her heart sank. “When shall you give me this
letter?” she asked.
“The evening before I start, when I come to bid good-bye; probably next
Sunday. This letter is our last hope. If, after reading that, she does
not give him up, you will have to pack your trunk, my dear Sybil, and
find a new home, for you can never live with them.”
He had never before called her by her first name, and it pleased her
to hear it now, though she generally had a strong objection to such
familiarities.
“Oh, I wish you were not going!” she exclaimed tearfully. “What shall I
do when you are gone?”
At this pitiful appeal, Carrington felt a sudden pang. He found that
he was not so old as he had thought. Certainly he had grown to like her
frank honesty and sound common sense, and he had at length discovered
that she was handsome, with a very pretty figure. Was it not something
like a flirtation he had been carrying on with this young person for the
last month? A glimmering of suspicion crossed his mind, though he got
rid of it as quickly as possible. For a man of his age and sobriety
to be in love with two sisters at once was impossible; still more
impossible that Sybil should care for him.
As for her, however, there was no doubt about the matter. She had grown
to depend upon him, and she did it with all the blind confidence of
youth. To lose him was a serious disaster. She had never before felt
the sensation, and she thought it most disagreeable. Her youthful
diplomatists and admirers could not at all fill Carrington's place. They
danced and chirruped cheerfully on the hollow crust of society, but they
were wholly useless when one suddenly fell through and found oneself
struggling in the darkness and dangers beneath. Young women, too, are
apt to be flattered by the confidences of older men; they have a keen
palate for whatever savours of experience and adventure. For the first
time in her life, Sybil had found a man who gave some play to her
imagination; one who had been a rebel, and had grown used to the shocks
of fate, so as to walk with calmness into the face of death, and to
command or obey with equal indifference. She felt that he would tell her
what to do when the earthquake came, and would be at hand to consult,
which is in a woman's eyes the great object of men's existence,
when trouble comes. She suddenly conceived that Washington would be
intolerable without him, and that she should never get the courage to
fight Mr. Ratcliffe alone, or, if she did, she should make some fatal
mistake.
They finished their ride very soberly. She began to show a new interest
in all that concerned him, and asked many questions about his sisters
and their plantation. She wanted to ask him whether she could not do
something to help them, but this seemed too awkward. On his part he
made her promise to write him faithfully all that took place, and
this request pleased her, though she knew his interest was all on her
sister's account.
The following Sunday evening when he came to bid good-bye, it was still
worse. There was no chance for private talk. Ratcliffe was there, and
several diplomatists, including old Jacobi, who had eyes like a cat
and saw every motion of one's face. Victoria Dare was on the sofa,
chattering with Lord Dunbeg; Sybil would rather have had any ordinary
illness, even to the extent of a light case of scarlet fever or
small-pox than let her know what was the matter. Carrington found means
to get Sybil into another room for a moment and to give her the letter
he had promised. Then he bade her good-bye, and in doing so he reminded
her of her promise to write, pressing her hand and looking into her eyes
with an earnestness that made her heart beat faster, although she
said to herself that his interest was all about her sister; as it
was--mostly. The thought did not raise her spirits, but she went through
with her performance like a heroine. Perhaps she was a little pleased to
see that he parted from Madeleine with much less apparent feeling. One
would have said that they were two good friends who had no troublesome
sentiment to worry them. But then every eye in the room was watching
this farewell, and speculating about it. Ratcliffe looked on with
particular interest and was a little perplexed to account for this too
fraternal cordiality. Could he have made a miscalculation? or was there
something behind? He himself insisted upon shaking hands genially with
Carrington and wished him a pleasant journey and a successful one.
That night, for the first time since she was a child, Sybil actually
cried a little after she went to bed, although it is true that her
sentiment did not keep her awake. She felt lonely and weighed down by a
great responsibility.
For a day or two afterwards she was nervous and restless. She would
not ride, or make calls, or see guests. She tried to sing a little, and
found it tiresome. She went out and sat for hours in the Square, where
the spring sun was shining warm and bright on the prancing horse of the
great Andrew Jackson. She was a little cross, too, and absent, and spoke
so often about Carrington that at last Madeleine was struck by sudden
suspicion, and began to watch her with anxious care.
Tuesday night, after this had gone on for two days, Sybil was in
Madeleine's room, where she often stayed to talk while her sister was at
her toilet.
This evening she threw herself listlessly on the couch, and within five
minutes again quoted Carrington. Madeleine turned from the glass before
which she was sitting, and looked her steadily in the face.
“Sybil,” said she, “this is the twenty-fourth time you have mentioned
Mr. Carrington since we sat down to dinner. I have waited for the round
number to decide whether I should take any notice of it or not? what
does it mean, my child? Do you care for Mr. Carrington?”
“Oh, Maude!” exclaimed Sybil reproachfully, flushing so violently that,
even by that dim light, her sister could not but see it.
Mrs. Lee rose and, crossing the room, sat down by Sybil who was lying
on the couch and turned her face away. Madeleine put her arms round her
neck and kissed her.
“My poor--poor child!” said she pityingly. “I never dreamed of this!
What a fool I have been! How could I have been so thoughtless! Tell me!”
she added, with a little hesitation; “has he--does he care for you?”
“No! no!” cried Sybil, fairly breaking down into a burst of tears; “no!
he loves you! nobody but you! he never gave a thought to me. I don't
care for him so very much,” she continued, drying her tears; “only it
seems so lonely now he is gone.”
Mrs. Lee remained on the couch, with her arm round her sister's
neck, silent, gazing into vacancy, the picture of perplexity and
consternation.
The situation was getting beyond her control.