Oh, love! of whom great Caesar was the suitor,
Titus the master, Antony the slave,
Horace, Catullus, scholars, Ovid tutor,
Sappho, the sage blue-stocking, in whose grave
All those may leap who rather would be neuter--
(Leucadia’s rock still overlooks the wave),
Oh, love! thou art the very god of evil,
For, after all, we cannot call thee devil.
--Byron.
Helen Grahame sat in her dressing-room alone. Scarce half-an-hour
had elapsed since she had quitted the side of Lester Vane, after their
stroll in the garden.
Her handkerchief, which she had dropped during her interview with Hugh
Riversdale in the thicket, yet glared before her eyes as it had done
when presented by him who, with a sharp, penetrating gaze, had sought
to extract evidence out of her confusion to assure him that she was the
heroine of the stolen interview he had disturbed.
She yet saw it floating and whirling among the circling eddies of
the meandering waters, which ran past her feet, and drew such small
consolation from the possibility of its never being again recovered--at
least to her disadvantage--as it might afford her.
It was something to have destroyed the only evidence that could identify
her with that stolen meeting, which had been the cause of so much
mystification, excitement, and scandal among the household. She could
scarcely prevent a proud smile of triumph curling her small upper lip
when she reflected that the mastery she possessed over the play of her
features, when she brought her will into action, had enabled her to
baffle the scrutiny of Vane, which she felt instinctively was exerted
to enable him to obtain power over her. Her womanly instincts were too
acute, too keen, for her not to comprehend that.
It is true she had no notion that he intended to act basely or falsely
to her. In spite of his display, his assumption of wealth, and the
inferences he left to be drawn from his suggestions, she entertained a
conviction that his sources of income were far more limited in capacity
than he wished them to appear. Her father’s reputed affluence--of the
reality of which she in common with the other members of the family, had
no doubt--she could easily understand, would attract the attention of a
young man of high family, who had but little with which to support his
station, and she as readily comprehended that he would do his best to
secure the hand of the eldest daughter of a man of wealth, if with it he
ensured also the certainty of a handsome settlement, to say nothing of
the unquestionable charms of the “encumbrance” he would have to take
with the gold.
She had not been twenty-four hours in his company before she detected
that he had determined upon becoming a suitor for her hand, having
fortified himself with a belief that her father would give with her a
dower, which would for ever set at rest his pecuniary anxieties for the
future. But she revolted at the thought of being sought for what she
should bring, rather than for her beauty--her heart, so brimful of
passion and tenderness--for her very self. Especially did she recoil
from the supposition that she was a “tassel gentle” to be lured by such
a falconer’s voice, for the purpose of his own aggrandisement, and her
whole soul rose in rebellion against being made the puppet in such a
scheme.
The Honorable Lester Vane was well-formed and handsome. There were
certain points in his figure and in his lineaments of a character to
attract and to win the admiration of many women--those, at least,
who, with the failing of their sex, are led by appearances. He had a
musically-toned voice, and a tongue, gifted with the soft cunning
of oily phrases, in so eminent a degree, that it could be scarcely
surpassed by that which our mother Eve found herself unequal to resist.
There were few women, who, if heart-free, would have been likely to
resist his advances, or to have remained proof against them were he to
address himself to them as a lover. Hitherto, he had not found female
conquest difficult; there was a peculiarity in his manner and appearance
which interested a woman in his favour immediately she beheld him; and
thus, having mastered the approaches, he, where he listed, found the
citadel not difficult to carry by a _coup de main_.
Helen was conscious of all this. She had read his character intuitively,
and had formed a just estimate of him. Perhaps her predominant feeling
towards him was contempt; but with that was mingled a strange dread of
some power he possessed to injure her, and which, at a future period, he
would exercise with a merciless malignity. She knew this impression
had no foundation, in fact--was, in truth, a mere in defined sense of
impending evil, of which he was to be the perpetrator, she the sufferer.
Yet, true to the nature of her sex, her conclusion, arrived at by no
process of reasoning, was as clear and determined as though it had been
based upon a train of facts which admitted neither of doubt nor dispute.
“At least,” she murmured, “Hugh can have nothing to fear from him, even
though he will, I am fully convinced, omit no stratagem to gain my love,
as the means of securing my hand and portion--the portion being rather a
considerable item in the object he proposes to accomplish. His eye looks
down searchingly into my heart, as though he would read and interpret
its most delicate mysteries and fathom its secrets, that he may hold me
in duress. Never! I defy him! He cannot, shall not, detect or decipher
anything I may purpose to conceal. He has destined me for his prey, a
golden fly, to be enmeshed in the entanglements of a web, every filament
of which is too palpable in my eyes. Ha! there are two words to a
bargain. It would be a delicious revenge to bring this schemer down upon
his knees before me, actually and absolutely an abject wooer: so that
when, with burning words and scorching tears, he pleaded his love, I
might spurn him with my foot. I will do it! Already has he commenced,
with consummate art, to make me think about him: he must exercise a
wily skill indeed to make me love him! I will meet him upon his own
battle-field; I will not appear to employ either art or skill, yet will
I stake my happiness that I will compel him to love me with a passionate
ardour, of which now he does not believe his soul capable. Ay, and when,
with a whirlwind of pleadings, urgings, and fervid prayers, he implores
me to bestow my heart upon him, then, in my moment of triumph, I
will open up to his terrible discomfiture my full knowledge of the
speculation which embraced my purse with my person, and laugh with
derisive scorn, at so shallow an attempt to win and wear me--_me!_”
While that reference to herself yet trembled upon her lips, a thought
rushed through her brain, and a flush of crimson spread itself over her
fair neck and face, and then it subsided, and left her deadly pale.
At this moment, the postman’s well-known ring at the gate-bell, given
with skilful force, resounded suddenly through the house. The noise made
her start, and utter a faint scream. Her heart began to beat violently,
while a strange presentiment seized her that the epistle which had
arrived by this channel was for her. An emotion of dread oppressed
her, for which she was at a loss to account, for she had but few
correspondents, and among them there was not one whose communication
ought to contain any matter to occasion her feelings of dread.
She had forgotten one.
She listened breathlessly for the light foot-fall of Chayter. She was
not disappointed. The door opened, and her quiet, neatly-dressed, sleek
maid entered, bearing a note upon a small silver salver.
Helen assumed an air of indifference she did not feel. She glanced, from
beneath her long dark eyelashes, rapidly at the letter, but she played
with the pendants of a bracelet, and yawned in Chayter’s face.
“A letter for you, if you please, miss,” said the girl, and handed it to
her.
“Put it down, Chayter,” said she, “I will read it by and by. I am in
no humour now to bore over a long crossed scrawl from a tiresome school
friend.”
The girl laid the letter upon the small table at Helen’s elbow,
remarking to herself, as she gazed upon the superscription, that the
school friend wrote a remark ably vigorous, masculine hand.
“Where is papa?” inquired Helen, with seeming apathy, although deeply
interested in the answer.
“In the library, if you please, miss,” the girl answered.
“And mamma, and the rest of them,” added Helen. “Your mamma, and his
Grace, and Miss Margaret, and Mr. Malcolm, are walking in the garden.”
“Yes.”
“And the Honorable Mr. Lester Vane and Miss Evangeline are in the
drawing-room.”
“In the drawing-room?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, miss, quite alone.”
“Indeed!”
Helen felt surprised and annoyed to hear this. She did not stay to
inquire why. Upon the first blush, it seemed to her that Lester Vane had
no right to be alone with her sister. She was irritated and vexed; not,
as she suggested to herself, that she cared, because she had a contempt
for the man; but then, to preserve merely the harmony of consistency, he
ought to be alone with no one else but her, and look into no other eyes
than her own. Evangeline, too, so reserved--so shy. She shook her head.
Perhaps there was more art and depth in that apparently timid girl than
any of them had ever dreamed of. She determined, instantly, to observe
her more closely. Evangeline hitherto had passed as a stupid, harmless,
nervous child, yet beneath such an exterior might lurk much shrewd
sagacity, and a power to think and act for herself for which she had not
previously received credit.
Helen rather prided herself upon her own perceptive faculties, and, like
many of her sex, she was so exceedingly keen-sighted as to be at times
precipitated into forming erroneous conclusions. It occurred to her that
it would not be altogether impolitic to put in an appearance, rather
unexpectedly, in the drawingroom, where Vane was _tête-à-tête_ with
her sister. A glance at the faces of both, she assured herself, would
suffice to tell her what course Vane was pursuing, and it would serve to
direct her future conduct.
She rose with this intention, and, as she moved past her little table,
her eye fell upon the letter which the sudden communication by Chayter,
respecting her sister and Lester Vane, had caused her to forget.
She turned her eyes hastily around the apartment, Chayter was no longer
there. She was alone.
She took up the letter and held it to the lamp, so that she might
see the superscription clearly. She started as she recognised the
handwriting.
“Heaven! I thought so,” she ejaculated. “It is from Hugh. How thoughtless
to address to me here!”
She examined the post-mark, which bore the name of Southampton. She drew
a long breath, as though to nerve herself to meet the contents of the
letter, which she felt would have a marked influence upon her future
destiny, and then she broke the seal.
The contents were penned by a hurried and trembling hand; the very
character of the scrawled letters betrayed the workings of a mind
convulsed by passion and sorrow--the words themselves only too
emphatically proved what the ill-formed characters suggested. She read,
with burning eyes, what follows--
“_Helen! thou passionately loved! Measure the intensity of my grief when
you learn that my dread forebodings are verified. I sail by the ‘Ripon’
to India on the 4th, three days hence. My agony is insupportable! To be
parted from you for years--perhaps never more to meet on earth--drives
me to despair--distraction! I could refuse to quit England. I did. An
alternative was presented to me; it involved the desolation of one
to insure whose happiness my life were too mean a gift; it would have
hurled me into beggary, and would still have sundered me from you--from
you, Helen, you my life-spring, the font from whence I draw the only joy
this world can yield me. What could I do? The chained and manacled slave
had more freedom of action than I! My choice lay between this loathed
voyage and comparative annihilation, and my consent to leave England has
been thus wrung from me. Helen, though but these feeble words greet
your tender eyes, yet I am with you face to face, near, near to you in
spirit._”
A cold thrill ran through the frame of Helen as she read these words,
and she raised her eyes, shrinking and gazing into the misty space
before her, as if expecting to see his form, phantom-like and grim,
standing there.
But she saw only the pictures on the walls and the hanging draperies,
so, with a cold tremor, she went on with the perusal of the letter--
“_You remember, Helen, that night when we stood together in the abbey
ruins alone--the cold, grey moonlight streamed through the oriel
window--shattered and decayed it was--and rested upon a mutilated cross.
You remember that cross, Helen, as, silver like, it stood out in bold
relief? My earnest gaze was upon it, Helen, when my fevered, trembling
lips uttered words in your ear only too feeble and inexpressive
to convey the depth and intensity of that love, which your gentle
tenderness and your unsurpassed beauty had won from me. And by that
cross I swore to be true to you while I had life. I see that cross now,
Helen! Can you? I repeat the oath I took on that night. Will you, oh,
Helen, dearest? You do not forget that, while my vow was yet vibrating
in your ear, you turned your lustrous eyes upon that glowing emblem of
mortal redemption. Your sweet head reclined upon my heaving breast, and
in faltering words, you owned that the passion was not unrequited--that
you loved me. Your warm, fragrant breath played upon my cheeks as you
pointed to that cross, and called Heaven to witness to your truth--to
testify that, in the time to come, your affection should be as
unchanging and as unchangeable as my own. Look, Helen, there! See
you not that cross standing sharply and brightly out from the shadows
beyond? Will you refuse the duty it calls upon you to perform, or forget
the oath it commands you to remember? Out of my deep love for you, at
what sacrifice would I pause? What hesitate to do and dare, that you
might be mine? Ah, Helen, will you be mine, as you have so often fondly
sworn you were, and would be ever? Are you prepared for the test which
shall prove it? It is this. Will you, on receipt of this letter, join
me here? Will you, Helen? I have made every arrangement by which you
can travel on the 3rd by the four o’clock train to Southampton alone
and secure from interruption. On your arrival, you will be received by
a lady, who will be expecting you, and will conduct you to apartments
prepared for you. On the 4th, we will be united by _a legal_ marriage,
as we have been by love, and--nay, we will then bid farewell to England,
with hearts light and free; for, come any evil after it, we shall at
least be happy in the possession of each other, and can no more be
parted, but by death. Helen, my own Helen, if you will fly to me, the
devotion of a life will be too poor a return for the integrity, the
purity, the magnanimity of your love. If you come not--well, words would
be idle.
“Hugh Riversdale.”_
Helen staggered to her chair as she concluded the epistle. She pressed
her hands to her throbbing temples; her brain was in a whirl; she had
not the power for a minute or two to summon a single thought to her aid.
Remember that night! Ay! the events crowded into it were not likely to
be forgotten by her. As her hot palms pressed down her eyelids, she
saw as in a vision the ruined abbey, desolate and silent, in the broad
moon-light, the moss-grown, ivy-bound walls, the dilapidated aisles, the
triple-arched windows, mouldering and falling away, very skeletons of
what they had once been; the rude masses of masonry half buried in the
long, rank grass; but, above all, that cross.
That cross!
It now glittered and sparkled and wreathed before her eyes as if it were
living flame, and darted out long, forked, arrowy tongues, to blister
and consume her if she violated her oath.
She sprang to her feet with a scream and a shudder of horror. She gazed
affrightedly round her; the sight of her maid, Chayter, who had, with
noiseless step, reentered the room, however, dispelled the vision, and
restored her to something like composure.
She looked for her letter; it was open upon the table where it had
fallen; waving her hand, she said, in a voice hoarse with emotion--
“Leave me, Chayter; I will ring when I require your services.”
The girl glanced at the letter and then at her mistress. She gave a
short cough.
“It is growing late, miss!” she said, hesitatingly, “I thought----”
“Leave me!” almost shrieked the haughty beauty, stamping her foot
violently.
The girl dropped a hurried curtsey, and slunk swiftly out of the room.
She had been witness to small displays of irritability, but never to
such an ebullition of temper as this.
When alone, Helen strode to the door and locked it. She threw herself
into her chair, and again pressed her beating temples with her hands.
“Is he mad?” she murmured. “Fly with him and to India! How selfish--how
unreasonable!”
He asked for a sacrifice as the test of her love; but what a sacrifice!
She loved him--he ought to know that. What had she not done to give him
proofs of it? If the proofs he had already received were insufficient,
what could suffice? Not even the very sacrifice he called upon her to
make. He had spoken of sacrifices, he had reminded her of their mutual
vow, but now he sought to make her crown those cumulative sacrifices by
inducing her to fling away all personal considerations, and follow his
fortunes--to minister to his happiness by the surrender of her own.
Not that she doubted she should be happy in becoming his wife, but then
there was so much that went to make up the sum of perfect contentment,
which she must forego upon quitting home, and which she could not hope
to possess or enjoy after she had linked her fate with his. Trifles
are they at best, but to have pleasure the rule, and retirement the
exception to be flattered, admired, the cynosure of adoring eyes--are
constituent parts of many a woman’s happiness, wanting only the love
of one to make a perfect felicity. Helen was called upon to make her
election. She could not, it appeared, have done both. If she flung away
the pleasures of the world and the comforts of wealth, she would have
to be compensated by Hugh’s passionate love and entire devotion. If she
flung away his love--well, there was still her luxurious home, and--and
if he was bent upon being so very, very obstinate in his selfish
demands, and in the event of her not taking part in his wild scheme,
were to sunder the connection between them--well, there were others
moving in a higher sphere than his, who would kneel at her feet, and
give to her entire and undisputed sway, so that she but bestowed her
hand upon the suppliant.
“I will write to him,” she said, taking up his letter, and placing it
in her desk, which she carefully locked. “Yes, I will write to him, and
show to him the weakness and the folly of what he asks. Papa would be
frenzied, and mamma would surely die of mortified pride if I were to
take such a step. No, no; it must not be. You were not in your senses,
Hugh, when you addressed that letter to me, and so thoughtless, too, to
direct it here. Poor fellow!--poor dear fellow!--how he loves me!--how
deeply, dearly, he truly loves me!--dear Hugh!--yes, I well remember that
night of mutual confession--oh! I well remember the tumult of joy which
swelled my bosom when your trembling voice, and nearly inarticulate
words, told me that which I already instinctively knew, but which I so
longed for you to confess, my dear, dear Hugh!”
To what result the train of reflection, now taking an opposite path to
that which at first it pursued, might have led, we do not pretend to
say. Helen was here interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by the
voice of Chayter, who informed her young mistress that she was expected
in the drawing-room, inquiries having been already made for her.
She gave a rapid glance at her face in the glass. It was pale as
alabaster, but there was no further trace of the disorder her mind had
suffered; and so assuming a calm demeanour, she admitted Chayter.
“I do believe I have been dozing,” she said to the sleek girl.
“I don’t believe anything of the kind,” thought Chayter; but, smiling,
said--“Dear me, miss, what a thing it is to be lovely, and have a dozen
noble and beautiful gentlemen grieving to death for you.”
“Chayter!”
“Ah, miss! it is as I say,” continued the girl. “I can see. There is his
Grace talking of nothing but you, and the Honorable Mr. Vane hoping that
you are not ill because you keep your own room, and you all the while so
indifferent, dozing in your chair, and Miss Margaret looking--I beg your
pardon, miss--as if she would give her ears to be taken notice of by
either of them.”
“Dress me, Chayter!” exclaimed Helen, abruptly, “and, if you can, pray
be silent; your volubility makes my head ache.”
Chayter understood a hint, though she did not quite comprehend whether
volubility meant impertinence or overwhelming information. She gathered
from Helen’s tone that she was in no humour to listen to her prattle,
and she was shrewd enough to keep her tongue still when its rattle was
likely to be unwelcome.
Helen quickly made her toilet, and had seldom looked more beautiful than
she did when she entered the drawing-room, which, though half filled by
the guests and family, was all but silent without her.
Her eye ran round the apartment as she glided in, and she perceived her
mamma and sister Margaret conversing together. Her papa was discoursing
with the young Duke upon the management of estates, and detailing a plan
by which to obtain the largest possible amount of income with the least
possible expenditure, to all of which the Duke appeared to listen,
though he yawned frequently; but he rescued himself from the charge of
inattention by occasionally observing--“Weally!”
“Pwecisely,”
“Pwobably,”
“Wemawkable!”
Malcolm was half-asleep upon a couch, and Lester Vane was seated by the
side of her sister Evangeline, talking with her in a tone sufficiently
low as not to be heard--at least, where she stood.
What strange feeling was it that possessed her when her eye fell upon
Evangeline and Lester Vane, as it were _tête-à-tête_? Why did a flush
mount to her brow, and a pang of vexation shoot through her breast? He
was nothing to her; what he might do ought to have no interest in her
eyes, for if any feeling for him was predominant in her heart, it was
not certainly of a favourable nature. Yet he had gazed upon her so
ardently, and spoken to her with such gentle tones, that if she could
draw a conclusion from his manner, it was that her beauty had made a
deep impression upon his heart. Now to see his dreamy eyes dwelling
on Evangeline’s innocent face so earnestly, to observe his impressive
manner, as he addressed her with words toned so as to make her gentle
heart thrill with a new emotion, was to be made to feel that she had
made no impression upon him at all, or that he made love to her simply
_pour passer le temps_.
She burnt with vexation.
“He shall love me,” she thought, “woo me, kneel to me. Oh! but how I
will spurn him--shatter him with my scorn.”
Poor Hugh Riversdale!
Upon the appearance of Helen, the Duke of St Allborne flung over the
elaborate dissertation to which he was supposed to be listening, and
quitting Mr Grahame, advanced hastily to his daughter; Lester Vane
caught sight of her at the same moment, and rose to his feet, but
without evincing any emotion, other than that of pleasure at her
arrival.
“My deah Miss Gwahame,” exclaimed the Duke, all in a flutter of
excitement, “I am twuly delighted that you have wejoined us; I began to
feah you weah not well, and would afflict us by not wetawning any moah
this evening. I should have been gweatly gwieved at youah absence, but
faw moah so if you had been weally indisposed.”
“Your Grace will, I hope, pardon my not being present with my mamma and
sisters to receive you in the drawing-room,” replied Helen, favouring
him with one of her most bewitching smiles. “I am really ashamed to
acknowledge to your Grace the truth, but I am afraid that while reading
a few pages of a novel I fell into the most unromantic doze possible.”
The Duke laughed appreciatively--a doze after dinner! Who comprehended
its luxury more keenly than himself?
“Pway don’t apologise, Miss Gwahame,” he exclaimed, “I think a nap after
one’s wine one of the wosiest and most delicate awdinations of natchaw.”
Helen smiled bewitchingly again at the Duke, for she knew the eye of
Lester Vane, who had slowly approached her, was on her face.
“My Lord Duke,” she returned, “do not misinterpret me--I dozed after my
_book_.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the Duke. “I beg pawdon. Exactly! I could not suppose
however, Miss Gwahame, that the wine you sipped at dinnaw would have
thwown you into a doze. I alluded to myself, eh, Vane?”
“Weally this girl is devilish pwetty,” thought the
Duke, as he turned to his friend. “She is a pawfect beauty; I must
weally wun off with her.”
“You are skilled in after-dinner indulgence, you are, in fact, a perfect
master of that species of luxury, St. Allbome,” replied Vane, smiling,
and added, with marked _empressement_ to Helen, “I would not have done
you the injustice, Miss Grahame, to have presumed that a _post prandial_
slumber had denied us the pleasure of your fair society, if you had
not yourself offered it in explanation of your absence. I should, if
permitted to speculate upon your movements, have imagined that a stroll
by moonlight, along the sinuous paths of the most excellently arranged
garden attached to this mansion, had occupied you pleasantly, that,
tempted by the beauty of the night--or some other cause--you had been
induced to linger in the purple shadows thrown upon the place beneath,
by the luxuriant foliage of a certain cluster of graceful trees, bending
in pensive reflection over the flowing stream, whose rippling waters
lave their base, the balmy air responding to the chant of the water’s
low music with soft sighs, and gently fondling in its murmuring the deep
green leaves still and silent in their evening dreams.”
The Duke looked up at his friend in indescribable astonishment. Lester
Vane went on--
“Such a scene, Miss Grahame, heightened by those associations your own
glowing thoughts could supply, would naturally furnish an ample excuse
for an absence so much regretted by all present. May I suggest that you
should adopt it, rather than confess to an afterdinner nap?”
“And dreams of pumpkin pie,” interposed Helen, with sarcastic
bitterness, and a very formal bend. She understood his allusion; it
brought a scarlet flush on her cheek, and made her eye flash like a
diamond. Her lip curled scornfully as she replied to him, and if the
sarcastic tone she adopted was unnoticed by others, it was not lost upon
him.
“Mr. Vane,” she added, not concealing an expression of disdain, “I
prefer to adhere to the vulgar truth. There are people to whom such a
course is inconvenient, but I find it less troublesome than to have
to coin a number of small prevarications. I am afraid I am rather an
unromantic individual. I catch cold, and have bad fits of sneezing come
on, when I am foolish enough to be tempted by some poetical enthusiast
to enjoy the beauty of a moonlight night, shadowy trees, rippling
waters, and sighing breezes. On those occasions there is always a
quantity of mist about, moist exhalations, powerfully suggestive I
assure you Mr. Vane, of influenza. Moonlight scenes are very pretty
things at the Opera, or in a picture, but the reality is really very
trying to the constitution.”
“The vewy weflections I have frequently made myself,” burst forth
the Duke with much vivacity. ‘’You enwapchaw me, Miss Gwahame, youaw
impwes-sions squaw so wondwously with mine. Moonlight nights aw vewy
damp aflaws; I nevaw venchaw upon one without a heavy boat cape, a box
of cigaws, and a pawson to play the twumpet, to keep me awake, nevaw!”
“You surprise me, Miss Grahame,” said Vane, nettled by the tone she
assumed. “I imagined that your temperament was highly sentimental
and poetical.” There was a hidden meaning even in these words. Helen
detected so much; though she did not at the moment perceive the object
at which the shaft was levelled; she replied quickly--
“You have been premature, Mr. Vane, in forming your estimate of my
character. I am not so easily read as my sister Evangeline. She is
imbued with romance, as, no doubt, you have before this discovered. She
trusts to seeming, poor child--I do not.”
For a moment her eye fastened itself piercingly upon him. She then took
the Duke’s ready arm, and advanced up the _salon_ to a magnificent harp,
to fulfil a promise made by her to the Duke at dinner. As she did so,
she looked for Evangeline, but she had quitted the room when Lester Vane
rose up to greet her, and she liked not her disappearance.
Lester Vane looked after Helen as, with queenly dignity, she paced the
room, leaning upon the arm of his bulky, ungraceful friend, all the
brighter and more beautiful for the contrast.
“I am right,” he mused; “I am on the track; she chafes at the very
mention of garden and moonlight. My experiment, too, succeeds--two suns
may not shine in her hemisphere--she is already jealous of my attention
to her little, simple, innocent sister. There is power in that. I will
use it. I will have her completely in my grasp.”
He moved towards Mrs. Grahame and the passionless statue, her daughter
Margaret, perfectly at his ease, and as unconcerned as though the
incident of the moment alone occupied his thoughts.
Helen, too, appeared to commence her task in perfect serenity of mind,
yet the words, “You remember that cross, Helen!” were ringing in her
brain, and though she sang words and music correctly, and never faltered
in the accompaniment, she prayed for the hour of release from the
presence of guests, the sounds of voices, the glaring lights; to
be again alone in her room, to wrestle with memories of passion and
promise, to contend with conflicting emotions, to decide upon obeying
the impulse of her heart, or to determine upon one great sacrifice, in
order to secure the glittering’ triumphs of a brilliant position.
Alone! What would she not have given at that moment, while singing with
such charming taste, to have been alone!
Before her song commenced, Mr. Grahame had been summoned to an interview
with some person, who required to see him on business of importance, and
during the performance of the song, while approving smiles were upon
the features of his guests, and his wife and daughter Margaret sat in
ineffable elation, he lay upon the floor of his library in a fit!