My temples throbbed; my blood flowed with feverish heat; I felt as if
carried away by a burning stream down to some deep, fiery region, where
angry voices ever raised a strange clamour, that perpetually drowned my
unavailing cry--"I did not do it."
I know not how I reached my room; quietly and simply, I suppose; for when
I recovered from this transport of indignant passion, I was lying on my
bed and I was alone. I did not weep, I did not moan, I scarcely thought,
but I drank deep of the cup of grief which had so suddenly risen to my
lips. In youth we do not love sorrow, but when it comes to us we welcome
it with strange avidity; there is a luxury, a dreary charm in the first
excess of woe. True, we quickly sicken of the bitter draught; I had lain
down with the feeling--"There, I am now as miserable as I can be, and yet
I care not!" but, alas! how soon I grew faint and weary! how soon from
the depths of my wrung heart I cried for relief to Him who knew my
innocence, who had never wronged me, who, were I ever so guilty, would
have never condemned me unheard!
What was it to me that Cornelius left me his love and his kindness, when
I knew and felt, with a keener bitterness than words can convey, that I
had for ever lost his esteem? Did I, could I, care for an affection from
which the very life had departed? No; child as I was in years, something
within me revolted from the mere thought of his tenderness and
endearments. If he believed me guilty, then let him hate and detest me:
sweeter would be his aversion than such fondness as he could bestow on
one whom, the more he forgave her, the more he must despise.
This resentful feeling--better to be hated than weakly loved--bore with
it no consolation. I still groaned under the intolerable load of so much
misery. Spirit and flesh both revolted against it, and said it was beyond
endurance; that, anything save that, I would bear cheerfully, but that I
could not bear; that sickness would be pleasant, and death itself would
be sweet in comparison. And as I thought thus, I remembered the time when
I was near dying, when Cornelius wept over me, and I should have carried
in my grave his regard as well as his tears, and I passionately
questioned the Providence that rules our fate. I asked why I had been
spared for this? why I was thought guilty when I was innocent? why
Cornelius disbelieved me? why there was no hope that I should ever be
acquitted by him? why the only being for whose good opinion I would have
given all it was mine to give, had been the very one to condemn me? Had I
looked into my heart, I might there have found the stern reply--"By his
idol let the idolater perish." But I did not. I only dwelt on the galling
fact, that though guiltless, there was no hope for me, and I sank into as
violent a fit of despair as if this were a new discovery. I wept
passionately at first, then slowly, unconsciously. My head ached; my
heavy eyes closed; I did not sleep, but I sank into the apathy of subdued
grief.
I know not how long I had been thus when the door opened, and Kate--I
knew her step--entered. She came up to my bed, bent over me, and seeing
my eyes closed, whispered--
"Are you asleep, Daisy?"
A slight motion of my head implied the denial I could not speak. She took
my hand, said it felt cold, went into the next room, whence she brought
some heavy garment, with which she covered me. I felt rather than saw her
lingering by me; then I heard her leaving the room softly. My heart
swelled as the door closed on her. Not one word of faith or doubt had she
uttered, and yet her voice was both compassionate and kind. It was plain
that she too thought me guilty, pitied, and forgave me.
"Be it so!" I thought, with sullen and bitter grief: "let every one
accuse me, I acquit myself; let no one believe in me, I keep faith in my
own truth. I shall learn how to do without their approbation and their
belief."
I remained in this mood, until, after the lapse of some hours, Kate once
more came near me. Again she bent over me and asked if I slept. I opened
my heavy eyes, but, dazzled by the light, I soon closed them again.
"Come down to dinner," she said gently.
"I am not hungry."
There was a pause; I fancied her gone, and looked; she was standing at
the foot of my bed, gazing at me with a very sorrowful face.
"Daisy," she said, in her most persuasive accents, "have you nothing to
say to me?"
I looked at her; her glance told me she asked for a confession, not for
justification, so I replied--
"Nothing, Kate," and again closed my eyes.
She left me, but soon returned, carrying a small tray with a plate, on
which there was some fowl and a glass of wine. She wanted me to eat. I
assured her I was not hungry.
"Try," she urged; "I promised Cornelius not to leave you without seeing
you take something."
To please her I tried, but she saw that the attempt sickened me; she
pressed me to take the wine.
"Cornelius poured it out in his own glass," she said, "and tasted it
before sending it up; so you must have some."
Wine seldom appeared on our frugal table; it had been forbidden to me as
injurious; but Cornelius always left me some in his glass, which he made
me drink slyly, whilst his sister pretended to look another way. I knew
why he had now sent me this; it was a token of old affection living
still, spite of what happened. I would not refuse the pledge: I sat up,
and taking the glass from Kate, I raised it to my lips; but as I did so,
the thought of the past thus evoked made my heart swell; a sensation of
choking came upon me; I felt I could not swallow one drop, and laid down
the glass untasted. Kate sighed, but she saw it was useless to insist,
so, hoping I would try again in her absence, she left me.
I did not try: why should I? food sufficient to me were my tears and my
grief renewed in all its bitterness by this incident. Why had Cornelius
sent me this token of a communion from which the trust and the faith had
for ever vanished? Why should I drink from his glass, whilst he thought
me a liar? I ought not, and I resolved that I would not, until he had
acknowledged my truth. I pushed away the tray from me; in doing so I saw
that the covering Kate had thrown over me was an old cloak of her
brother's. I recognized it at once: it was the very same he wore when he
came to see me at Mr. Thornton's; the same in the folds of which he had
wrapped and carried me, a weak and sickly child. I cast it away in a
transport of despair and grief; he might care for me and cherish me
again, but never more could he be to me what he once had been.
After awhile I became more calm, or rather I sank into the apathy which
is not calmness. Lying on my bed I looked through the window which faced
it, at the grey and cloudy sky. The preceding day had been clear and
sunshiny; this was dark and overcast, one of those September days that
bear something so dull, chill, and wintry in their mien. I watched my
room grow dim, and felt it becoming more cold and comfortless as evening
drew on; but it seemed not so dreary, and felt not so cold, as my
desolate heart.
A well-known step on the stairs partly roused me. I listened; there was
a. low tap at my door; I gave no answer; it was renewed, and still I was
silent. Cornelius, for it was he, waited awhile and finally entered. Like
his sister he came up to my bed and bent over me, but the room had grown
dark; he drew back the curtain; I shaded my eyes with my hand; he moved
it away.
"You are not asleep," he said, "look at me, Daisy."
I obeyed; he stood gazing at me with my baud in his; there was sadness on
his face, and pity still deeper than his sadness. I dare say I looked a
pitiable object enough. He glanced at the food untouched, at the wine
untasted.
"You have taken nothing," he said, "not even a drop of the wine I sent
you; why so?"
"I could not."
"Try again."
He wanted to raise the glass to my lips; but I pushed it away so
abruptly, that half its contents were spilled. He made no remark; but
feeling the dead-like dullness of my hand, he attempted to cover me with
his cloak; I half rose to put it away; Cornelius took no notice of this
either.
"Come down and have some tea," he said quietly; "this room is cold, but
below there is a fire."
Mechanically I obeyed. I sat up, put back my loosened hair from my face,
and slipped down on the floor. I followed him out, and I felt weak and
giddy; I had to cling to him for support until we entered the parlour. It
looked as I had so often seen it look on many a happy evening. The fire
burned brightly; the lamp shed its mild, mellow radiance; the kettle sang
on the fire; the white china cups and saucers stood on the little table
ready for use, and Kate sat working as usual; but familiar as everything
seemed, it was as if I had not entered that room for years. As we came
in, Kate looked up and sighed, then made the tea in deep silence.
Cornelius made me sit by the fire, and sat down by me; he handed me my
cup himself; but I could not drink, still less eat. He pressed me in
vain. If I could, I would have gratified him, for my abstinence proceeded
not from either stubbornness or pride; I knew I should eat again, and to
do it early or late could not humble or exalt me. Cornelius ceased to
urge the point. The meal, always a short one with us, was over, the room
was silent; I sat in an angle of the couch, my hand shading my weary
eyes; perhaps my long fasting contributed to render me partly insensible
to what passed around me, for Cornelius had to speak twice before he
could draw my attention. When I at length looked up, I perceived that
Kate had left the room; we were alone.
"Daisy," said Cornelius, very earnestly, "are you fretting?"
"Yes, Cornelius, I am."
"Do you then think me still angry with you?"
"No," I replied, rather surprised, "I know you are not."
"How do you know?" he asked, bending a keen look on me.
"You have said so, Cornelius, how then can I but believe you?"
I looked up in his face as I spoke, and if my eyes told him but half the
feelings of my heart, he must have read in their gaze--"Doubt me if you
like; I keep inviolate and true my faith in you." He looked as if the
words had smote him dumb. For awhile he did not attempt to answer; then
he observed rather abruptly--
"Well, what are you fretting about?"
I would not reply at first; he repeated his question. "Because you will
not believe me," I answered in a low tone.
He gave me a quick, troubled gaze, full of fear and--for the first time--
of doubt. He caught my hands in his; he stooped eagerly as if to read my
very soul in my eyes: heavy and dim with weeping they might be, but their
look shrank not from his.
"Daisy," he cried agitatedly, "I put it to you--to your honour--I shall
take your word now--did you or did you not do it?"
I disengaged my hands from his, and clasped them around his neck, and
thus, with my face open to his gaze like a book, I looked up at him sadly
and calmly.
"Cornelius," I replied, "I put it to you: Did Daisy Burns do it?"
He looked down at me with an anxious and tormenting doubt that vanished
before a sudden and irresistible conviction. Yes, I read it in his face:
he who had so pertinaciously accused, judged, and condemned me, was now,
as with a two-edged sword, pierced with the double conviction of my
innocence and his own injustice. For a moment he looked stunned, then he
withdrew from my clasp, rose, and walked away without a word, and sat
down by the table with his back turned to me.
The heart has instincts beyond all the written knowledge of the wise. I
rose and ran to him; he averted his face and put me away.
"Cornelius," I entreated, "Cornelius, look at me."
Without answering, he turned his face to me. Never shall I forget its
mingled remorse and grief. He rose and paced the room up and down, with
agitated steps. I did not dare to follow or address him; of his own
accord he stopped short and, confronting me, took my two hands in his and
looked down at me with a sorrowful face.
"If I had but wronged a man," he said, "one who could give me back insult
for insult and wrong for wrong, I should regret it, but I could forgive
myself; but you!" he added, looking at me from head to foot, "a girl, a
mere child, dependent on me too, helpless and without one to protect or
defend you against wrong--oh, Daisy! it is more than I can bear to think
of!"
It did seem too galling for thought, for tears wrung forth by wounded
pride rose to his eyes and ran down his burning cheek.
"Can you forgive me?" he added, after a short pause.
This was more than I could bear. Forgive him! forgive him to whom I owed
everything the error of one day! I could not, and I passionately said I
never would.
But Cornelius was peremptory, and, though burning with shame at so
strange a reversion of our mutual positions, I yielded. I felt however as
if I could never again look him in the face. But Cornelius had a faculty
granted to few: he could feel deeply, ardently, without sentimental
exaggeration. His mind was manly in its very tenderness. He had expressed
his grief, his remorse, his shame; he did not brood over them or distress
me with puerile because unavailing regrets over a past he could not
recall. As he made me return to my seat and again sat by me, there was
indeed in his look, in the way in which he drew me nearer to him, in the
tone with which he said once or twice, "My poor child! my poor little
Daisy!" something which told me beyond the power of language, how keenly
he felt his injustice, how deeply he lamented my day of sorrow; but
otherwise, his conscience acquitting him of intentional wrong, he
accepted my forgiveness as frankly as he had asked for it.
Thus my troubled heart could at length rest in peace. Languid and wearied
with so many emotions, I could yield myself up to the strange luxury and
sweetness of being once more, not merely near him--that was little--but
of feeling, of knowing, of reading in his face, so kindly turned to mine,
that he believed in me. As I sat by him, his hand clasped in both mine,
restored to what I prized even higher than his affection--his esteem, it
seemed like a dream, too blissful to be true, and of which my eyes ever
kept seeking in his the reality and the confirmation.
"Oh, Cornelius," I said once, "are you sure you do not think I did it?"
He looked pained at being reminded that he had thought me guilty.
"Have some wine," he observed, hurriedly, "I am sure you can now."
He went to the back parlour and brought out a glassfull. He took some
himself, and made me drink the rest. It revived me. I felt I could eat,
and I took some biscuits from the plateful he handed me. He watched me
with a pleased and attentive smile, and in putting by both glass and
plate, he sighed like one much relieved.
"When I was a boy." he said, sitting down again by me, "I caught a wild
bird, and caged it, thinking it would sing; but it would not eat; it hung
its head and pined away. I was half afraid this evening you were going to
do like my poor bird."
"I hope I know better than a bird," I replied, rather piqued at the
comparison, "and that was a very foolish bird not to take to the cage
where you had put it--so kind of you."
"Very; yet, strange to say, it liked its cage and its captor as little as
you on the contrary seem to fancy yours."
"Yes, but it is scarcely worth while putting or keeping me in a cage,
Cornelius; I am very useless; I can't even sing--not a bit."
"Never mind," he replied, smiling, "I could better dispense with all the
birds of the air than with you, my pet."
I thought it was very kind of Cornelius to say so, and to prefer me to
nightingales, larks, black-birds, thrushes, and the whole sweet-singing
race. I felt cheerful, happy, almost merry, and we were talking together
gaily enough when the door opened, and Kate entered.
She had left me plunged in apathetic despondency; on seeing me chatting
with her brother in as free and friendly a fashion as if nothing had
happened, she looked bewildered. She came forward in total silence, and
behind her came Miriam, who closed the door and looked at us calmly
through all her evident wonder.
"It's a very wet night," observed Kate, sitting down opposite us and
looking at me very hard.
"Is it?" said Cornelius, rising to give Miriam a chair, then returning to
me.
"Very," rejoined his sister, who could not take her eyes from me, as,
with the secure familiarity of an indulged child, I untwined one of his
dark locks to its full extent, observing--
"It is too long; let me cut it off with Kate's scissors."
"No, 'faith," he replied, hastily, and shaking back his head with an
alarmed air, as if he already felt the cold steel, "do not dream of such
a thing. Cut it off indeed!" and he slowly passed his fingers through his
raven hair, in the glossy and luxuriant beauty of which he took a certain
complacency.
"Well!" said Kate, leaning back in her chair, folding her hands on her
knees, and drawing in a long breath.
"Well, what?" coolly asked Cornelius.
"I never did see such a rainy night--never."
"How kind of you to come!" observed Cornelius, bending forward to look at
Miriam.
She sat by the table, her arms crossed upon it, her eyes bent on us; she
smiled without answering.
"You look pale and fatigued," he said, with some concern.
There was indeed on her face a strange expression of languor, weariness,
and _ennui_.
"Yes," she replied abstractedly, "I am weary."
"I am not going to stand that, you know!" exclaimed Kate, whose attention
was not diverted from me. "Will you just tell me, Daisy, or rather you,
Cornelius, what has passed between you and Daisy since I left the room."
Cornelius raised on his sister a sad look, which from her fell on me.
"I have found out a great mistake," he said, reddening as he spoke, "and
Daisy has been good enough to forgive me."
"I wish you would not speak so," I observed, feeling ready to cry.
"My dear, Kate might blame me."
"No one has any right to blame you," I interrupted. "If I am your child,
as you say sometimes, can't you do with me as you think fit?"
I looked a little indignantly at Kate, who did not heed me. Her eyes
sparkled; her cheeks were flushed.
"A mistake!" she exclaimed eagerly, "that's right; I can't say I thought
it was a mistake, but I always felt as if it were one. I never felt as if
poor Daisy could be such a little traitor. How did he do it, Cornelius?"
"_He?_ really, Kate, I don't know how _he_ did it, for I don't know who
_he_ is."
"Some jealous, envious, mean, paltry little fellow of a bad artist,"
hotly answered Kate. "I can tell you exactly what he's like: he squints,
he limps, he wears his hat over his eyes, and is always looking round to
see that no one is watching him--I see him--you need not laugh,
Cornelius, I can tell you sow he did it; he came in by Deborah's window,
and escaped across the leads. He is an artist decidedly, and he was mixed
up with the rejection of your Sick Child; can't you trace the
connection?"
Cornelius did not look as if he could.
"Never mind," continued Kate, "I shall find him out, but you must give me
the links."
"What links, Kate?"
"Why, how you found it out, of course?"
"Found out what, Kate?"
"Don't be foolish, boy: why, that it was not Daisy."
Cornelius stroked his chin, and looked at his sister with a perplexed
air, then said--
"I don't think you will find it much of a link, Kate."
"Nonsense! a hint is enough for me, you know."
"Well, but if there is no hint at all?" objected Cornelius, making a
curious face.
"No hint at all?" echoed his sister, rather bewildered.
"Kate," resolutely said Cornelius, "think me foolish, mad, if you like:
the truth is, that I have found out the innocence of Daisy, as I ought to
have found it out at once--by believing her."
"But where are the proofs?" asked Kate.
"I tell you there are no proofs," he replied with impatient warmth;
"proofs made me condemn Daisy; I am now a wiser man, and acquit her on
trust."
"No proofs!" said Kate, looking confounded.
"No, Kate, none, and I don't want any either."
"But you had proofs this morning, you said."
"You could not give me a better reason for having none this evening.
Proofs are cheats, I shall trust no more."
Kate sighed profoundly and said in a rueful tone--
"Heaven knows how much I wish to believe Daisy innocent, but my opinion
cannot turn about so quickly as yours."
"She did not do it, Kate," exclaimed her brother, a little vehemently,
"she did not."
"You need not fly out: I never accused her."
"But I did: do not wonder that I defend her all the more warmly."
"But I do wonder," pursued Kate, with a keen look at me; "there is
something in it; the sly little thing got round you whilst you were alone
together. Oh, Cornelius, Cornelius! that child has made her way to your
very heart. You would rather be deceived than think she did wrong."
"I am not deceived," he indignantly replied.
Kate did not answer, but kept looking at me in a way that made me feel
very uncomfortable.
"Daisy is guiltless," continued her brother; "how I ever thought her
otherwise is a mystery to me. Who has ever been more devoted to my
painting than the poor child?"
Kate opened her lips, then closed them again without speaking. Cornelius
detected this.
"Well," he said quickly, "what have you got to say, Kate?"
"Nothing!" she drily answered, with another look at me so searching and
so keen that I involuntarily clung closer to Cornelius.
"Kate," he said again, looking from me to her, "what have you to say?"
There was a pause; Kate hesitated, then resolutely replied--
"The truth--which always insists on making itself known, no doubt because
it is good that it should be known. I think, Cornelius, that you acquit
Daisy as you condemned her--too hastily; but that is a part of your
character: you detest to suspect--a generous, imprudent feeling. You make
too much or too little of proofs. Now it so chances that I have got one
which escaped you this morning, when you would have held it conclusive;
which I kept quiet, but never meant to suppress. I shall make no comments
upon it, but simply lay it before you."
Her looks, her words, the gravity with which they were uttered, alarmed
me. In the morning I had trusted implicitly to my innocence for
justification: then I could not understand how facts should condemn me,
when conscience held me guiltless; but now I knew better. I looked at
Cornelius; perhaps he was only astonished; I fancied he seemed to doubt.
All composure, all presence of mind forsook me. I threw myself in his
arms, as in my only place of hope and refuge.
"Cornelius," I cried in my terror, "don't believe it; I don't know what
it is, but don't believe it--pray don't."
He looked moved, and said to his sister--
"Not now, Kate, not now."
"Nonsense!" she replied, "it is too late to go back."
"I think it is," assented Cornelius, looking down at me. But I threw my
arms around his neck, and looking up at his face with all the passionate
entreaty of my heart--
"You won't believe it, Cornelius, will you?" I asked; "it's against me, I
am sure; but you won't believe it?"
"No, indeed," he replied, with some emotion, "I will believe nothing
against you, my poor child."
The assurance somewhat pacified me. Kate, whom my alarm seemed to impress
very unfavourably, observed drily--
"It is not a matter to make so much of, and I never said you could not
explain it, Daisy; at all events here it is."
With this she drew forth from her pocket, and laid on the table, the
filagree bracelet.
"Is that all?" asked Cornelius, seeming much relieved.
"I think it quite enough, considering where it was found," shortly said
Kate.
"In the studio! What about it: was it not in the studio I gave it to
her?"
"That is all very well, but I should like to know how it has got stained
with the very same ochre that was used to daub the face of poor Medora."
"Even that is nothing, Kate; you know well enough that everything Daisy
wears bears traces of the place where she spends her days."
Miriam had remained indifferent and calm, whilst all this was going on in
her presence; she had not changed her attitude, scarcely had she raised
her eyes, or cast a look around her. She now stretched forth her hand,
took up the bracelet from the table where it lay, looked at it, laid it
down again, and said very quietly--
"It is mine."
"Yours!" cried Cornelius.
"Yes, I know it by the clasp. I put it on this morning, and dropped it, I
suppose, in the studio."
"There, Kate," triumphantly exclaimed Cornelius, "so much for
circumstantial evidence!"
Kate looked utterly confounded.
"Yours," she said to Miriam, "yours? are you quite sure it is really
yours?"
"Quite sure," was the composed reply.
Miss O'Reilly turned to me, and asked shortly--
"Why did you not say it was not yours?"
"I did not know it was not mine, Kate. I knew I had left mine in the
studio."
"Then it is really yours!" said Kate, again turning to Miriam, who
replied with an impatient "Yes," and an ill-suppressed yawn of mingled
indifference.
"Truth is strong," rather sadly said Kate; "the bracelet which you put on
this morning, Miss Russell, was picked op by me last night at the door of
the studio."
Miriam gave a sudden spring on her chair; if a look could have struck
Kate to the heart, her look would have done it then. But Kate only shook
her handsome head, and smiled, fearless and disdainful.
"Yes," she said again, "I picked it up there last night, thought it was
Daisy's, and, to give her a lesson of carefulness, I said nothing about
it. This morning I suppressed it from another motive. Do you claim it
still, Miss Russell?"
Everything like emotion had already passed from the face of Miriam. She
had sunk hack on her seat; her look had again become indifferent and
abstracted; her countenance again wore the expression of fatigue and
_ennui_ it had worn the whole evening. As Kate addressed her, she looked
up, and very calmly said--
"Why not?"
I looked at Cornelius; his brow, his cheek, his lip, had the pallor of
marble or of death: he did not speak, he did not move; he looked like one
whose very last stronghold the enemy has reached, and who beholds his own
ruin with more of silent stupor than of grief. At length he put me away;
he rose; he went up to the table which divided him from Miriam; he laid
both his hands upon it, and looking at her across, he bent slightly
forward, and said, in a voice that seemed to come from the depths of his
heart--
"Miriam, tell me you did not do it; Miriam!"
She did not reply.
"Tell me you did not do it--I will believe you."
Miriam looked at him; as she saw the doubt and misery painted on his
face, something like pity passed on hers.
"Would you?" she said, with some surprise. "No, Cornelius, you could not,
and even if you could, I would not prolong this. I might deny or give
some explanation at which you would grasp eagerly; but where is the
use?--I am weary." She passed her hand across her brow, as if to put by
someheavy sense of fatigue, and looked round at us with an expression of
dreary languor in her gaze which I have never forgotten. "I am weary,"
she said again; "for days and weeks this sense of fatigue has been
creeping over me. The struggle to win that I never should have prized
when won, is ended. I regret it not--still less should you."
"Miriam," passionately said Cornelius, "it is false, and you must, you
shall deny it."
"I will not," Miriam replied firmly, and not without a certain cool
dignity which she preserved to the last. "I tell you I am weary, and that
if this did not part us, something else should."
A chair stood near Cornelius; he sat down, and gave Miriam a long,
searching glance, that seemed to ask, in its dismay and indignant grief--
"Are you the woman whom I have loved?"
"You never understood me," she said, impatiently. "You might have guessed
that I had, from youth upwards, lived in the fever of passion inspired or
felt; you might have known that I should master or be mastered. I warned
you that though I could promise nothing, I should exact much, and you
defied me to exact too much. Yet when it came to the test--what did you
give me? a feeling weak as water, cold as ice! Why, you would not so much
as have given up what you call Art for my sake!"
"Nor for that of mortal woman," indignantly replied Cornelius. "Give up
painting! Do you forget I told you I would love you as a man should
love?"
"That is, I suppose, a little more than Daisy, and something less than
your pictures. I have been accustomed to other love."
Cornelius reddened.
"An unworthy passion," he said, "stops at nothing to secure its
gratification; a noble one is bound by honour."
"I leave you to such passions," calmly answered Miriam; "to painting,
which you love so much; to the domestic affections in which you weakly
thought to include me. I have tried to make you feel what I call passion,
I have failed; it is well that we should part; let us do so quietly, and
without recrimination."
Cornelius looked at her like one confounded. She spoke composedly, as if
she neither cared for nor felt that, on her own confession, she was
guilty. Of excuse or justification she evidently thought not.
"You think of Daisy," she continued; "think of my conduct to her what you
choose. I will only say this, though she, poor child, has hated me, as
she loved you, with her whole heart, you have been, are still, and will
remain, her greatest enemy."
"I!" indignantly exclaimed Cornelius.
"Yes: and you must be blind not to see that, by seeking to sever from you
a child whom a few years will make a woman, I was her best friend; and so
she will know some day, when you break her heart, and tell her you never
meant it."
"May God forsake me when I place not her happiness before mine!" replied
Cornelius, in a low tone, and giving me a troubled look.
"You are generous," answered Miriam, with an ironical, but not unmusical
laugh, and looking at me over her shoulder with all the scorn of
conscious beauty; "you think so now; but I know, and have always known,
better. And yet, spite of that knowledge, and though with foolish
insolence she ever placed herself in my way, I have felt sorry for her at
times. Of course you will not believe this: with the exaggeration of your
character, you will at once set me down as one delighting in evil;
whereas what you call evil is to me only a different form of good,
justifiable according to the end in view. If I had succeeded in inspiring
you with an exclusive, all-engrossing passion--even though the cost had
been a few pictures less, and the loss of Daisy's heart--know that I
would have conferred on you the greatest blessing one human being can
bestow on another."
Her eyes shone with inward fire; her cheeks glowed; her parted lips
trembled. I do not think we had ever seen her half so beautiful.
Cornelius looked at her, and smiled bitterly.
"I pity you," she said, with some scorn; "I pity you, to deride a feeling
you cannot feel: know that I at least speak not without the knowledge."
"Oh, I know it," he exclaimed, involuntarily.
"You know it?"
"Yes," he replied, more slowly, "and I have known it long. One, whose
pride you had stung, found means to procure letters written by you some
years ago, and which proved to rue how ardently you had been attached to
another--now dead, it is true. For a whole day I thought to give you up;
but I was weak, I burned the letters, and said nothing. I loved you well
enough to forgive you the tacit deceit; too well to think of humbling you
by confessing that I knew it, and too jealously perhaps not to be glad to
annihilate every token of a previous affection."
"Humbling me!" said Miriam, rising; "know that it is my pride. I felt not
like you, Cornelius; I would have made myself the slave of him whom I
loved, had he wished it."
She folded her hands on her bosom, like one who gloried in her
subjection, and continued--
"Proud and wilful as I am, _he_ could bend me to his will. I mistook your
energy for power, and thought you could do so too. I mistook my own
heart, and thought I could feel again as I once had felt. Since I
discovered the twofold mistake, there has been nothing save weariness and
vexation of spirit to me. I knew it should end--do not wonder I am now
glad and relieved that it is ended."
She spoke in the tone with which she had said "I am weary;" the lustre
had left her eyes, the colour her cheek; her mien was again languid and
careless. She cast an indifferent look around her, drew the silk scarf
which she wore, closer over her shoulders, turned away, and left the room
without once looking back.
A deep silence, that seemed as if it never could end, followed her
departure. Kate sat in her usual place, her look sadly fixed on her
brother. His face was supported and partly shaded by his hand. He neither
moved nor spoke. At length his sister rose and went up to him. She laid
her hand on his shoulder, and stooping, said gently--
"Cornelius!"
He looked up at her wistfully, and said, in a low tone--
"Kate, I thought her little less than an angel; what a poor dupe I have
been!"
"But you will bear it," she said earnestly, "I know you will."
"Yes," he answered, though his lip trembled a little as he said it; "it
is hard, but it is not more than a man can bear."
He rose as he spoke.
"Where are you going?" asked Kate, detaining him.
"Out; do not be uneasy about me, Kate."
"But it is pouring fast."
"Never mind."
His lips touched her brow--he left the room--we heard the street-door
close upon him, and in the silence which followed, the low, rushing sound
of the rain.
"Poor fellow! poor fellow!" sadly said Kate, and, looking at one another,
we began to cry.
END OF VOL. I.