His manner is so earnest, so pleading, that Kate, who scents at least a death in the air, retires full of compa.s.sion for the "pore gentleman."
And then another three minutes, that now to the agitated listener appear like forty, drag themselves into the past.
Suspense is growing intolerable, when a well-known step in the hall outside makes his heart beat almost to suffocation. The door is opened slowly, and Mrs. Arlington comes in.
"You have something to say to me?" she asks, curtly, unkindly, standing just inside the door, and betraying an evident determination not to sit down for any consideration upon earth. Her manner is uncompromising and forbidding, but her eyes are very red. There is rich consolation in this discovery.
"I have," replies Cyril, openly confused now it has come to the point.
"Say it, then. I am here to listen to you. My servant tells me it is something of the deepest importance."
"So it is. In all the world there is nothing so important to me.
Cecilia,"--coming a little nearer to her,--"it is that I want your forgiveness; I ask your pardon very humbly, and I throw myself upon your mercy. You must forgive me!"
"Forgiveness seems easy to you, who cannot feel," replies she, haughtily, turning as though to leave the room; but Cyril intercepts her, and places his back against the door.
"I cannot let you go until you are friends with me again," he says, in deep agitation.
"Friends!"
"Think what I have gone through. _You_ have only suffered for a few minutes, _I_ have suffered for three long days. Think of it. My heart was breaking all the time. I went to London hoping to escape thought, and never shall I forget what I endured in that detestable city. Like a man in a dream I lived, scarcely seeing, or, if seeing, only trying to elude, those I knew. At times----"
"You went to London?"
"Yes, that is how I have been absent for three days; I have hardly slept or eaten since last I saw you."
Here Cecilia is distinctly conscious of a feeling of satisfaction: next to a man"s dying for you the sweetest thing is to hear of a man"s starving for you!
"Sometimes," goes on Cyril, piling up the agony higher and higher, and speaking in his gloomiest tones, "I thought it would be better if I put an end to it once for all, by blowing out my brains."
"How dare you speak to me like this?" Cecilia says in a trembling voice: "it is horrible. You would commit suicide? Am I not unhappy enough, that you must seek to make me more so? Why should you blow your brains out?"
with a shudder.
"Because I could not live without you. Even now,"--reproachfully,--"when I see you looking so coldly upon me, I almost wish I had put myself out of the way for good."
"Cyril, I forbid you to talk like this."
"Why? I don"t suppose you care whether I am dead or alive." This artful speech, uttered in a heart-broken tone, does immense execution.
"If you were dead," begins she, forlornly, and then stops short, because her voice fails her, and two large tears steal silently down her cheeks.
"Would you care?" asks Cyril, going up to her and placing one arm gently round her; being unrepulsed, he gradually strengthens this arm with the other. "Would you?"
"I hardly know."
"Darling, don"t be cruel. I was wrong, terribly, unpardonably wrong ever to doubt your sweet truth; but when one has stories perpetually dinned into one"s ears, one naturally grows jealous of one"s shadow, when one loves as I do."
"And pray, who told you all these stories?"
"Never mind."
"But I do mind," with an angry sob. "What! you are to hear lies of me, and to believe them, and I am not even to know who told you them! I do mind, and I insist on knowing."
"Surely it cannot signify now, when I tell you I don"t believe them."
"It does signify, and I should be told. But indeed I need not ask," with exceeding bitterness; "I know. It was your brother, Sir Guy. He has always (why I know not) been a cruel enemy of mine."
"He only repeated what he heard. He is not to be blamed."
"It _was_ he, then?" quickly. "But "blamed"?--of course not; no one is in the wrong, I suppose, but poor me! I think, sir,"--tremulously,--"it would be better you should go home, and forget you ever knew any one so culpable as I am. I should be afraid to marry into a family that could so misjudge me as yours does. Go, and learn to forget me."
"I can go, of course, if you desire it," laying hold of his hat: "that is a simple matter; but I cannot promise to forget. To some people it may be easy, to me impossible."
"Nothing is impossible. The going is the first step. Oblivion"--with a sigh--"will quickly follow."
"I do not think so. But, since you wish my absence--"
He moves toward the door with lowered head and dejected manner.
"I did not say I wished it," in faltering tones; "I only requested you to leave me for your own sake, and because I would not make your people unhappy. Though"--piteously--"it should break my heart, I would still bid you go."
"Would it break your heart?" flinging his hat into a corner (for my own part, I don"t believe he ever meant going): coming up to her, he folds her in his arms. "Forgive me, I entreat you," he says, "for what I shall never forgive myself."
The humbleness of this appeal touches Cecilia"s tender heart. She makes no effort to escape from his encircling arms; she even returns one out of his many caresses.
"To think you could behave so badly to me!" she whispers, reproachfully.
"I am a brute! I know it."
"Oh, no! indeed you are not," says Mrs. Arlington. "Well, yes,"--drawing a long breath,--"I forgive you; but _promise_, promise you will never distrust me again."
Of course he gives the required promise, and peace is once more restored.
"I shall not be content with an engagement any longer," Cyril says, presently. "I consider it eminently unsatisfactory. Why not marry me at once? I have nine hundred a year, and a sc.r.a.p of an estate a few miles from this,--by the bye, you have never yet been to see your property,--and, if you are not afraid to venture, I think we might be very happy, even on that small sum."
"I am not afraid of anything with you," she says, in her calm, tender fashion; "and money has nothing to do with it. If," with a troubled sigh, "I ever marry you, I shall not come to you empty-handed."
""If: dost thou answer me with ifs?"" quotes he, gayly. "I tell you, sweet, there is no such word in my dictionary. I shall only wait a favorable opportunity to ask my mother"s consent to our marriage."
"And if she refuses it?"
"Why, then I shall marry you without hers, or yours, or the consent of any one in the world."
"You jest," she says, tears gathering in her large appealing eyes. "I would not have you make your mother miserable."
"Above all things, do not let me see tears in your eyes again," he says, quickly. "I forbid it. For one thing, it makes me wretched, and"--softly--"it makes me feel sure _you_ are wretched, which is far worse. Cecilia, if you don"t instantly dry those tears I shall be under the painful necessity of kissing them away. I tell you I shall get my mother"s consent very readily. When she sees you, she will be only too proud to welcome such a daughter."
Soon after this they part, more in love with each other than ever.