"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 pa.s.sionately 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 gla.s.sfull. 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.