Her two hands had been hanging loosely amongst the fringes of her shawl; she lifted them now, and linked her fingers together with a convulsive motion; but she never withdrew her eyes from Clement"s face, and her glance never faltered as she looked at him.
"Going away, Margaret?" the cashier cried; "going away--to-day--this morning?"
"Yes, by the half-past nine o"clock train."
"Margaret, you must be mad to talk of such a thing."
"No," the girl answered, slowly; "that is the strangest thing of all--I am not mad. I am going away, Clement--Mr. Austin. I wished to avoid seeing you. I meant to have written to you to tell you----"
"To tell me what, Margaret?" asked Clement. "Is it I who am going mad; or am I dreaming all this?"
"It is no dream, Mr. Austin. My letter would have only told you the truth. I am going away from here because I can never be your wife."
"You can never be my wife! Why not, Margaret?"
"I cannot tell you the reason."
"But you _shall_ tell me, Margaret!" cried Clement, pa.s.sionately. "I will accept no sentence such as this until I know the reason for p.r.o.nouncing it; I will suffer no imaginary barrier to stand between you and me. There is some mystery, some mystification in all this, Margaret; some woman"s fancy, which a few words of explanation would set at rest.
Margaret, my pearl! do you think I will consent to lose you so lightly?
My own dear love! do you know me so little as to think that I will part with you? My love is a stronger pa.s.sion than you think, Madge; and the bondage you accepted when you promised to be my wife is a bondage that cannot so easily be shaken off!"
Margaret watched her lover"s face with melancholy, tearless eyes.
"Fate is stronger than love, Clement," she said, mournfully, "I can never be your wife!"
"Why not?"
"For a reason which you can never know."
"Margaret, I will not submit----"
"You must submit," the girl said, holding up her hand, as if to stop her lover"s pa.s.sionate words. "You must submit, Clement. This world seems very hard sometimes, so hard that in a dreadful interval of dull despair the heavens are hidden from us, and we cannot recognize the Eternal wisdom guiding the hand that afflicts us. My life seems very hard to me to-day, Clement. Do not try to make it harder. I am a most unhappy woman; and in all the world there is only one favour you can grant me.
Let me go away unquestioned; and blot my image from your heart for ever when I am gone."
"I will never consent to let you go," Clement Austin answered, resolutely. "You are mine by right of your own most sacred promise, Margaret. No womanish folly shall part us."
"Heaven knows it is no woman"s folly that parts us, Clement," the girl answered, in a plaintive, tremulous voice.
"What is it, then, Margaret?"
"I can never tell you."
"You will change your mind."
"Never."
She looked at him with an air of quiet resolution stamped upon her colourless face.
Clement remembered what the doctor had said of his patient"s iron will.
Was it possible that Mr. Vincent had been right? Was this gentle girl"s resolution to overrule a strong man"s pa.s.sionate vehemence?
"What is it that can part us, Margaret?" Mr. Austin cried. "What is it?
You saw Mr. Dunbar yesterday?"
The girl shuddered, and over her colourless face there came a livid shade, which was more deathlike than the marble whiteness that had preceded it.
"Yes," Margaret Wilmot said, after a pause. "I was--very fortunate. I gained admission to--Mr. Dunbar"s rooms."
"And you spoke to him?"
"Yes."
"Did your interview with him confirm or dissipate your suspicions? Do you still believe that Henry Dunbar murdered your unhappy father?"
"No," answered Margaret, resolutely; "I do not."
"You do not? The banker"s manner convinced you of his innocence, then?"
"I do not believe that Henry Dunbar murdered my--my unhappy father."
It is impossible to describe the tone of anguish with which Margaret spoke those last three words.
"But something transpired in that interview at Maudesley Abbey, Margaret? Henry Dunbar told you something--perhaps something about your dead father--some disgraceful secret which you never heard before; and you think that the shame of that secret is a burden which I would fear to carry? You mistake my nature, Margaret, and you commit a cruel treason against my love. Be my wife, dear one; and if malicious people should point to you, and say, "Clement Austin"s wife is the daughter of a thief and a forger," I would give them back scorn for scorn, and tell them that I honour my wife for virtues that have been sometimes missing in the consort of an emperor."
For the first time that morning Margaret"s eyes grew dim, but she brushed away the gathering tears with a rapid movement of her trembling hand.
"You are a good man, Clement Austin," she said; "and I--wish that I were better worthy of you. You are a good man; but you are very cruel to me to-day. Have pity upon me, and let me go."
She drew a pretty little watch from her waist, and looked at the dial.
Then, suddenly remembering that the watch had been Clement"s gift, she took the slender chain from her neck, and handed them both to him.
"You gave me these when I was your betrothed wife, Mr. Austin; I have no right to keep them now."
She spoke very mournfully; but poor Clement was only mortal. He was a good man, as Margaret had just declared; but, unhappily, good men are apt to fly into pa.s.sions as well as their inferiors in the scale of morality.
Clement Austin threw the pretty little Genevese toy upon the floor, and ground it to atoms under the heel of his boot.
"You are cruel and unjust, Mr. Austin," Margaret said.
"I am a man, Miss Wilmot," Clement answered, bitterly; "and I have the feelings of a man. When the woman I have loved and believed in turns upon me, and coolly tells me that she means to break my heart, without so much as deigning to give me a reason for her conduct, I am not so much a gentleman as to be able to smile politely, and request her to please herself."
The cashier turned away from Margaret, and walked two at three times up and down the room. He was in a pa.s.sion, but grief and indignation were so intermingled in his breast that he scarcely knew which was uppermost.
But grief and love allied themselves presently, and together were much too strong for indignation.
Clement Austin went back to the window; Margaret was standing where he had left her, but she had put on her bonnet and gloves, and was quite ready to leave the house.
"Margaret," said Mr. Austin, trying to take her hand; but she drew herself away from him, almost as she had shrunk from him in the corridor on the previous night; "Margaret, once for all, listen to me. I love you, and I believe you love me. If this is true, no obstacle on earth shall part us so long as we live. There is only one condition upon which I will let you go this day."