"Yes. I think the book was to Hester something of what you are to me.
Her whole heart was wrapped up in it--and she has lost it. Hugh, whatever happens, you must not be lost now. It is too late. I could not bear it."
"I can only be lost if you throw me away," said Hugh.
There was a long silence.
"Lady Newhaven will know to-day," said Rachel at last. "I tried to break it to her, but she did not believe me."
"Rachel," said Hugh, stammering, "I meant to tell you the other day, only we were interrupted, that _she_ came to my rooms the evening before I came down here. I should not have minded quite so much, but Captain Pratt came in with me and--found her there."
"Oh Hugh, that dreadful man! Poor woman!"
"Poor woman!" said Hugh, his eyes flashing. "It was poor you I thought of. Poor Rachel! to be marrying a man who--"
There was another silence.
"I have one great compensation," said Rachel, laying her cool, strong hand on his. "You are open with me. You keep nothing back. You need not have mentioned this unlucky meeting, but you did. It was like you. I trust you entirely, Hugh. I bless and thank you for loving me. If my love can make you happy, oh Hughie, you will be happy."
Hugh shrank from her. The faltered words were as a two-edged sword.
She looked at the sensitive, paling face with tender comprehension. The mother-look crept into her eyes.
"If there is anything else that you wish to tell me, tell me now."
A wild, overwhelming impulse to fling himself over the precipice out of the reach of those stabbing words! A horrible nauseating recoil that seemed to rend his whole being.
Somebody said hoa.r.s.ely:
"There is nothing else."
It was his own voice, but not his will, that spoke. Had any one ever made him suffer like this woman who loved him?
Lady Newhaven had returned to Westhope ill with suspense and anxiety.
She had felt sure she should successfully waylay Hugh in his rooms, convinced that if they could but meet the clouds between them (to borrow from her vocabulary) would instantly roll away. They had met, and the clouds had not rolled away. She vainly endeavored to attribute Hugh"s evident anger at the sight of her to her want of prudence, to the accident of Captain Pratt"s presence. She would not admit the thought that Hugh had ceased to care for her, but it needed a good deal of forcible thrusting away. She could hear the knock of the unwelcome guest upon her door, and though always refused admittance he withdrew only to return. She had been grievously frightened, too, at having been seen in equivocal circ.u.mstances by such a man as Captain Pratt. The very remembrance made her shiver.
"How angry Edward would have been," she said to herself. "I wonder whether he would have advised me to write a little note to Captain Pratt, explaining how I came there, and asking him not to mention it.
But, of course, he won"t repeat it. He won"t want to make an enemy of me and Hugh. The Pratts think so much of me. And when I marry Hugh"--(knock at the mental door)--"_if ever_ I marry Hugh, we will be civil to him and have him to stay. Edward never would, but I don"t think so much of good family, and all that, as Edward did. We will certainly ask him."
It was not till after luncheon that Lady Newhaven, after scanning the _Ladies" Pictorial_, languidly opened the _Morning Post_.
Suddenly the paper fell from her hands on to the floor. She seized it up and read again the paragraph which had caught her eye.
"No! No!" she gasped. "It is not true. It is not possible." And she read it a third time.
The paper fell from her nerveless hands again, and this time it remained on the floor.
It is doubtful whether until this moment Lady Newhaven had known what suffering was. She had talked freely of it to others. She had sung, as if it were her own composition, "Cleansing Fires." She often said it might have been written for her.
In the cruel fire of sorrow, [_slow, soft pedal_.
Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail, [_both pedals down, quicker_.
Let thy hand be firm and steady, [_loud, and hold on to last syllable_.
Do not let thy spi-rit quail, [_bang! B natural. With resolution_.
Bu-ut... .
[_hurricane of false notes, etc., etc._
But now, poor thing, the fire had reached her, and her spirit quailed immediately. Perhaps it was only natural that as her courage failed something else should take its place; an implacable burning resentment against her two betrayers, her lover and her friend. She rocked herself to and fro. Lover and friend. "Oh, never, never trust in man"s love or woman"s friendship henceforth forever!" So learned Lady Newhaven the lesson of suffering.
"Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me," she sobbed, "and mine acquaintance out of my sight."
A ring at the door-bell proved that the latter part of the text, at any rate, was not true in her case.
A footman entered.
"Not at home. Not at home," she said, impatiently.
"I said not at home, but the gentleman said I was to take up his card,"
said the man, presenting a card.
When Captain Pratt tipped, he tipped heavily.
Lady Newhaven read it.
"No. Yes. I will see him," she said. It flashed across her mind that she must be civil to him, and that her eyes were not red. She had not shed tears.
The man picked the newspaper from the floor, put it on a side table, and withdrew.
Captain Pratt came in, bland, deferential, orchid in b.u.t.ton-hole.
It was not until he was actually in the room, his cold appraising eyes upon her, that the poor woman realized that her position towards him had changed. She could not summon up the nonchalant distant civility which, according to her ideas, was sufficient for her country neighbors in general, and the Pratts in particular.
Captain Pratt opined that the weather, though cold, was seasonable.
Lady Newhaven agreed.
Captain Pratt regretted the hard frost on account of the hunting. Four hunters eating their heads off, etc.
Lady Newhaven thought the thaw might come any day.
Captain Pratt had been skating yesterday on the parental flooded meadow.
Flooded with fire-engine. Men out of work. Glad of employment, etc.
How kind of Captain Pratt to employ them.
Not at all. It was his father. Duties of the landed gentry, etc. He believed if the frost continued they would skate on Beaumere.
No; no one was allowed to skate on Beaumere. The springs rendered the ice treacherous.