Rose could not see her cousin"s face, for he had abruptly turned his back on her, and was staring out the window.
"You will remember, Agapit," she went on, with gentle persistence; "do not be irritable with her; she cannot endure it just at present."
"And why should I be irritable?" he demanded, suddenly wheeling around.
"Is she not doing me a great honor?"
Rose fell back a few steps, and clasped her amazed hands. This transfigured face was a revelation to her. "You, too, Agapit!" she managed to utter.
"Yes, I, too," he said, bravely, while a dull, heavy crimson mantled his cheeks. "I, too, as well as the Poirier boy, and half a dozen others; and why not?"
"You love her, Agapit?"
"Does it seem like hatred?"
"Yes--that is, no--but certainly you have treated her strangely, but I am glad, glad. I don"t know when anything has so rejoiced me,--it takes me back through long years," and, sitting down, she covered her face with her nervous hands.
"I did not intend to tell you," said her cousin, hurriedly, and he laid a consoling finger on the back of her drooping head. "I wish now I had kept it from you."
"Ah, but I am selfish," she cried, immediately lifting her tearful face to him. "Forgive me,--I wish to know everything that concerns you. Is it this that has made you unhappy lately?"
With some reluctance he acknowledged that it was.
"But now you will be happy, my dear cousin. You must tell her at once.
Although she is young, she will understand. It will make her more steady. It is the best thing that could happen to her."
Agapit surveyed her in quiet, intense affection. "Softly, my dear girl.
You and I are too absorbed in each other. There is the omnipotent Mr.
Nimmo to consult."
"He will not oppose. Oh, he will be pleased, enraptured,--I know that he will. I have never thought of it before, because of late years you have seemed not to give your thoughts to marriage, but now it comes to me that, in sending her here, one object might have been that she would please you; that you would please her. I am sure of it now. He is sorry for the past, he wishes to atone, yet he is still proud, and cannot say, "Forgive me." This young girl is the peace-offering."
Agapit smiled uneasily. "Pardon me for the thought, but you dispose somewhat summarily of the young girl."
Rose threw out her hands to him. "Your happiness is perhaps too much to me, yet I would also make her happy in giving her to you. She is so restless, so wayward,--she does not know her own mind yet."
"She seems to be leading a pretty consistent course at present."
Rose"s face was like an exquisitely tinted sky at sunrise. "Ah! this is wonderful, it overcomes me; and to think that I should not have suspected it! You adore this little Bidiane. She is everything to you, more than I am,--more than I am."
"I love you for that spice of jealousy," said Agapit, with animation.
"Go home now, dear girl, and I will follow; or do you stay here, and I will start first."
"Yes, yes, go; I will remain a time. I will be glad to think this over."
"You will not cry," he said, anxiously, pausing with his hand on the door-k.n.o.b.
"I will try not to do so."
"Probably I will have to give her up," he said, doggedly. "She is a creature of whims, and I must not speak to her yet; but I do not wish you to suffer."
Rose was deeply moved. This was no boyish pa.s.sion, but the unspeakably bitter, weary longing of a man. "If I could not suffer with others I would be dead," she said, simply. "My dear cousin, I will pray for success in this, your touching love-affair."
"Some day I will tell you all about it," he said, abruptly. "I will describe the strange influence that she has always had over me,--an influence that made me tremble before her even when she was a tiny girl, and that overpowered me when she lately returned to us. However, this is not the occasion to talk; my acknowledgment of all this has been quite unpremeditated. Another day it will be more easy--"
"Ah, Agapit, how thou art changed," she said, gliding easily into French; "how I admire thee for thy reserve. That gives thee more power than thou hadst when young. Thou wilt win Bidiane,--do not despair."
"In the meantime there are other, younger men," he responded, in the same language. "I seem old, I know that I do to her."
"Old, and thou art not yet thirty! I a.s.sure thee, Agapit, she respects thee for thy age. She laughs at thee, perhaps, to thy face, but she praises thee behind thy back."
"She is not beautiful," said Agapit, irrelevantly, "yet every one likes her."
"And dost thou not find her beautiful? It seems to me that, when I love, the dear one cannot be ugly."
"Understand me, Rose," said her cousin, earnestly; "once when I loved a woman she instantly became an angel, but one gets over that. Bidiane is even plain-looking to me. It is her soul, her spirit, that charms me,--that little restless, loving heart. If I could only put my hand on it, and say, "Thou art mine," I should be the happiest man in the world.
She charms me because she changes. She is never the same; a man would never weary of her."
Rose"s face became as pale as death. "Agapit, would a man weary of me?"
He did not reply to her. Choked by some emotion, he had again turned to the door.
"I thank the blessed Virgin that I have been spared that sorrow," she murmured, closing her eyes, and allowing her flaxen lashes to softly brush her cheeks. "Once I could only grieve,--now I say perhaps it was well for me not to marry. If I had lost the love of a husband,--a true husband,--it would have killed me very quickly, and it would also have made him say that all women are stupid."
"Rose, thou art incomparable," said Agapit, half laughing, half frowning, and flinging himself back to the table. "No man would tire of thee. Cease thy foolishness, and promise me not to cry when I am gone."
She opened her eyes, looked as startled as if she had been asleep, but submissively gave the required promise.
"Think of something cheerful," he went on.
She saw that he was really distressed, and, disengaging her thoughts from herself by a quiet, intense effort, she roguishly murmured, "I will let my mind run to the conversation that you will have with this fair one--no, this plain one--when you announce your love."
Agapit blushed furiously, and hurried from the room, while Rose, as an earnest of her obedience to him, showed him, at the window, until he was out of sight, a countenance alight with gentle mischief and entire contentment of mind.
CHAPTER X.
A CAMPAIGN BEGUN IN BRIBERY.
"After madness acted, question asked."
TENNYSON.
Before the day was many hours older, Agapit was driving his white horse into the inn yard.
There seemed to be more people about the house then there usually were, and Bidiane, who stood at the side door, was handing a long paper parcel to a man. "Take it away," Agapit heard her say, in peremptory tones; "don"t you open it here."