"Run up against the "lectric telegraph, ma"am," replied Mr. Parmalee, sulkily; "and there was a message coming full speed, and it knocked me over. Morning. Much obliged."
He walked away. Outside the gates he paused and shook his clinched fist menacingly at the n.o.ble old house.
"I"ll pay you out, my fine feller, if ever I get a chance! You"re a very great man, and a very proud man, Sir Everard Kingsland, and you own a fine fortune and a haughty, handsome wife, and G. W. Parmalee"s no more than the mud under your feet. Very well--we"ll see! "Every dog has his day," and "the longest lane has its turning," and you"re near about the end of your tether, and George Parmalee has you and your fine lady under his thumb--under his thumb--and he"ll crush you, sir--yes, by Heaven, he"ll crush you, and strike you back blow for blow!"
True to his word, ho ordered unlimited supplies of brown paper and vinegar, rum and water, pipes and tobacco, swore at his questioners, and adjourned to his bedroom to await the coming of nightfall and Sybilla Silver.
The short winter day wore on. A good conscience, a sound digestion, rum and smoke _ad libitum_, enabled our wounded artist to sleep comfortably through it, and he was still snoring when Mrs. Wedge, the landlady, came to his bedside with a flaring tallow candle, and woke him up.
"Which I"ve been a-knockin" and a-knockin"," Mrs. Wedge cried, shrilly, "fit to knock the skin off my blessed knuckles, Mr. Parmalee, and couldn"t wake you no more"n the dead. And he"s a-waitin" down-stairs, which he won"t come up, but says it"s most particular, and must see you at once."
"Hold your noise!" growled the artist, tumbling out of bed. "What"s o"clock? Leave that candle and clear out, and tell the young feller I"ll be down in a brace of shakes."
"I couldn"t see him," replied Mrs. Wedge, "which he"s that m.u.f.fled up in a long cloak and a cap drawed down that his own mother herself couldn"t tell him hout there in the dark. Was you a-expectin" of him, sir?"
"That"s no business of yours, Mrs. Wedge," the American answered, grimly. "You can go."
Mrs. Wedge departed in displeasure, and tried again to see the m.u.f.fled stranger. But he was looking out into the darkness, and the good landlady was completely baffled.
She saw her lodger join him; she saw the hero of the cloak take his arm, and both walk briskly away.
"By George! this is a disguise!" exclaimed Mr. Parmalee. "I wouldn"t recognize you at noonday in this trim. Do you know who I took you for until you spoke?"
"Whom?"
"Sir Everard himself. You"re as like him as two peas in that rig, only not so tall."
"The cloak and cap are his," Miss Silver answered, "which perhaps accounts--"
"No," he said, "there"s more than that. I might put on that cap and cloak, but I wouldn"t look like the baronet. Your voices sound alike, and there"s a general air--I can"t describe it, but you know what I mean. You"re no relation of his, are you, Sybilla?"
"A relation of the Prince of Kingsland--poor little Sybilla Silver! My good Mr. Parmalee, what an absurd idea! You do me proud even to hint that, the blue blood of all the Kingslands could by any chance flow in these plebeian veins! Oh, no, indeed! I am only an upper servant in that great house, and would lose my place within the hour if its lordly master dreamed I was here talking to the man he hates."
"And my lady, any news from her?"
"Not a word. She came down to dinner beautifully dressed, but white as the snow lying yonder. She and Sir Everard dined _tete-a-tete_. I take my meals with the housekeeper, now," smiling bitterly. "My Lady Harriet doesn"t like me. The butler told me they did not speak six words during the whole time of dinner."
"Both in the sulks," said Mr. Parmalee. "Well, it"s natural. He"s dying to know, and she"ll be torn to pieces afore she breathes a word.
She"s that sort. But this shyin" and holding off won"t do with me.
I"m getting tired of waiting, and--and so"s another party up to London.
Tell her so, Sybilla, with G. W. P."s compliments, and say that I give her just two more days, and if she doesn"t come to book before the end of that time, I"ll sell her secret to the highest bidder."
"Yes!" Sybilla said, breathlessly; "and now for that secret, George!"
"You won"t tell?" cried Mr. Parmalee, a little alarmed at this precipitation. "Say you won"t--never--so help you!"
"Never--I swear it. Now go on!"
An hour later, Sybilla Silver, in her impenetrable disguise, re-entered Kingsland Court. No one had seen her go--no one saw her return. She gained her own room and took off her disguise un.o.bserved.
Once only on her way to it she had paused--before my lady"s door--and the dark, beautiful face, wreathed with a deadly smile of hate and exultation, was horribly transformed to the face of a malignant, merciless demon.
CHAPTER XXI.
A STORM BREWING.
Sir Everard Kingsland was blazing in the very hottest of the flame when he tore himself forcibly away from the artist and buried himself in his study. The unutterable degradation of it all, the horrible humiliation that this man and his wife--his--were bound together by some mysterious secret, nearly drove him mad.
"Where there is mystery there must be guilt!" he fiercely thought.
"Nothing under heaven can make it right for a wife to have a secret from her husband. And she knew it, and concealed it before she married me, and means to deceive me until the end. In a week her name and that of this low-bred ruffian will be bandied together throughout the country."
And then, like a man mad indeed, he tore up and down the apartment, his hands clinched, his face ghastly, his eyes bloodshot. And then all doubts and fears were swept away, and love rushed back in an impetuous torrent, and he knew that to lose her were ten thousand times worse than death.
"My beautiful! my own! my darling! May Heaven pity us both! for be your secret what it may, I can not lose you--I can not! Life without you were tenfold worse than the bitterest death! My own poor girl! I know she suffers, too, for this miserable secret, this sin of others--for such it must be. She looked up in my face with truthful, innocent eyes, and told me she never saw this man until she met him that day in the library, and I know she spoke the truth! My love, my wife! You asked me to trust you, and I thrust you aside! I spoke and acted like a brute! I will trust you! I will wait! I will never doubt you again, my own beloved bride!"
And then, in a paroxysm of love and remorse, the young husband strode out of the library and upstairs to his wife"s room. He found her alone, sitting by the window, in her loose white morning-robe, a book lying idly on her knee, herself whiter than the dress she wore. She was not reading, the dark eyes looked straight before them with an unutterable pathos that it wrung his heart to see.
"My love! my life!" He had her in his strong arms, strained to his breast as if he never meant to let her go. "My own dear Harrie! Can you ever forgive me for the brutal words I used--for the brutal way I acted?"
"My Everard! my beloved husband! My darling! my darling! You are not--you will not be angry with your poor little Harrie?"
"I could not, my life! What is the world worth to us if we can not love and trust? I do love you, G.o.d alone knows how well! I will trust you, though all the world should rise up against you!"
"Thank Heaven! thank Heaven! Everard, dearest, I can not tell you--I can not--how miserable I have been! If I lost your love I should die!
Trust me, my husband--trust me! Love me! I have no one left in the wide world but you!"
She broke down in a wild storm of womanly weeping. He held her in silence--the hysterics did her good. He only knew that he loved her with a pa.s.sionate, consuming love, and not ten million secrets could keep them apart.
Presently she raised her head and looked at him.
"Everard, have you--have you seen that man?"
His heart contracted with a sudden sharp pang, but he strove to restrain himself and be calm.
"Parmalee? Yes, Harrie; I left him not an hour ago."
"And he--Everard--for G.o.d"s sake--"
"He told me nothing, Harrie. You and he keep your secrets well. He told me nothing, and he is gone. He will never come back here more."
He looked at her keenly, suspiciously, as he said it. Alas! the intermittent fever was taking its hot fit again. But she dropped her face on his shoulder and hid it.
"Has he left the village, Everard?" very faintly.