Innocent

Once more Innocent unfolded the fingers which she had clenched fast upon something. She held out a small phial, with some drops of dark liquid still in it. “It was this,” she said, looking at it with a strange, vacant gaze.

And then a horrible conviction came to poor Mrs. Eastwood’s mind. Out of the depths of her heart there came a low but terrible cry. Many things she had been called upon to bear in her cheerful life, as all stout hearts are—now was it to be swallowed up in tragic disgrace and horror at the end?

The cry brought Nelly, wondering and horror-stricken, from her innocent sleep, and old Alice, forecasting new trouble to the family, but nothing so horrible, nothing so miserable as this.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A BEREAVED HUSBAND.

I will not attempt to describe the state of the house out of which Innocent had fled—the dismal excitement of all the attendants, the sudden turning of night into day, the whole household called up to help where no help was possible, and the miserable haste with which the two men, of whose lives Amanda was the centre and chief influence, came to the room in which she lay beyond their reach. Batty, roused from his sleep, stupid with the sudden summons and with the habitual brandy and water which had preceded it, stumbled into the room, distraught but incapable of understanding what had befallen him; while Frederick, stunned by the sudden shock, came in from the room where he had been dozing over a novel, and pretending to write letters, scarcely more capable of realizing the event which had taken place in his life than was his father-in-law. It was only when the doctor came, that any one of the party actually believed in the death which had thus come like a thief in the night. After he had made his dismal examination, he told them that the sad event was what he had always expected and foretold. “I have warned you again and again, Mr. Batty,” he said, “that in your daughter’s state of health any sudden excitement might carry her off in a moment.” There was nothing extraordinary in the circumstances, so far as he knew, or any one. The often-repeated passion had recurred once too often, and the long-foreseen end had come unawares, as everybody had known it would come. That was all. There was no reason for doubt or inquiry, much less suspicion. The glass which had fallen from the dead hand had been taken away, the black stain on the coverlit concealed by a shawl, which aunty in natural tidiness had thrown over it. Poor Batty, hoarsely sobbing, calling upon his child, was led back to his room, and with more brandy and water was made to go to bed, and soon slept heavily, forgetting for an hour or two what had befallen him. With Frederick the effect was different. He could not rest, nor seek to forget in sleep the sudden change which had come upon his life. He went out into the garden, in the broad, unchanged moonlight, out of sight of all the dismal bustle, the arrangements of the death-chamber, the last cares which poor aunty, weeping, was giving to the dead. The dead! Was that his wife? Amanda! She whom he had wooed and worshipped; who had given him rapture, misery, disgust, all mingled together; who had been the one prize he had won in his life, and the one great blight which had fallen upon that life? Was it she who was now called by that dismal title? who lay there now, rigid and silent, taking no note of what was done about her, finding no fault? Frederick stood in the moonlight, and looked up at her window with a sense of unreality, impossibility, which could not be put into words; but a few hours before he had been there, with his little cousin, glad to escape from the surroundings he hated, from Batty’s odious companionship, from Amanda’s termagant fits. He had felt it a halcyon moment, a little gentle oasis which refreshed him in the midst of the desert which by his own folly his life had become. And now—good heavens! was it true?—in a moment this desert was past, the consequences of his folly over, his life his own again to do something better with it. The world and the garden, and the broad lines of the moonlight, seemed to turn round with him as he stood and gazed at the house and tried to understand what had come upon him.

It may be thought strange that this should have been the first sensation which roused him out of the dull and stupefying pain of the shock he had just received. Frederick was not a man of high mould to begin with, but he was proud and sensitive to all that went against his self-love, his sense of importance, his consciousness of personal and family superiority—and he had the tastes of an educated man, and clung to the graces and refinements of life, except at those moments which no one knew of, when he preferred pleasure, so-called, to everything, moments of indulgence which had nothing to do with his revealed and visible existence. He had been wounded in the very points at which he was most susceptible, by Amanda and her belongings. She, herself, had been an offence to him even in the first moments of his passion, and, as his passion waned and disappeared altogether, what had he not been compelled to bear? He had brought it upon himself, he was aware, and he had believed that he would have to bear it all his life, or most of his life. And now, in a moment, he was free! But Frederick was not unnatural in exultation over his deliverance. The shock of seeing her lying dead upon that bed, the strange, pitiful, remorseful sense, which every nature not wholly deadened feels at sight of that sudden blow which has spared him and struck another—that sudden deprivation of the “sweet light,” the air, the movement of existence which we still enjoy, but which the other has lost—affected him with that subduing solemnity of feeling which often does duty for grief. How could any imagination follow Amanda into the realms of spiritual existence? Her life had been all physical—of the flesh, not of the spirit; there had been nothing about her which could lead even her lover, in the days when he was her lover, to think of her otherwise than as a beautiful development of physical life, a creature all made of lovely flesh and blood, with fascinations which began and ended in satiny gloss and dazzling colour, in roundness and brightness, and softness and warmth. What could he think of her now? She had gone, and had left behind all the qualities by which he knew her. Her voice was silent, that one gift she possessed by which she could call forth any emotion that was not of the senses; with it she could rouse a man to fierce rage, to wild impatience, to hatred and murderous impulses; but that was silent, and her beauty was turned into marble, a solemn thing that chilled and froze the beholder. What else was there of her that her husband could think of, could follow with his thoughts? Her soul—what was it? Frederick had never cared to know. He had never perceived its presence in any secret moment. But he was not impious, nor a speculatist of any kind; he indulged in no questions which the most orthodox theologian could have thought dangerous. He tried even to think piously of his Amanda as passed into another, he hoped a better, world; but he stood bewildered and saddened on that threshold, not knowing how to shape these thoughts, nor what to make of the possibility of spiritual non-bodily existence for her. He could not follow her in idea to any judgment, to any heaven. He stood dully sad before the dim portals within which she had passed, with a heavy aching in his heart, a blank and wondering sense of something broken off. He was not without feeling; he could not have gone to bed and slept stupefied as did the father, who had lost the only thing he loved. A natural awe, a natural pang, were in Frederick’s mind; he felt the life run so warm in his own veins, and she was dead and ended. Poor Amanda! he was more sorry for her than he was for himself. The anguish of love is more selfish; it is its own personal loss, the misery of the void in which it has to live alone, which wrings its heart. But Frederick, for once, felt little for himself. To himself the change was not heart-breaking; he was free from much that had threatened to make his life a failure; but for once his mind departed from selfish considerations. He was sorry for her. Poor Amanda! who had lost all she cared for, all she knew.

This is not a bitter kind of grief, but so far as it went it was a true feeling. He had more sympathy with his wife in that moment than he had had throughout all their life together. Poor Amanda! it might be that he had gained, but she had lost. I need not say what a different, far different, sentiment this was, from that which feels with an ineffable elevation of anguish that she, who is gone, has gained everything, and that it is the survivor whose loss is unspeakable, irremediable. Frederick’s loss was not irremediable. But he was sorry, very sorry for her; the tears came into his eyes as he thought of the grave, and the silence, for Amanda. Poor Amanda! so fond of sound, and bustle, and motion; so confident in her own beauty; so bent upon gratification—all taken away from her at a stroke. He looked up at her window through his tears; the flickering lights had been put out, the movement stilled; no more shadows flitted across the white blinds; the windows were open, the place was quiet, one small taper left burning—the room given over to the silence of death. And all this in a few hours! It was then the middle of the night, three or four o’clock; he had been wandering there a long time, full of many thoughts. When he saw that all was still, he went back softly to the house. He had nowhere to go to but the little parlour in which he had been writing, where he threw himself on the sofa to get a few hours’ rest; and then it suddenly occurred to him to think of Innocent. Where was she? how had she disappeared out of that scene of consternation and distress? Frederick was cold and weary; he had wrapped a railway rug round him, and he could not now disturb himself and the house to inquire after his cousin. She must have gone to bed before it happened, he said to himself. He had not seen her, or heard her referred to, and doubtless it had been thought unnecessary to call her when the others were called. No doubt she was safe in bed, unconscious of all that had happened, and he would see her next morning. Thus Frederick assured himself ere he fell into a dreary comfortless doze on the sofa. Nothing could have happened to Innocent; she was safe and asleep, no doubt, poor child, slumbering unconsciously through all these sorrows.

It was not till late next morning that he found out how it really was. Neither aunty nor any one else entertained the slightest suspicion that Innocent had anything to do with Mrs. Frederick’s death. She had disappeared, and no one thought of her in the excitement of the moment. The very maid who had seen her leave the house had not identified the figure which had appeared and disappeared so suddenly in the moonlight. She thought first it was a ghost, and then that it was some one who had been passing and had been tempted to look in at the open door. In the spent excitement of the closed-up house next day—it was Sunday, most terrible of all days in the house of death—when the household, shut up, in the first darkness, had to realise the great change that had happened, and the two men, who had been arbitrarily drawn together by Amanda, were thrown upon each other for society in the darkened rooms, at the melancholy meals, with now no bond whatever between them—Frederick asked, with a kind of longing for his cousin. “Is Miss Vane still in her room? Is she ill?” he asked of the maid who attended at the luncheon which poor Batty swallowed by habit, moaning between every mouthful.

“Miss Vane, sir? oh, the young lady. She went away last night, when—when it happened,” answered the maid.

“Went away last night? Where has she gone?” cried Frederick, in dismay.

“That none on us knows. She went straight away out of the house, sir, the next moment after—it happened,” said the maid.

“She was frightened, I suppose, poor young lady. She took the way to the Minster, up the street. It was me that saw her. I didn’t say nothing till this morning, for I thought it was a ghost.”

“A ghost! My poor Innocent!” said Frederick. “Did she say nothing? Good heavens! where can the poor child have gone?”

He started up in real distress, and got his hat.

“Stay where you are,” said Batty. “You are not going out of my house this day, and my girl lying dead. My girl!—my pretty ’Manda!—none of them were fit to tie her shoes. Oh Lord, oh Lord! to think an old hulk like me should last and my girl be gone! You don’t go a step out of my house, mind you, Eastwood—not a step—to show how little you cared for my girl, if I have to hold you with my hands.”

“I have no desire to show anything but the fullest respect for Amanda,” said Frederick; “poor girl, she shall have no slight from me; but I must look after my little cousin. Miss Vane trusted her to me. My mother will be anxious——”

“D—— Miss Vane,” said poor Batty, “d—— every one that comes in the way of what’s owed to my poor girl, my pretty darling. Oh, my ’Manda, my ’Manda! How shall I live when she’s gone? Look you here, Frederick Eastwood, I know most of your goings on. I know about that cousin. You shan’t step out of here, not to go after another woman, and the breath scarce out of my poor girl.”

“I must know where Innocent has gone,” cried Frederick, chafing at this restriction, yet moved by so much natural emotion as to hesitate before wounding the feelings of Amanda’s father. “I have little wish to go out, Heaven knows; but the poor child——”

“I will find out about the child,” said Batty; and Frederick did not escape till the night had come again, and he could steal out in the darkness to supplement the information which Batty’s groom managed to collect. Innocent had been seen by various people in her flight. She had been watched to the shadow of the Minster, and then to the railway, where nobody had seen her go into the train, but which was certainly the last spot where she had been. Frederick was discomposed by this incident, more perhaps than became a man whose wife had died the day before. He could not leave the house in which Amanda lay dead to follow Innocent; but in his mind he thought a great deal more of her than of his wife on the second night of his bereavement. Where was she—poor, innocent, simple-hearted child? He sent a messenger to the High Lodge, hoping she might be there. He felt himself responsible for her to his mother, to Miss Vane, to all who knew him. As it was Sunday, however, he had no means—either by post or telegraph—to communicate with his mother. He had to wait till morning, with burning impatience in his mind. Poor Innocent! how his heart warmed to the little harmless, tender thing, who had nestled to him like a child, who had always trusted him, clung to him, believed in him. Nothing had ever shaken her faith. Even his marriage, which had detached many of his friends from him, had not detached her. She had believed in him whatever happened. I have said that Frederick had always been kind to Innocent. It had not indeed always been from the most elevated of motives; her supposed love for him had pleased his vanity, and he had indulged himself by accepting her devotion without any thought of those consequences to her which his mother feared; he had, indeed, believed as firmly as his mother and her maids did, that Innocent was “in love” with him—and instead of honourably endeavouring to make an end of that supposititious and most foolish passion he had “encouraged” Innocent, and solaced himself by her childish love. But through all this vanity and self-complacency there had been a thread of natural affection, which was perhaps the very best thing in Frederick, during that feverish period of his life which had now suddenly come to an end. He had always been “fond of” his little cousin. Now this tender natural affection came uppermost in his mind. Real anxiety possessed him—painful questionings and suspicions. Where had she fled to in her terror? She was not like other people, understanding how to manage for herself, to tell her story, and make her own arrangements. And then there was the strange alarming fact, that though she had been seen to enter the railway station she had not gone away, so the officials swore, by any train, and yet had disappeared utterly, leaving no trace. It seemed natural enough to Frederick that she should have fled in terror at thus finding herself face to face with death. Neither aunty nor the maids had as yet sufficiently shaped their recollections to give a very clear idea as to the moment at which poor Amanda died, and no one knew how deeply Innocent was involved in that terrible moment. But yet no one wondered that she had “run away,” partly because the excitement of the great event itself still possessed the house, and partly because the girl’s abstracted visionary look impressed upon all vulgar spectators a belief that “she was not all there,” as the maids said. She was supposed to be a little “weak,” even at the High Lodge, where her piety had procured for her a kind of worship. That she should be driven wild by fright and should fly out of the house seemed no wonder to any one. Frederick lay awake all night thinking of her; he could not turn his thoughts to any other subject. How soon the mind gets accustomed to either gain or loss when it is final! Twenty-four hours before, his brain had been giddy with the awful thought that Amanda was dead, that the bonds of his life were broken, and that she who had been his closest companion, the woman he had loved and loathed, had suddenly and mysteriously departed from him, without notice or warning, into the unseen. The shock of this sudden interruption to his life had for the moment disturbed the balance of earth and heaven; in that terrible region of mystery between the seen and the unseen, between life and death, he had stood tottering, wondering, bewildered—for a moment. Now, after twenty-four hours, Amanda’s death was an old, well-known tale, a thing that had been for ages; it was herself who began to look like a shadow, a dream. Had she really been his wife, his fate, the centre of his life, colouring it wholly, and turning it to channels other than those of nature? Already this began to seem half incredible to Frederick—already he felt that his presence in Batty’s house was unnatural; that he was a stranger altogether detached from it and its disagreeable associations, waiting only for a point of duty, free from it henceforward for ever. He was there “on business” only, as any other stranger might be. And his whole mind was now occupied by the newer, more hopeful mystery, the fate of his cousin. Poor little Innocent! how sweet she had always been to him, how soothing in her truth and faith. Perhaps in the halcyon time to come, free of all the bonds which his folly had woven round him, might he not reward Innocent for her love? If he could only be sure she was safe—if he but knew where she was!

Early on the Monday morning he rushed to the telegraph-office to communicate with his mother, and ascertain if she had gone home. How he chafed at his bondage here, and that he could not go to satisfy himself, to secure the poor child’s safety! No one, however, who saw Frederick with his melancholy aspect passing along the street, had any suspicion that Amanda’s memory was treated with less “respect” than that of the most exemplary of wives. The village was full of the sad story, and people looked at him curiously as he passed. Poor fellow, how he seemed to feel it! and no doubt she was very pretty, and men thought so much of beauty. Frederick’s solemn aspect gained him the sympathy of all the villagers. They spoke more tenderly of Batty’s daughter when they saw the bereaved husband. No doubt it had been a love match on his side at least, and whatever her faults might have been it was dreadful to be taken so young and so sudden! Thus Sterborne murmured sympathetically as Frederick went to send off his telegram, with very little thought of his wife, and a burning impatience to escape from all her belongings, in his heart.

He went to the railway before he went back, to ask if any further information about Innocent had been obtained. The early train from town had just arrived, and to his astonishment he was met by his mother, looking very pale, anxious, and almost frightened, if that could be. “Mother, this is kind,” he cried, rushing up to her, touched for the moment by a sudden sense of the faithful affection that never failed him; and then he added hurriedly, “Innocent! is she with you? do you know where she is?”

“She is safe at home,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a heavy sigh.

“Thank God!” he cried; and it did not occur to him that his mother did not share his thankfulness, and that the cloud on her face was more heavy than any he had before seen there through all her troubles.

CHAPTER XXXV.

MRS. EASTWOOD’S INVESTIGATION.

She recurred to this with a reiteration which was unlike her usual sympathetic understanding of others. There was an eager anxiety in her eyes when she suggested that Amanda’s death was unlooked for. Frederick sat by with a countenance composed to the woe of the occasion, and strangely impressed by the profound feeling in his mother’s face, watched her anxiously, but could not understand. What did she mean? Was she really so grieved for Amanda? Had the shock and pain of so sudden an ending really produced this profound effect upon her? or was she so conscious of the advantage which Amanda’s death would bring with it, that natural compunction made her exaggerate her expressions of sympathy? Frederick could not tell, but he watched his mother, wondering. There were circles of weariness and care round her eyes, and signs of suppressed and painful anxiety, and an eager watchfulness, which was incomprehensible to him, were visible in her whole aspect. She even breathed quickly, as with a feverish excitement, all the more painful that it was suppressed.

“I thought you were aware, mother,” he said, “that poor Amanda had been threatened for years with this which has happened now in so terrible a way. The doctors have always said——”

“The doctors, confound ’em!” cried Batty. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but it’s hard for a man to keep his patience. They’re ready enough to talk, but what can they do, these fellows? Keep her quiet, they told me. My God! didn’t I do everything a man could do to keep her quiet, gave her all she wanted, never crossed her, let her have her way in everything! There is nothing I wouldn’t have done for my girl. She’d have had gold to eat and drink if that would have done it. I’d have took her anywhere, got her anything. But no. Ask ’em, and they tell you all that is unpleasant, but give you a way to mend it—no. They do it, I sometimes think, to make their own words come true. ‘She’ll go off one day, all in a moment,’ they said to me, years and years ago. Says I, ‘I’ll give you half I’ve got, all I’ve got, if you will make it so as this shan’t be.’ Trust them for that. They gave her physic and stuff, and shook their wise heads, and said she was to be kept quiet. What had keeping quiet to do with it? We’ve all quick tempers. I never could master mine myself, and how was she to be expected to master hers? From father to son and from mother to daughter, the Battys were always a word and a blow. I’d rather that a deal than your slow, quiet, sullen ones, that hides their feelings. No, you may say it was unexpected, for how was I to believe them? A bit of a flare-up never did me no harm. I never believed them. But now here’s their d——d artfulness—it’s come true.”

“And she knew it herself?” said Mrs. Eastwood, with searching, anxious gaze. “Oh, Mr. Batty, try and take a little comfort! It must have made her think more seriously than you suppose, if she knew it herself.”

Batty gave her a dull look of wonder from his tearful blood-shot eyes; and then he launched forth again into panegyrics upon his lost child. “She was none of your quiet, sullen ones—still water as runs deep. She said what she thought, did my ’Manda. She might be too frank and too open to please them as hide their thoughts, but she always pleased her father. There’s aunty, now, that was constantly with my girl, will tell you ’Manda was always the one to make it up; whatever was done or said, she was the one to make it up. She spoke her mind free, but it was over directly. You should have seen her when she was a bit of a girl; she’d ride anything you put her upon—till the doctors said it was bad for her. When she was a baby I used to grumble and wish for a boy; but I’d never have been as proud of a boy as I was of my beauty, when I saw what she was coming to. From fifteen there never was a man as saw her that wasn’t mad about her. Your son, here, ma’am, Fred, as she always called him, poor girl, was the one that had the luck to please her; I don’t know why, for many is the handsome fellow, titles and all that, I’ve had to send away. I’ve nothing to say against Fred, but she might have done a deal better. And now she’s gone, where there’s neither marrying nor giving in marriage. You are sorry for Fred, of course it’s but natural; but it isn’t half to Fred that it is to me. Give us your hand, my boy; I always look upon you as my son, for her sake—but it isn’t half the blow to you as it is to me.”

Frederick had started to his feet when he had heard himself first spoken of in this familiar fashion. The familiarity chafed him almost beyond endurance. He stood at the window, with his back towards his father-in-law, as Batty wept and maundered. Fiery rage was in Frederick’s mind. What had this man, this fellow, to do with him? a man with whom he had no relationship, no bond of connexion? He took no notice of the outstretched hand. When would those slow hours pass, and the time be over during which decency compelled him to endure his odious presence? What would he not give when it was all ended, when this horrible chapter in his life should be closed, and he himself restored to his natural sphere among his equals, restoring to his mother all the comforts which Amanda’s existence had diminished, and taking once more his natural place. How he longed suddenly, all at once, for his old home! He would never go back to the house which had been Amanda’s; he would sell everything, disperse everything that could remind him of this episode which, God be thanked, was over. Batty, though he stretched out his hand in maudlin affectionateness, was satisfied that Frederick had not observed the gesture, and did not resent the absence of response. But Frederick had seen and loathed the offered touch. The days that must pass perforce before he could finally cut the last lingering ties which decency required him to respect seemed to him an age.

“I should like to see the—the—excellent person who attended upon poor Amanda,” said Mrs. Eastwood, whose looks were still watchful and anxious, though a certain relief had stolen over her face. “Might I speak to her and thank her for her devotion—to my daughter-in-law?” she added, almost rousing Frederick from his own preoccupied condition by the astounding interest and sympathy she showed. What could she mean by it? When Batty, pleased by the request, went himself to call aunty, Frederick turned to his mother with something of his old peremptory and authoritative ways.

“You did not always seem so fond of your daughter-in-law,” he said.

“Oh, Frederick!” cried Mrs. Eastwood, with a depth of feeling which surprised him more and more. “I never wished her any harm. God forbid that I should have wished her any harm!”

“Has anyone ever supposed you did?” he cried, with some impatience.

His mother put her handkerchief to her eyes. “God knows I am sorry—sorry to the bottom of my heart,” she said, “for her, and for the poor man who has lost his child. Whatever she was to us, she was his child to him. But, Frederick, I am not quite disinterested in my motives, God forgive me; it is for Innocent’s sake.”

“Are you out of your senses, mother? For Innocent’s sake?”

“Oh, hush, my dear! that I may ascertain the circumstances exactly, and how much is known. Oh, hush! Frederick, here they are. Don’t say a word more.”

He had to conceal his bewilderment, which was beyond describing, as aunty, in a black gown and with her handkerchief rolled up tight into a ball in her hand, came into the room. When he heard his mother speak to this woman in soft caressing tones, and beg to hear an account of everything, every incident and detail—it seemed to Frederick that his understanding of the meaning of words must be deserting him. “Tell me everything; it is all of the deepest interest to me, and there is a mournful satisfaction in knowing the details,” said poor Mrs. Eastwood, putting forth the conventional words with an uncomfortable sense of her son’s criticism, and his doubt of her sincerity. But Batty had no doubt. He was flattered by Mrs. Eastwood’s anxiety, by her desire to know all. “I ain’t equal to it myself,” he said, “but she will tell you,” and withdrew to a corner, to listen and sob, and moan over his child’s name. Mrs. Eastwood could not see his grief without becoming sympathetic. As for Frederick, he had heard the particulars often enough, and had no wish to hear them again. He was surprised and half offended by his mother’s strange mission. For Innocent’s sake! Were the women all mad together, one madder than the other? or what did she, what could she mean? He went out into the garden, his only refuge during these days when decorum forbade him to be seen; there he lighted a cigar, and with his hands in his pockets strolled about the paths. His mind turned to Innocent, and he thought to himself how pleasant it would have been to have had her there now, holding his arm with her delicate hand, hanging upon him, looking up in his face. He took almost a fit of longing for Innocent. But what folly about her could his mother have got into her head? what did she mean?

Mrs. Eastwood had a long interview with aunty. She heard everything about Amanda’s illness; how aunty had thought badly of her from the first, seeing her strength give way; how her excitableness, poor dear, grew greater and greater, so that not a day passed without one or two outbreaks; how she took a fancy to “the young lady,” saying she’d have her to sit with her, and not her ordinary nurse; how there had been a long silence when Innocent went to the room, while she was reading; how, after this, aunty had heard Amanda’s voice in high excitement, talking loud and fast; how there had come a sudden stillness, a stillness so great that it waked poor aunty from her doze; how she had rushed to the rooms and found her patient in a faint, as she at first thought, with “the poor young lady” standing over her. “The poor child ran off from us in the midst of our bustle,” said aunty, “and I don’t wonder; she was frightened, and I hope no harm happened to her, poor thing. She was young to see death, and a nice young lady. I hope she came to no harm?”

“Oh no—except the shock to her nerves,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “She came straight home. It was the best thing she could do.”

“The very best thing,” assented aunty. “And if you’ll believe me, ma’am, what with the bustle, and grieving so, and my mind being full of one thing, I never even thought of the poor young lady till to-day. I’m thankful to hear she’s all safe, and not another house plunged into trouble like we are. I was saying an hour since, my heart was sore for her, poor young thing, her first being from home, as far as I understood, and to come into a house of such sore trouble, and to see death without notice or warning. It was hard upon such a child.”

“Yes, it was very hard,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I left her ill in bed, her nerves shattered to pieces. And what a shock, what a night for you——”

“Oh, ma’am, you may say that,” cried aunty, with tears. “I’ve nursed her from a baby, and nobody could care for her like me, except her poor father, as worshipped the ground she trod on. She’s as beautiful as an angel,” said the faithful woman; “never all her life, when she was at her best, did I see her like what she is now. Oh, ma’am, you’ve a feeling heart, besides being Mrs. Frederick’s mother, and a relation like the rest of us. You’ll come up-stairs and look at her, poor dear.”

And Mrs. Eastwood was taken up-stairs, and what with infinite pity, what with unspeakable relief and ease of mind, cried so over Amanda’s deathly beauty, that Batty and his humble sister-in-law were flattered and comforted beyond expression. She was a real lady, they both said—no pride like the other Eastwoods, or the rest of that sort, but with a feeling heart, and showing such respect as was Amanda’s due. She made a conquest of both, and the household put itself at her feet when, with red eyes and a voice tremulous with emotion, she came down-stairs. She was just in time to receive Miss Vane, who, driving from the High Lodge in fulfilment of her promise to reclaim Innocent and pay a visit of ceremony to Mrs. Frederick, discovered to her consternation what had happened, and was anxiously questioning the servants about Innocent when Mrs. Eastwood came down-stairs.

“Went away in the middle of the night?” said Miss Vane. “Pardon me for speaking out. What a very strange thing to do?”

“She is a strange girl,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “She was shocked and frightened beyond measure. The only thought in her mind was to get home.”

“It was very odd all the same, very odd, in the middle of the night, and when she might have been of use. I must write to my brother Reginald, and let him know she has left me. He will be surprised. I am glad she is safe in your hands,” said Miss Vane pointedly; “a girl that does such things is dangerous to have about one.”

“Indeed, you mistake poor Innocent,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “She is not like other girls——”

“Ah, that is evident,” said Miss Vane. “I liked her too; there were many things in her that I liked; but a girl that acts so on impulse—I ought, however, to condole with you, Mrs. Eastwood. How very sad for—your son.”

“It is a great shock,” said Mrs. Eastwood. She was so much excited and agitated, that on the smallest inducement she was ready to cry again.

Miss Vane regarded Frederick’s mother with eyes of somewhat severe criticism. No doubt a certain decorum was necessary; but for the relations of a man who had made so unfortunate a marriage to pretend to grieve over the death of the objectionable wife seemed to her absolute duplicity. She eyed poor Mrs. Eastwood severely, making mental commentaries upon her red eyes, which were very little to her favour. “I had never the advantage of seeing Mrs. Frederick Eastwood,” she said, drily. “She was very handsome, I have always heard.”

Then there was a pause; neither of the ladies knew what to say to each other. That she should be found here, doing as it were the honours of Batty’s house, was not a position pleasant to Mrs. Eastwood, and she realized it for the first time now when her mind was relieved in respect to Innocent. But what could she say? She could not explain her horror of fear, her painful mission, to this representative of Innocent’s family, who already looked suspicious and disapproving both at herself and at the strange conduct of the poor girl whom no one understood. When the pause had lasted so long that it was necessary to break it, she said hurriedly, “If poor Innocent had not been so much startled and shocked—so overcome, in short, by what happened before her eyes—I am sure she would have asked me to explain to you. But she is so young, and had never seen death before, and such a sensitive, imaginative——”

“Do you think she is imaginative? She looks it certainly—but I found her matter-of-fact,” said Miss Vane, determined to give no countenance to these wild proceedings. Mrs. Eastwood was thus driven upon another tack.

“I am going back this afternoon,” she said, “her story was so incoherent, poor child; and I feared for the effect the shock might have—upon my son.”

“Is he imaginative too?” asked Miss Vane.

“He is my boy,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a comforting flush of indignation and offence, “naturally my first thought was for him. I go back to my other poor child to-night.”

“A most fatiguing journey for you, I am sure,” said the visitor, and they took a stately leave of each other, with no very friendly feeling. Had the brother only been there instead of the sister! Mrs. Eastwood thought to herself. John Vane was the only person in the world to whom possibly she might have confided the terror she had gone through—who might have advised what was best to be done. Even to Frederick, Mrs. Eastwood reflected, she never could whisper the horrible delusion which had taken possession of Innocent’s mind. For it could be nothing but delusion—yet how vivid, how powerful! Nelly knew of it, and Alice, who were safe as herself; and Mrs. Eastwood could not but recollect the other listener, whose commonplace imagination would never be satisfied by any certainty that the confession she had heard was the outburst of a mere delusion. The experience of life made her very well aware that nothing is ever long concealed which has been put into words in the hearing of an uninterested bystander; and should any emergency arise, what should she—what could she do? There was no one whom she dared trust—not Frederick, not Ernest Molyneux. The secret must be locked in their own bosoms; nothing could be done but to keep it a secret. Even John Vane—but on the thought of him alone her anxious mind reposed with a certain consolation—of all the world, he was the only one who might, perhaps, help them, should any terrible necessity for help ever come.

Miss Vane, on her part, went away shaking her head. “There is something in it all I don’t understand,” she said to the Sister, who awaited her in the pony carriage outside. “Innocent never concealed her dislike to Mrs. Frederick. Though she talked so little, she could talk on that subject.”

“Poor child, she was so simple and sincere, she said what she thought,” answered Sister Emily, whom Innocent’s church-going ways had deeply impressed.

“Oh, sincere! well, I suppose you may call that sincerity,” said Miss Vane; “but few people would like such sincerity in respect to themselves; and why with these feelings Innocent should have been so shocked, I can’t imagine. Depend upon it, there is something more in the whole business than meets the eye. I shall write to my brother all about it to-day.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

AT HOME.

That was a day never to be forgotten at The Elms. Innocent had been partially soothed during the long Sunday by the constant presence of her aunt and Nelly, and the careful tendance of old Alice. They never left her all day long. She was brought back at her own piteous request from the room she had chosen for herself to the little room within Nelly’s, which had been first prepared for her, and there lay all day long, holding the hand of one or the other, in a state of prostration which it was painful to witness. So long as they were with her she was calm; but if left a moment alone, began to cry out about the eyes that were looking at her, the clutch on her arm. Sometimes she would doze and begin counting over and over again, counting “ten, eleven, fifteen,” and would wake and start with looks of horror, gazing wildly around her, not knowing where she was. Mrs. Eastwood’s expedition to Sterborne had been decided upon by the mother and daughter as they sat together whispering over the fire, when Innocent at last fell asleep. Only one of the two could go, and Mrs. Eastwood decided at once that hers must be the mission. “We must know what is hanging over us—we must ascertain what we have to expect,” she had said. Oh, in what labyrinths of woe and horror did their innocent simple life seem about to lose itself! For neither of them doubted Innocent’s story. They felt that nothing which she had imagined could have produced such an effect upon her, and besides, what could have suggested such a strange idea? Her imagination was not impressionable. The only explanation was that it must be true. Mrs. Eastwood accordingly, after her vigil, set off in the early morning with a heart overweighted with horrible anxiety, not knowing what might have happened before she returned, or what tumult she might meet when she got there. She was prepared to defend the unfortunate girl to the last gasp; but if this dreadful story were true, what could be done? To carry Innocent away at once out of the country, without an hour’s delay, was a thought which had occurred both to Nelly and herself, but this might make doubt into certainty, and precipitate the very danger they feared. Thus she went away, trembling with anxious fears, with traces in her face of the agitation she could not conceal; yet, at the same time, horribly on her guard, watching everybody and everything, to draw the secret if possible from others, and to conceal her own possession of it. The two whom she left behind to guard Innocent were almost more to be pitied than she was. They felt themselves the garrison of the room, to defend it against possible invasion. They locked the door of Nelly’s chamber, through which any visitor must come, and then unlocked it again, fearing to awake suspicion. At every noise they started, and clung to each other, fearing nothing less than the horrible approach of justice to carry a prisoner away; and how many noises there were in the house that day! Carriages drove mysteriously to the door and drove away again, from the very moment about daybreak when Mrs. Eastwood left them, until the dreary afternoon which felt as if it would never be over. In that afternoon all the people left in London, everybody the Eastwoods knew, came to call, and had to be sent away with messages curiously worded to baffle suspicion, if any suspicion existed. The morning’s post had brought a short note from Frederick announcing his wife’s death, and the telegram of inquiry about Innocent which he had sent off on Monday morning closely followed the letter; therefore Nelly felt justified in drawing down all the blinds, and announcing that the death of her sister-in-law made it impossible for her to receive visitors. The maid who had heard Innocent’s confession was the one who waited on them, who came with hard knocks at the door to tell of every new caller, and kept suspicious watch upon everything that passed. How frightened Nelly was of her! How eager to conciliate and turn her thoughts into other channels! But the woman was not to be moved into friendliness. She said nothing of her superior knowledge, but she betrayed a curiosity, and, at the same time, an amount of information which made the very blood run cold in Nelly’s veins. She had not forgotten what she heard; she did not set it down to delusion; she believed what Innocent had said. To the vulgar intelligence it is always so comprehensible that evil should have been done. No questioning as to motive or likelihood takes place in that region; that all men are most likely to go wrong is the one fundamental principle of their belief; they make no distinction between the kinds of crime, that this is more probable than the other. All they know is that guilt is always the most probable hypothesis, and that probably every accused person did what he was accused of, or worse, however unlikely the accusation might be.

And Innocent herself was restless and wretched; less stupefied, more living than on the previous day. She could not bear Nelly to leave her. She talked incessantly—she, whose habit it was never to talk at all, and her talk was all about the event which had made so tremendous an impression on her.

“Shall I always see her eyes?” she cried, holding Nelly fast. “She looked at me, and would not stop looking. Her eyes were terrible. She looked at me, yet she was dead. Oh, think! She was dead—and it was I who made her die——”

“Even if you did, oh, Innocent,” cried Nelly, worn out with excitement; “you did not mean it—it was an accident. She did it herself—it was an accident—it was not you.”

“But I wished her to die,” said Innocent, lifting her pale face with something of its old steadfastness of expression from her pillow. “I wished her to die.”

“But not like this—Innocent, you would not hurt any one, I know. I am sure you did not mean it. Oh, you must know you could not have meant it!” cried Nelly, and wept, leaning her head upon the bed. How she felt her loneliness in that terrible emergency! Her mother had left her, and there was no one else to stand by her; to none in the world dared she tell this tale. Oh, if Ernest had but been as he once was, as she had thought him to be; if she but dared to send for him as a girl might send for her affianced husband, and relieve herself of the burden which was too heavy for her to carry alone! How blessed, how happy must the women be who could do this, who could trust entirely in the love and faith of the men whom they had pledged their own faith to! But on the contrary, even while she realized so fully the happiness, the comfort of such confidence, Nelly’s prayer was that Ernest might be kept away from her—that he might not come to see her wretched suspense, or to spy into the terrible secret of the house. He did not love the house, though he had said he loved Nelly. The honour, the good name of the family, could never be trusted in his hands.

And so the lingering wretched day went on. I think Nelly was far more unhappy than Innocent was, though the girl’s whole being was shaken, for Innocent had Nelly to transfer her trouble to; and Nelly, poor Nelly, had no one. She had to bear up alone, and to bear up her cousin too; and with sickening fear she looked forward to the moment when her mother should return, and either relieve or intensify the strange suffering into which they had been suddenly plunged. It was about seven o’clock when Mrs. Eastwood came back, their usual dinner-hour—and Nelly had not ventured to neglect the dinner or to seem careless about it, lest the servants should suspect. Happily they were alone in the house, for Jenny had gone to his college, and Dick had accompanied the young freshman to Oxford, to see him off, according to his own phraseology, on his University career. “Thank God, the boys are away!” had been Mrs. Eastwood’s first exclamation; and Nelly had echoed it a hundred times during that terrible day. Thank God, they were out of the way altogether! Nelly ran down-stairs to meet her mother with an anxiety which was speechless and almost indescribable—feeling as if her own future, her own life, hung in the balance with Innocent’s. Mrs. Eastwood was giddy, and worn out with fatigue. She stumbled out of the cab into her daughter’s arms. There were lights in the little hall, and the housemaid stood about waiting to receive Mrs. Eastwood’s bag—the housemaid who had received Innocent—the one person in the house who shared their knowledge. Mrs. Eastwood was very pale, but the aspect of her countenance had changed.

“Oh, Nelly, let us thank God!” she said.

“Then it was all fancy—all delusion—it is not true!”

Nelly sank down upon a chair, feeling her limbs unable to sustain her. She had kept up till then—though for her too (she felt) it would have been death as well as Innocent. Now her head swam, her strength failed; she could scarcely see with her dim eyes her mother’s exhausted face.

“It is simple delusion,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I cannot find even any foundation that she could have built such a fancy on—except that she was alone with—with poor Amanda, when the last paroxysm came on. Nelly, my darling, how pale you are! it has been too much for you——”

“You are pale too, mamma——”

“Yes, with fatigue—and relief—and thankfulness. Oh, Nelly, it seems wicked to be thankful when I think of that poor man who has lost his child.”

“Mr. Batty?” said Nelly, with a perceptible failure of interest. The introduction of a stranger into the conversation brought her back to ordinary life.

“My dear, she was his child,” said her mother, with gentle reproach.

“But you have made quite sure, perfectly sure?”

“I have seen everybody. Her nurse, her doctor, her father, even the maids—there is nothing in it—nothing. It must have been fright, imagination, nothing more.”

“Thank God!”

This conversation was quite spontaneous and natural; but it would not, I think, have taken place in the hall but for Jane’s presence, whom it was necessary to convince as well as themselves. But for this the mother and daughter would have concealed both their anxiety and their consolatory news till they were alone. And Jane, can it be doubted, knew this, and felt in the superiority of her unconscious cynicism and disbelief in human nature that the whole scene was got up for her benefit, and was a piece of acting. “As if I was to be taken in so easy,” she said to herself; “as if they could come over me like that!”

Innocent lay with her eyes fixed upon the door, longing and waiting for her kind nurses. It was old Alice who sat by her in the interval, holding her head, smoothing the wild locks from her forehead. “My poor lamb!” said Alice. The old woman’s heart was wrung with pity. I do not think she had ever believed Innocent’s story fully. Neither did she believe fully the vindication which Mrs. Eastwood was bringing. She held the poor child’s hand, and looked at her with soft pitying eyes. “My poor lamb!” To Alice, Innocent had always been a creature astray in the world; she did not wonder, like the rest, at this fatal complication in which her heedless feet had been caught. “I aye felt there was something coming,” Alice had said, and her calm had been a support to them all in their excitement. Now she stood aside, and gave up her place to her mistress with far less anxiety than Nelly had shown; but kept behind, listening and watching the one person in the world whom all three could rely upon for life or death. Mrs. Eastwood, weeping and smiling together, came forward, and threw herself on her knees by Innocent’s bed. She kissed her again and again with many sobs. “Put it all away out of your mind,” she cried, “my poor darling, my dear child! Put it all out of your mind. You are as innocent as your name; you had nothing, nothing to do with it. Do you understand me, Innocent? You had nothing to do with it. All you did was to be kind to her, good to her—not to bring her harm.”

“Then she is not dead?” asked Innocent, with a cry of joy.

“She is dead; but you are not to blame. Oh, Innocent, try to understand, try to believe me; you are not to blame. She died of a disease she has had all her life, not of anything that she took.”

“Ah! I gave it to her,” said Innocent, dropping back upon her pillows with sad conviction. “I was there, I know; you and the others could not see how it was. I gave it to her, and I know.”

“But, Innocent! listen to me. I have seen every one—the doctor, who must know best. And he told me exactly how it was, and what it was. He told me that he had looked for it for years—that he had always warned Mr. Batty how it must be. Innocent, you are not listening, you are paying no attention to what I say.”

“For I was there,” said Innocent. “Oh, do not be angry. I tried to count right; twice I threw it away because there was too much; the third time—oh, how can any one know but me? There was nobody else there—she in the bed, and I standing looking at her. And then all at once she was still—still like marble, and opened her eyes wide, and looked at me. She knew I did it, and I know. Except us two, who can tell in all the world? Oh, if you would be kind and kill me too!”

“Innocent! Innocent! It is her reason that has gone,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with tears. She stood before the unreasoning creature in all the impotence of fact against conviction. Nothing she could say or do would change the girl’s certainty; and yet she knew that this to which everybody bore witness, and not poor Innocent’s fatal fancy, must be the truth.

“Leave her to me, mem,” said old Alice. “She’ll be quiet now, and maybe sleep. She believes it; but the first effect is wearing off. Go and get your mamma some food and some wine, Miss Nelly, and make her lie down and rest. Leave this poor lamb to me, the first effect is wearing off.”

“But, Alice, there is no truth in it, not a word of truth——”

“I wouldna take it in that way,” said Alice; “there’s aye some truth. Poor lamb, there has been something for her mind to fix upon. I’m no the one to say what it was—an evil thought, or maybe just a shaking of the hand, two or three drops too much, as she says, of the sleeping draught. But there’s been something for her mind to fix on. It’s no for nothing that the creature is shaken and laid low like this.”

“It is a delusion,” said Mrs. Eastwood.

But old Alice shook her head.

Alice’s suspicion was very hard upon the ladies in their first burst of relief. It disturbed their conviction, their certainty.

“What Alice says is mere nonsense,” Mrs. Eastwood said, as she went down-stairs. “It is as clear as daylight that poor dear Innocent has been frightened out of her senses. There is nothing at all mysterious about the death. It is delusion, nothing more; you think so, Nelly, too?”

“Of course I think so, mamma,” said Nelly, with fervour. “I was always certain it must turn out so.” But, nevertheless, there was a piteous quaver in both their voices which had not been there when they went joyous and confident to Innocent’s room to set her mind at rest with their good news.

After they had eaten, for the first time almost since Sunday morning—a hurried cup of tea having been their chief support and sustenance in the interval—they sat together for half an hour over the fire with a hidden sense of misery in their hearts, though Mrs. Eastwood’s detailed narrative of all that had befallen her, and Nelly’s many comments and questions, the mutual support of two hearts which were as one, was not without its consolation. Before, however, this long and digressive talk was over Ernest Molyneux’s well-known knock was heard at the door. He had a habit of coming in thus late after his evening engagements. Mrs. Eastwood started up suddenly.

“I am not equal to seeing any one to-night,” she said. “You can tell Ernest I am tired; and Nelly—I don’t bind you, dear, if it will be a comfort to you; but say no more than you can help——”

Thus the mother hurried away, leaving Nelly alone to meet her lover. After all the weariness and horrible suspense of the day, here was a reward for her—a moment of consolation, do you say, gentle reader? Molyneux came in from a dinner-party in evening dress, and with the air of society about him. He had looked in at his club, he had heard the news, he was full of the atmosphere of that conventional and limited sphere which is called the world; and he found Nelly in her morning gown, rising with a nervous shiver from the fire, her face pale, her eyes anxious, a creature trembling with the fulness of a life much different from that of clubs and dinner parties.

“Hallo, Nelly!” he said, looking at her with surprise and tacit disapproval. This sort of carelessness (he would have said) was inexcusable. It shocked his best feelings—a dowdy already before her marriage, idling over the fire in a morning dress; it might be a dressing gown next time, and in married life what would be expected from one who made such a beginning? All these commentaries were in the look he gave her, and the involuntary comparison he conveyed by a glance at himself in the mirror,—himself all gorgeously arranged in purple and fine linen, and with a flower in his coat.

“I have not dressed, it is true,” she said hurriedly. “Innocent is ill, and I have been with her all day. You have not heard of our——trouble. Mamma has been at Sterborne since early this morning——”

“At Sterborne! I thought Innocent was there; and yet you tell me you have been with her all day——”

“Ernest,” said Nelly, breaking in suddenly, “Frederick’s wife is dead——”

“Frederick’s wife!”

“Yes, it happened late on Saturday. Innocent is somehow mixed up in it. I mean she was there, and saw it happen, and it has—almost—turned her brain.”

“She had not much to turn,” said Ernest carelessly. “But what does all this mean? Mrs. Frederick dead? You don’t mean to tell me, Nelly, that you were so much attached to her as to make a great trouble of that?”

“No, I suppose not,” said Nelly, looking at him wistfully, “but still, when any one dies—it is a—shock.”

She used her mother’s word unconsciously. Words for the moment had become to Nelly symbols, not for the expression, but for the concealment of her meaning; and oh! he surely might have read that there was more than her words said, in her eyes.

“Oh, a shock!” he said contemptuously. “Of course you would not have done anything to bring it about, but when Providence has been so kind as to deliver you from such an unpleasant connexion, you might be grateful at least. By Jove, what a lucky dog he is! he has had his swing, and as soon as the consequences threaten to be unbearable, here comes in some cold or something and carries her off.”

“Do you call that lucky?” said Nelly, somewhat woe-begone. “I suppose he loved her, or thought he did!”

“He has given up thinking anything of the sort for some time back, you may be sure,” said Ernest. “Well, Nelly, I suppose the conventional correct sort of thing is right for women. Granted that you have had a—shock. But Mrs. Frederick’s death cannot have made such a deep impression that you should look ready to cry at every word——”

“I suppose not,” repeated Nelly, with a painful smile. She was indeed “ready to cry,” but not for Mrs. Frederick’s death—for many reasons that he could little divine.

“It is not cheerful for a man to come a long round out of his way to see you and find you like this,” continued Molyneux. “I don’t want to find fault, heaven knows; but when you are of so much importance to me, I ought to be of a little importance to you, don’t you think, Nelly? A dowdy old gown, and your eyes red with gazing in the fire, or something else—and the lamp burning low, and a supper-tray or something on the table. Good heavens, what hugger-mugger ways you women fall into when you are left to yourselves! And what now, crying? Nelly, upon my word I don’t think I deserve this——”

“I am in trouble, Ernest,” said the poor girl, “and you are not. You can’t enter into my feelings. I do not want to annoy you with things that you have nothing to do with, as you once upbraided me for doing. Next time perhaps I shall be in better spirits. It is very foolish certainly to cry.”

Molyneux walked up and down the room in great impatience. He felt it was time to read a moral lesson to his future wife.

“I wish you would remember, dear,” he said, “that neither your life nor mine is to be limited by the walls of this house. You ought to think of something else beyond what’s going on here. And really I cannot see that the death of Frederick’s wife is much of an occasion for tears——”

“But Innocent was mixed up with it,” said Nelly timidly, with a feeling that he must know some time, that it would be better if he knew at once. “Innocent is—very ill—almost out of her mind——”

“Pshaw, Innocent!” he said; “if you open upon that chapter I shall go. I must warn you, Nelly, that I think you all make a great deal of unnecessary fuss over that girl.”

This was the result of poor Nelly’s faltering attempt to take her lover into her confidence. He went away shortly after, chafing at the folly of women; and she, poor girl, had a cry by herself in the dreary drawing-room before she went to share her mother’s vigil up-stairs.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

INNOCENT’S CONFESSION.

After this crisis there came a great lull. Innocent was ill. She lay for some weeks under the power of a mysterious disorder which was sometimes called low fever, and sometimes by other names. “She had no doubt received a shock,” the doctor said, when informed by Mrs. Eastwood to that effect, and this was about all that any one could say. But she was young, and she got better by degrees. They were all very good to her. By the time she was able to come down-stairs Frederick had returned home. He had let his little house in Mayfair, prudently making the best of his domestic calamity, and had gone back to live with his mother after his wife’s death, with a gentle melancholy about him which most people, or at least most ladies, found impressive. He had been unfortunate, poor fellow; his marriage had been a terrible mistake, but yet it was very sad and shocking to lose a beautiful young wife so suddenly—and his conduct was most becoming, all that could be desired in the circumstances. Frederick had a luck for coming well out of a bad business. He had taken his own way, and derived from that all the enjoyment procurable, and then Providence had taken the trouble to step in and deliver him from his wife, who could not but have been a hindrance to him in life. Frederick himself accepted very piously this explanation of affairs. I don’t know whether he went so far as to believe himself a favourite of heaven, but at heart he felt that he was lucky, very lucky; yet nevertheless he would talk about “my poor wife” now and then with touching pathos, and was very much sympathized with in some circles. On the whole, however, there can be no doubt that he was deeply thankful to find himself back again in The Elms with his career still before him, and no harm done, or at least no harm to speak of. Sometimes, it is true, softening thoughts of tenderness towards the beautiful creature whom he had supposed himself to love would cross his mind. But Amanda’s charm had lasted but a very short time, an incredibly short time considering the insane force of the passion which had swept him along to his marriage, and the momentary pangs of loss, which, I suppose, being human, he must sometimes have felt, were as nothing in comparison with the sense of relief and deliverance which came over him when he recalled with an effort the strange feverish episode of life which he had gone through since he left the familiar family home to which he had now returned. Sometimes he wondered if it had been real, or if it was only some strange dream more vivid than usual, so entirely did every trace of that episode pass away, and the old existence come back.

But I think, on the whole, Frederick was a more agreeable inmate since he had gone through this experience. He was not fundamentally improved by his troubles, but he was more civil and tolerant to others. His wife had treated him and his feelings with no consideration at all, and he had not found that treatment agreeable. Thus experience made up for him the want of that moral imagination, if we may use the word, which enables some of us to put ourselves in the places of others, and consider their feelings by nature. Frederick was as far as ever from any disposition to sacrifice what he cared for to anybody’s convenience—but in matters which he did not care for, he had, it must be allowed, gained a certain power of toleration, and had learned to think that the others might have wishes, and to respect them. He was pleasanter to have in the house, even Nelly acknowledged. Things went more smoothly in the re-united household. Brownlow came back again well pleased, restoring to the house a certain amount of dignity which it had lost; and to all of them Amanda and her brief reign began to appear like a feverish dream.

When Innocent came down-stairs, an invalid, thin and pale, with eyes that seemed to have grown to double their size, and with all that touching weakness which appeals to every good feeling of humanity, Frederick was very good to her. There was nothing he would not do for her gratification. He would stay at home in the evening, and give up other engagements in order to read to her. He would draw her chair from one place to another, and watch over her comfort. Would she soon get quite well? Would she ever be the same creature as before—the passive abstracted little soul, who lived in the midst of them without being of them? In many ways Innocent was changed. She no longer hung upon Frederick as she had once done. Her eyes did not go forth to meet him, her hand to grasp his. Indeed, at first she had been startled by his presence, which was unexpected by her, and had shrunk from him—a fact which piqued him deeply, when at last he found it possible to believe that Innocent was less desirous than usual of his society. She had not the skill to conceal this strange and incomprehensible state of feeling, and when his mother had endeavoured to explain to him that he too was inextricably associated in Innocent’s mind with the record of that night which had been the principal turning-point in her existence, Frederick did not like it. “Nonsense!” he had cried, with something of his old warmth; “What is it to her in comparison with what it must be to me? If I can bear it, surely she may be able to bear it. I did not think Innocent had been such a little fool.”

“She has strange ideas,” said Mrs. Eastwood, trembling as she spoke. “Sometimes I think her mind has been thrown a little off its balance. If she says anything strange to you about her own share in all that was done on that melancholy night, don’t treat her with ridicule, Frederick. Sometimes I do not know what to make of her. Sometimes she is very strange.”

“She always was,” said Frederick, pulling his peaked beard with a certain complacency. He thought he saw through it all. When he brought her from Italy she had been very young, and had not understood her own feelings; and then he married, and his position was changed. But now a further change had come. He was a widower; he was free to love and to marry over again. And Innocent, developed into self-consciousness, felt this; and felt that she herself in her perilous position had need of great additional prudence in her intercourse with him. Poor Innocent! This interpretation of her motives entirely removed any offence that Frederick might have felt. It gave him a delightful sense of his own powers and attractions, and inclined him doubly towards the little cousin who had so just an appreciation at once of himself and his circumstances. It opened his eyes to many things, among others, to her beauty, which had developed wonderfully. She was now not only very handsome, but handsome in a way which struck everybody. Hers were not the sweet and bright good looks of Nelly, but a quite distinct beauty of a high order—and Frederick began to admire Innocent more than she had ever admired him. He inquired into everything about her, and in the course of his inquiries learned all that happened with Sir Alexis, and was more amused and pre-occupied by this piece of news than his mother could have supposed possible. He was amused, she supposed, for he laughed long and low, and could not be done with the subject. “So Longueville thought he could have her for the asking,” Frederick said, with a laugh which was full of keen and covert excitement. “He was very nice about it,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I think he was really fond of her; and it would be a good thing for Innocent; a man who knows her so thoroughly, and would not expect too much. I don’t think he has given up hope.”

“Oh, he has not given up hope,” said Frederick half fiercely, half laughing. He would not give any explanation of his amusement, but he returned to the subject again and again with a curious interest. And gradually he came to show a great deal of regard and attention to the invalid of the house, to all Innocent’s desires and likings, as she came out of her fever. Sometimes she would look at him strangely, as if she had something to tell him, and then would sigh and shrink away, and avoid all conversation with him. Poor, dear little Innocent! she felt the difference. He was no longer a married man, he was free; she could not disclose her guileless love any longer with the sense of security she had once had. Nothing could be more natural, nothing sweeter, more interesting to Frederick—and the whole secret of her conduct seemed to him to be in his hands.

Strangely different were poor Innocent’s thoughts. The thing she wanted to do was to tell him of the one event she had never forgotten. “I killed your wife;” these were the words that were constantly on her lips, which in her forlorn honesty, poor child, she could not rest without saying. Though the sense of guilt had never left her, her mind had begun to accustom itself to the idea, horrible as it was. She began to feel herself in a measure the innocent victim of fate, guilty without intention. She had not meant it. Innocent’s mind grew by degrees capable of taking in this thought, which was more complex than anything she had ever embraced with her intelligence before; she had not meant it—and yet she was guilty. She had reft another of sweet life, she had freed Frederick from his wife. She felt uneasy with him until she had told him, an impostor, approaching him under false pretences. Poor Innocent was in a sad strait between him and his mother. If she told Frederick the terrible secret, which stood like a ghost between them, Mrs. Eastwood would be angry with her. This kept her back; and who could doubt that he, too, would be “angry” when he knew what she had done? The latter thought, however, was an inducement to make the disclosure, for Innocent, in her simplicity, could not bear the thought of keeping the secret, which might alienate her cousin from her, and yet accepting his kindness while she did not deserve it. Thus her secret had driven her out of the primitive region of sentiment in which her mind had hitherto dwelt, into that sphere of mental and moral complication in which most of us have our home. This it was that made her uneasy, embarrassed, almost unhappy with Frederick. It may seem strange to the reader that any additional weight was necessary to disturb the calm of an unhappy girl who thought herself guilty of a murder. But Innocent was passive in feeling, and imagination scarcely existed in her; and besides, I believe that though fictitious miseries are often very terrible, a fictitious guilt like this, though it may affect the mind as if it were real, can scarcely weigh upon the conscience like an actual crime. It is difficult to grope into such darkling corners of nature or to discriminate between moral and intellectual impressions to a point so fine drawn. I do not affirm this as a certainty, but I put it forth as an opinion. Innocent believed that she had been guilty of a terrible crime, and yet she knew, poor child, that she was not guilty. Her mind was oppressed by it, her life clouded, all her peaceful, passive existence revolutionized; but her conscience was not affected to a similar degree. Her consciousness had entered upon an entirely new chapter since this terrible event. Herself had become revealed to her by the light of it, and it was only by this light that she could realize her own individual and independent being; but she was not so unhappy as in the circumstances she ought to have been. She was unhappy with Frederick because he did not know, because he thought otherwise of her than as she deserved; but the general course of her life, though weighed down by this strange new consciousness, was not so unhappy as, according to all rules, it ought to have been.