The Heir Presumptive and the Heir Apparent

“Oh, nurse, God bless you! I thank you with all my heart!” cried poor Agnes, bursting out, but noiselessly, into a passion of tears.

Upon which the cheerful woman shook her head. “We must not go too fast,” she said. “He is very bad. But I have never been one that took the worst side. I’ve seen that kind before; a long, weedy slip of a boy that’s outgrown, you would say, his strength. But they’re stronger than you think for. I say, while there’s life there’s hope.”

Agnes Hill had heard these words often before, as we all have done, and looking up through her grateful tears with a fresh accès of misery she said, “Is that all? Oh, is that all?”

“The doctor gives him the six weeks,” said the nurse, pursuing her own line of thought, “but I shouldn’t be surprised if there was a change to-morrow or next day. That will be five weeks. I can’t tell you why I think it, but one can’t be so long with a case without forming an opinion. To-morrow night or early on Thursday morning I shouldn’t wonder if the change came.”

“Oh, nurse, the change!” said Agnes, clasping her hands, with the full sense of the words flashing on her mind.

“Yes,” said the nurse. “I can’t say, and no one can say, what change it will be—but I believe the fever will go. And then—it all depends upon his strength,” she added, “and I take the cheerful view.”

“You think there is still hope?” said Agnes, taking the woman’s hand in hers.

“Oh, plenty of hope!” said the optimist. But when the anxious visitor was allowed to come within the door, and from that corner saw Mar lying in the doze in which he spent most of his time, her heart sank within her. Nothing could look more feeble, more like death, as if he were gone already, than the waxen face of the boy, with his dark eyelashes against his cheek. She turned away and put her hands to her eyes, thinking he was already gone. What did it matter what any one said? Hope died with a pang unspeakable in the anxious woman’s breast. She came away again without listening to the further words of comfort which the nurse poured into her ears. Comfort—what comfort was there possible when he lay there, gone, wasted to a shadow, shrunken to nothing, with those wide circles round his eyes, and the blue veins like streaks of color? Agnes said to herself she had seen too many to deceive herself. She knew, whatever any one might say.

As she came down again to the hall, Letitia’s carriage arrived at the door. Though Agnes was so hopeless and so entirely convinced that nothing could now avail, the sound of the carriage wheels on the gravel made her shrink and glow with indignation, as if the noise might harm him. The first words she said to Mrs. Parke were of reproach. “Couldn’t you drive round another way, not to disturb him?” she said.

“Ah, you have come to see our poor Mar. No, dear boy, we don’t disturb him. Nothing has disturbed him for a long, long time, alas!” said Letitia. The mournful motion of her head, her measured tones of fictitious grief, gave Agnes an impulse to strike her, as a brutal man might have done, upon the lying mouth.

“Oh, Aunt Agnes,” cried Letty, “stay, stay! Don’t go away.” There was no possibility of doubting the sincerity of Letty’s wet eyes and tear-stained face.

“I am afraid I cannot ask you to do that,” said Letitia. “If it had been Mary—— But there are too many people already in the house. And you could do Mar no good, Agnes; in all likelihood he will never recognize anybody—he will just sleep away. And the agitation is more than I can bear. And at such a moment it is best there should be nobody in the house but the family alone.”

“I am his mother’s sister,” said Agnes, painfully.

“But such a mother! who has never spoken to him, never acknowledged him, would have turned him out of his rights if she could. No, he must be left now to those who have cared for him all his life.”

“Oh, Letitia,” she cried, in her misery, “and have you nothing to blame yourself with in that? Is your conscience clear? Don’t you remember, as we all do—as we all did—for most of them are gone?” she cried, wringing her hands.

Letitia looked at her, opening her eyes wide, then gave her daughter a glance of appeal, and shook her head. “Poor thing!” she said. “Poor Agnes, it has been too much for her. This dreadful mental weakness is in the family. Tell one of the men, Letty, to get ready to take her to the station. My poor Agnes, rest here a little and Thomas shall take you to the train.”

Agnes said not a word more. She turned and hastened away, almost running to get into the shelter of her cab before the storm of wretchedness and fierce indignation, which she could scarcely keep silent so long, should burst forth. And now she was about to triumph in her wickedness, this cruel terrible woman! The stars in their courses fought for her. Mar’s innocent young life, and Mary’s reason, and all the misery that had been, were but steps in her advancement. And now she had all but reached the climax of her life.

CHAPTER XLIII.

There came a moment, however, when the courage of Agnes failed, and she could bear it no more. She told her sister again that she had a headache, a pretence which Mary seemed to understand, asking no questions—and would go early to bed. But she did not go to bed. It seemed something to sit up, to accompany the vigil of the nurse, the possibility of the change with the intensity of feeling if not of presence. When Agnes closed her eyes she seemed to see the whole scene—the room with its shaded light, the wasted form scarcely visible in the bed; the nurse—a silent figure—watching the long hours through. She did not know that the nurse who was then with the boy was one who did not hope—which was a thing which would have added heaviness to the vigil had she known it. She had not the heart to go to bed. It seemed somehow as if she were doing something for him to sit up and count the hours and spend her soul in broken breaths of prayer. Oh, how broken, how interrupted with a hundred fantastic uncontrollable imaginations! Still it was something to join herself to the vigil, if no more.

She was so absorbed in her own deep anxiety and thoughts that she did not hear any movement in the house, and thought nothing but that the household was asleep and hushed at its usual early hour. And when she heard a stealthy step come to her door after midnight, Agnes’ mind was so confused from reality by that vigil that she sprang up with a breathless terror lest it might be the nurse coming to call her to tell her the change had come, and that Mar’s life was fading away. She made a swift step to the door and opened it, unable to speak; but only found Lady Frogmore’s maid outside with an anxious face.

“Oh, Miss Hill, I’m so glad you’re up,” she said; “I wish you would come to my lady—she is not herself at all. I can’t tell what is the matter with her.”

“Hasn’t she gone to bed, Ford?”

“I got her to bed, ma’am, quite comfortable I thought; but I stopped about doing little things, for I saw she was wakeful; and then all at once she got up and called me and caught me by the arm. ‘Ford,’ she says, looking in my face very serious, ‘who was it that said, May he grow up an idiot and kill you? Who was it, who was it?’ ‘Oh, my lady, I don’t know,’ I said; ‘I never heard the words before.’ ‘It was a dreadful thing to say,’ she cries, always looking at me. ‘Ford, do you think words like that ever come true?’ Perhaps I was too bold, Miss Hill; but I spoke up and said, ‘No, my lady, I’m sure they don’t: for if they did God Almighty would be putting us in the power of the worst and dreadfullest—and He would never do that.’ ‘No, Ford, He would never do that,’ she said, with the tears in her dear eyes. Oh, Miss Hill, there’s some change coming. I don’t know what it is. And now she’s trying all her keys upon that box we brought from the Park. We’ve not been able to find one that would open it; but I got another bunch just now, and while she was busy I thought I’d come and call you. Don’t be frightened, Miss Hill. I don’t think it’s a change for the worse.”

“Oh, Ford,” said Agnes, “it is just the bitterness of life. It’s a change that will come too late. Oh, my boy! it must be his dear spirit that is moving his mother’s heart.”

“Let’s hope it’s something better than that. Let’s hope it means good news,” said the woman, who knew a great deal of the family in her long service, and nearly, if not all, its mysteries. But Agnes, whose heart was very heavy, only shook her head. When she went into her sister’s room, Mary was standing against the light, a white figure wrapped in a white dressing-gown. Her partial confusion of mind, the subdued and quiet life she had led, her exemption from strong emotions, had kept an air of comparative youth about her. Her hair was partially grey, but it gave no appearance of age to the face, which had the appearance of one purified and refined from earthliness by long misfortune and trouble. She had lighted a number of candles, which encircled her with light, and was standing looking down into the box which was open on the table with a strange air of tremulous discovery, indecision, terror, and joy, like one who has found out some astonishing thing which she cannot believe yet knows to be true. She turned half round with a warning movement, as if begging not to be disturbed, then suddenly putting out her hand drew Agnes close to her. “What is that? Do you know what it is?” she said.

The only answer Agnes made was with a burst of tears: “Oh, Mary! Oh, my dear! my dear!” she cried.

A smile was on Mary’s face—a strange tender smile, full of all the softness of her veiled and gentle soul. She took out something tenderly and reverently, as if it had been a sacred thing. The curious nurse, peering behind these two absorbed women, expecting to see some mystery, felt herself to come down from imaginative poetic heights to the commonest familiar ground when she saw what it was. Ford almost laughed with the surprise, but dared not, so strong was the sensation of passionate feeling that seemed to fill the air. What Lady Frogmore took from the box was the first little garment that is ever put upon a child. A little film of lawn, not much more; the most delicate and softest of fabrics made to fold over the delicate body, in exquisite softness and whiteness, as if the finest fairy web of earth had been chosen to wrap the little thing new-born, come from among the angels. It was unfinished—a narrow line of very fine lace only half-sewn round the little sleeves. Mary took it up and held it in her hands, spread out upon them. Oh, what soft suggestions of trembling happiness, of wonderful anticipation, of tender mystery, and dreams were in it! “What is this?” she said, in a whisper; “tell me what it is.”

Agnes had put her arms round her sister, leaning upon her—she who was usually the strong one, the supporter and prop—and laid her head on Mary’s shoulder. The sight of the little tender relic, so familiar, so full of suggestion on this night of fate, overcame her altogether. Oh, to think of the infant for whom that little wrapper of softness had been made; whom his mother, who had made it with such holy and tender thoughts, had never known; who was lying now between life and death, perhaps having crossed the awful boundary lingering near them, breathing into her long-closed and stupefied heart. Agnes could make no answer. She sobbed convulsively upon her sister’s shoulder. “Oh, my baby, my boy, my little Mar, my little Mar!” she cried, with a poignant tone of anguish which pierced the soft air, the soft silence of the night, like something keen and terrible, a sharp blade and point of passionate human feeling.

Mary held up the stronger woman with a rally of her own strength, but did not move otherwise. Her eyes were full of tears, but there was no anguish in them. She said in a low voice, like the coo of a dove, “No one need tell me. I know. It was I who made it for my baby—my baby! And he was born. I remember now everything. The old mother was there—my mother—don’t you know—and so proud. And my old lord, my dear old lord—with his heir—— Agnes, Agnes!” she cried, suddenly, “what have you done to me, to keep me so long from my boy?”

Agnes sank down upon her knees on the floor. She held up her clasped hands as if she were praying to the white figure that stood over her. “It can do no harm now,” she cried. “What does it matter if we all go mad? I think I shall: to see her remember him, to see her find out the truth too late—too late! Oh, God, that I should have my answer now when it is all over. It would have been better if there had been no answer—no answer now.”

“Agnes,” said Mary, gently laying a hand upon her head. She held the precious little garment in her other hand, and kissed it, pressing it to her lips and her cheek. “Agnes,” she said in her soft voice, pitying her sister’s emotion, “I do not blame you, dear. I have been kept in the dark, I don’t know why; I have done many strange things not knowing. Perhaps my—my baby—my boy has been injured; God forbid. But I don’t blame you, dear. If he has been injured we can put it right. All can be put right now we know. You meant it, I am sure, for the best. Agnes, I never, never will blame you, dear. Oh, rise up now and tell me, tell me all you have kept from me; tell me everything about my boy.”

“I think God has taken him,” cried Agnes on her knees. “This was the night—I think he must be here to have found his way to his mother’s heart. Oh Mar, Mar! if you are dead, if you hear, say something, let us see you one moment, one moment before you go to heaven. One moment, one moment, Mar!”

The maid who was standing by, and whom these words froze with terror, thought to her dying day that she had heard something, she knew not what, like the passing of a soft footstep, like a subdued breath, and would have turned and fled had she not thought herself safer in the room with the lights than in the dark passages outside. This impulse of terror was stopped in Ford’s mind by the look her mistress gave her—which was a look which Ford had exchanged with many persons over Lady Frogmore’s own head—a look of pity and appeal, consulting her what was to be done for the distracted woman at their feet. This curious turning of the tables stupefied Ford. It was as if an infant from its cradle had turned and bid its nurse care for its mother.

“All this has been too much for her,” said Lady Frogmore. “Help me to put her in my bed, Ford. She and I have always been together. We slept together when we were two little girls in the old vicarage. Agnes, let me lift you, dear; don’t strain yourself or take any trouble. We’ll stay together this wonderful night. And when you’re able you will tell me; let me lift you first——”

“You!” cried Agnes, stumbling somehow to her feet. She added in a humble tone, coming to herself, “I have forgotten my duty, Mary. Don’t think any more of me. It was more than I could bear, just for a moment.”

“Yes, I saw it was too much. Ford, do you think you could sleep on the sofa, just to be at hand if we wanted anything? I am not easy about her still. We’ll stay together to-night. Lie down and I will sit by you, and when you are able you will tell me——”

“My lady, it would be much better for you to get your natural rest.”

“Mary, you must not sit up with me!”

“And why not, I should like to know,” said Mary. “Don’t you know I’m very happy to-night. Don’t you know I’ve found it out what has been on my mind so long. I knew there was something. I have never said anything to you, but it has been, oh so heavy on my mind! Something, something that has gone away from me that I could not get back, and when I dreamt of my old lord he was always frowning, always angry. Agnes! I was making this, and mother sitting, as there, and you pouring out tea, when—we were all very happy—I remember my thread breaking just there, when I had nearly finished. And I turned to take another, and—then there was something that happened before—before he was born.”

“He was born that night,” cried Agnes, “God bless him.” She was very pale, and her eyes had become dry and shone as if with fever. In her mind there was a deep wonder whether Mar heard her, whether it would please him, though he was dead, to have the story of his infancy told to his mother. And with this half distracted thought came one that was quite real, quite rational; the anxious determination to shut out all reference to Letitia’s visit from the still wavering mind of her sister; to keep that which was the key of all that followed from her recollection if possible.

“He was born that night—God bless him!” said Mary slowly. Then she added, “I remember a cluster of people bending over him, and the light on father’s bald head, and my dear old lord with his face down quite close, and the doctor standing saying something about the child. And then—and then—what happened? I remember no more.”

“You were very ill, oh very ill; so ill that—Oh,” said Agnes, “don’t make me think of that terrible time.”

“Ah!” said Mary, a quiet seriousness coming over her face, though her lips still smiled, “you thought I was going to die.”

Agnes made no reply.

“But even that,” said Lady Frogmore, “was not enough to make you all deceive me so cruelly. No, no, my dear, I did not mean cruelly. You must have thought it for the best. One can but do what one thinks is for the best. Was there ever such a thing before that a woman should live and never know. Do you remember what the Bible says, ‘Can a woman forget her child, that she should not remember——’

“Oh,” cried the poor soul, “what you have taken from me! How much you have robbed me of?” She paused a moment with her hands clasped, with the consciousness of wrong on her face. Then that sterner mood died away in the old sweet way of making the best of it, which Agnes remembered with a melting of her heart had always been Mary’s way. “Never mind,” she said. “Never mind. I know now, and you meant it all for the best.”

CHAPTER XLIV.

Mary sat by the bed in which Agnes lay for nearly half the night. She was so determined on this strange arrangement that her sister had to yield, and as long as the darkness lasted, which in July moves slowly, much more than in June, the conversation went on. Ford lay on the sofa in a distant corner and slept soundly, but neither of the ladies had any inclination to sleep. It distracted the thoughts of Agnes from the possible awful importance of this night in Mar’s life to tell Mar’s mother everything that had happened, dwelling as briefly as possible upon the illness which had separated Mary from her child, and endeavoring to blur over as best she could the blank which that illness had left behind in Mary’s mind. It was indeed a very broken story, in which a stranger wanting information would have seen the most serious gaps and deficiencies. But to Mary the interest of the details in which Agnes took refuge to avoid the more serious questions was so great that it was always possible to carry her past a dangerous point, and the murmurs of the two voices going on all through the night, low, breathed into each other’s ears, was more like the whisperings of two girls over their little secrets of love than the clearing up of what was almost a tragedy, the revelation of the strangest, troublous story. Mary herself was lost in a still vague and tremulous joy, all innocent and soft as the little garment that had been the happy cause of it, possessing as yet no complications, realizing nothing but that she had been proved to have the dearest of all possessions to a woman—a child, a baby, who to her thoughts was a baby still, and at present linked himself but dimly to any idea of further developments. To be told that he was Mar still gave little enlightenment to her mind, which did not know Mar. Something that could be wrapped still in that little film of innermost apparel—although it was at the same time something which could consciously respond to her affection, reflect his father’s image as Agnes said he did—something that was at once a loving human creature and an infant entirely her own. This was Mary’s conception of the child whom she had discovered as if it had been a jewel that was lost. She was not shaken by her discovery as had been feared. She took it sweetly, quietly, as was natural to her gentle soul. Happily it had come without any harsh discovery, in the gentlest way, and as yet there seemed nothing but happiness in the lifting of the veil, the opening up of the old life. Mary cried as she sat and listened, shedding many soft tears. Her eyes shone behind them with joy and peace. She had found what she had lost. No more would her old lord frown upon her in her dream; no more would she feel that imperfection, that something which she could not understand, the mystery which had haunted her life, though she did not know what it was. She could not, perhaps would not, for even in this feeble state there is some moral control, allow herself to think further. It was enough that she had come out of the darkness, and that the light was sweet. When the daylight began to come in at the window and make the candles pale, Lady Frogmore rose, as light and serviceable as if it had not been she who had been surrounded with such anxious cares for so many years, and placed upon such a platform of weakness and disadvantage. She was not weak nor at any disadvantage now. Her maid slept. Her sister, who had ministered to her all these years, lay silent, looking on while she put out the candles and closed the shutter on the window. “I am coming to bed,” she said, “if you will make room for me, Agnes: not because I am tired, for I could sit and hear of him for ever, but because we must be early astir to-morrow, and I suppose rest is necessary. I don’t feel any need of it,” she said, with a soft laugh. “None at all. I feel young and strong as if I could do anything. I feel about twenty, Agnes. But make a little room and I think I shall sleep. It is like old times,” she said as she took her place by her sister’s side, “like old, old times, when the little girls were always together. Do you remember the time when we two were the little girls?”

They kissed each other, laughing and crying over that old recollection. How long, how long ago? And all life had passed since then, and here they were, two sisters growing old, with wrinkles upon the faces which the early light revealed, despising all the tender fictions of the night. Mary soon slept as she had said, fearing nothing, innocent in the discovery she had made. She fell asleep like a child with the light of the summer morning growing on her face. But Agnes could not sleep. When her sister’s regular breathing showed the deep repose in which she was wrapped, Agnes stole out of bed and went to the furthest window where there was a glimmer of the rising sun, and knelt down there in the dawning ray, turning her face towards the east. Why she could not have told. To turn her face towards the east was no spell, there was nothing in that to secure that her prayers should be heard. And it could not be said that she prayed. Her soul and body were both worn out. She knelt there silent, her head bowed in her hands. The new day was bringing life or death to Mar—which was it bringing, life or death? She knelt on silent, like an image of devotion. It was something at least to await that crisis, when it should come, upon her knees.

Lady Frogmore slept till it was late, long after Agnes had dressed and come upstairs again to await at her bedside her sister’s awakening with a little anxiety after all the excitement of the night. Mary had lain very still; she had not moved for hours, and was sleeping like a child. But when she began to give signs of waking, her appearance changed. She moved about uneasily, her face contracted as if with pain; she put out her hands as if appealing to some one. Suddenly she sprang up broad awake in her bed. “Ford!” she cried, and then “Agnes!” as she perceived her sister. Her breath came quick, a look of terror came over her face. “Who was it?” she cried, “Who was it—that said ‘May he grow up an idiot, and kill you——’ Who was it, Agnes?”

“Oh, my lady, my lady!” cried Ford from the other side of the bed.

“Mary! don’t think of that, for God’s sake.”

“Who was it?” she cried. “It was to me it was said.”

“Oh, my lady,” said Ford, “don’t think of such dreadful things.”

“‘May he grow up an idiot—and kill you—’ It was said to me—it was a curse upon my baby—my child! Who said it Agnes?—you know.”

“Oh, Mary, what does it matter now? What harm could such wicked words do to any one? Yes—yes, it is true. Mary, I ought not to tell you, it was Letitia. Oh, what does it matter now?”

Mary pushed her away, flinging herself out of her bed. “Not matter! Ford, let me dress at once. Order the carriage. Tell me what is the first train. We must go at once by the first train.”

“Where, Mary? Oh, my dear, where?”

“She asks me where?” cried Lady Frogmore, appealing in her excitement to the maid. “She asks me where, and she knows my boy is in that woman’s hands—my child in that woman’s hands: She said, may he grow up an idiot—my child, my baby! and he is in her hands. Oh, quick, quick, give me my things! Order the carriage! There is a train, early, that we went by before. Oh, the slow, horrible train it is, I remember, stopping everywhere; but at least don’t let us lose it now.”

“Is it to the Park you are going, Mary?”

“Where else?” cried Lady Frogmore; “is not my child there? and in her hands.” She was too impatient to accept the usual services of her maid, but dressed herself in wild haste, her trembling hands tying strings and fastening buttons all wrong. Her two attendants could do little but look on as in her agitation she snatched at everything. The gentle Mary, always so tranquil and mild, was transfigured with passion and eagerness. When she heard that it was loo late for the morning train, it was a shriek rather than a cry which burst from her breast. “Oh, why did you let me sleep? Why did I sleep?” she cried bitterly. There was no possibility of calming her, no means of explaining how they had arranged everything for her comfort that she might rest after her unusual excitement and exhaustion. She, rest! Mary, who had been the object of unceasing care for years, whose every mood had been considered, and from whom everybody near warded and kept off any possible shade of annoyance, forgot all that in a moment. She became the Mary of old, she who was Letitia’s right hand, she who spared no trouble, who thought of everybody but herself. Mary was as much surprised at being the first to be thought of, at having her rest cared for, as if that long time of care and observance had never been. “Rest for me,” she cried. “You should have known better, Agnes—you might have known I should not rest till I have seen my boy.” She woke without a cloud upon her memory of that fact, but with this new dread sprung up in her mind which could not be calmed down. They set off in time for a later train after a weary interval of waiting, an interval that seemed to both as if it would never end. Mary had been seized in the new sense of motherhood with a panic and fear of alarm which nothing could quench. She who had forgiven everything to Letitia, who had thought of nothing either in her madness or her recovery but the interests of her former friend, now feared her as if she were a criminal, and felt that every moment the heir remained in her hands was a moment of danger. “She will do him no harm,” Agnes tried to say. “She is not kind. She does not love him, but she will do him no harm.” Mary would not listen to this voice of reason. The woman who had wished that the unborn child should grow up an idiot and kill his parents appeared in no light but that of a possible murderess to her who had newly discovered his existence and that she was his mother. She waved off her sister’s soothing words. She put Agnes herself—Agnes who had loved him always, who had been his first guardian, all the mother he had ever known—in a secondary place as one who could not divine the passion of the mother love. “It is easy for you to speak,” she said, crying out in her impatience that the horses crept, that they would be too late for the train, and then that the train itself was like a country cart, and would not go. Then there came those long waitings at the junction, the interval between one little country conveyance and another. The rain of yesterday had all passed away. The day was bright, illuminating the face of the country, mocking at the heaviness of the travellers. Lady Frogmore was flushed and eager, full of enquiry, walking about during the times of waiting, explaining to everybody that she was going to her son, to bring him home, to the great confusion of those who knew her story, and new too that Mar lay dying. Her acquaintances looked at her with trouble and suspicion, looked anxiously aside at Ford, who followed her mistress about as she walked up and down. Had poor Lady Frogmore’s brain given way again, was what they asked each other with their eyes? But it was none of their business, and there was no one important enough to interfere.

As for Agnes, she was incapable of any activity. When she was permitted to be quiet for a moment there fell upon her heart the other dreadful burden which Mary had not understood, which Agnes shrank from insisting upon. Was it all too late, too late, a terrible irony of Providence which sometimes seems to keep the word of promise to the ear, as well as the pagan fates, to give when the gift is no longer of any use? Was his mother hurrying in all the new passion of her love and trust to find no child, no son, but only what was mortal, the poor cast-off garment of flesh that had once been her boy? Was it all over, that struggle? or had it perhaps ended, as the nurse hoped, in life and not in death? As she approached the time when she should know, Agnes’ mind began to play with this hope: tremulous gleams of happiness and possibility flashing before her eyes, which she dared not receive or dwell upon, but which came to her without any will of hers, flaming through the dark, lighting up the skies, then sinking into greater gloom than ever. While Mary walked about in the intervals of waiting, Agnes sat out of sight in the most retired corner she could find, dumb and faint with the awful suspense. She could not communicate to her sister what she feared, yet feared doubly for the consequence to Mary if in the heat of her newly awakened feeling she should come suddenly against that thick blank of loss. Oh, to forestall the wrong turn, to know what a few hours might bring forth—happiness, the perfection being a new life, a brighter world—or madness, misery and death? Thus the one sister sat dumb and incapable of speech, her throat dry and her lips parched, while the other, all energy and eagerness, soothed her impatience by movement and eager communication of her purpose—going to find her boy.

The railways have almost annihilated distance everybody says, and it is true. But when a succession of slow country trains on cross lines have to be gone through, with many pauses, stoppages, and changes, there is nothing which gives the same impression of delay and miserable tardihood. To haste for a little time towards your end, and then to stop and spend as long a time or longer in aimless waiting, repeating the same again and again in an afternoon’s journey! No wagon on the country road seems to be so slow, so lingering, so impossible to quicken. It was dark when they arrived at the nearest station to the Park, and then a long interval followed before they could obtain the broken-down rattling, clattering country fly which drove them six miles further to the Park. It was all that Agnes’ lips could do to utter an inquiry “How is Lord Frogmore?” when the keeper of the lodge awoke, up out of his first sleep, stumbled forth to open the gate, half reluctant to admit visitors at such an hour. “I think I heard as the young lord’s a bit better,” said the yawning lodge-keeper. Her heart leapt up, almost choking her in her sudden relief. But how did she dare to trust this indifferent outsider, who cared nothing? At least, at least, he lived still, which was much. Mary had grown quite silent in the excitement of the arrival. She put her hand into her sister’s and grasped it as if to keep herself up, but said nothing. They dismounted out of the noisy fly at the end of the avenue, Mary obeying the impulse of Agnes, asking no reason. There were still lights about the upper windows, and a glimmer in the hall, the door of which was opened to them by a servant who was in waiting, and who at first looked as if he would refuse them admittance, but gave way at the sight of the two ladies. He gave Agnes in a subdued whisper the bulletin, “A little better—fever diminished,” which in the instantaneous and unspeakable relief, took all strength and power to move from her after all her sufferings. She leaned back upon Ford, nearly fainting, her eyes closing, her limbs refusing to support her. In that moment Lady Frogmore drew her hand from her sister’s. She asked no questions. No weakness or sinking of heart or courage was in her. She neither looked nor spoke to any one round her, but swiftly detaching herself, throwing off her cloak, disappeared up the great, partially-lighted staircase as swift and as noiseless as a ghost.

CHAPTER XLV.

Letitia, who felt herself the chief person involved, did not feel even impatient that day. It was by this time a foregone conclusion, a question of time. The doctor even had said scarcely anything, had only shaken his head, and even the cheerful nurse, the woman of daylight and good hope, was daunted, and did not repeat her better auguries. John, who had avoided his wife, who had refused to discuss the subject, now let her speak, sitting with his head bent on his breast, and making little reply, but still listening to what she said. She had a great many plans, indeed had drawn out in her active mind a whole scheme of proceedings for their future guidance, of changes to be made both for pleasure and profit, things of much more importance than these alterations in the house on which she had set her mind the first time she came into it. Letitia spoke low, but she spoke boldly, bidding her husband remember that though it was very sad it was a thing that had always been necessary to look forward to, and that after all it was his just inheritance that was now coming to him. And John had not stopped her to-day. It was all true enough. The poor boy had been an interruption to the course of events, and now things were returning to their natural course. He had a soft heart, and it was sore for the poor boy; but Letitia had reason on her side, and what she said was not to be refuted or despised.

She was very busy that day, not going out for her drive or receiving any visitors, not even any of the anxious inquirers who came to beg for a little more information than the bulletin gave—the clerical people about, and the, nearest neighbors, whom hitherto she had allowed to enter; very busy in her own room planning out a great many things. It would make a change to everybody—a different style of living, a great extension and amplification would now not only be possible but necessary. She put it all down on paper, making out her arrangements systematically, which was an exercise that she loved. If the poor boy lingered for a week longer that would make no difference after all. She had promised to Duke to send for him if Mar became worse; but she decided that she would not do so, for what would be the good? Mar was far too weak to take an interest in any one, perhaps even to recognize his cousin. And Letitia felt that she could not bear the noisy grief with which her son would no doubt receive the news, which was the best news for him that could possibly be. It was bad enough to see Letty with her red eyes moping about the house, and Tiny devoting herself to her lessons as if the mortification of her soul over them was more appropriate to the crisis than anything she cared for. Little fools! who did not know what was to their advantage! But even to them it would not make the difference it would make to Duke. For Duke there could be no doubt it was the one thing to be desired; yet Letitia knew he would make a greater fuss than even the girls were doing, and this she could not bear.

Next morning she was a little later than usual in leaving her room. She had not slept well. Her mind had been so full of all that she had to do. It was not anxiety that kept her awake, for anxiety had almost left her in the certainty of what was going to happen; but merely the preoccupation of her mind and the responsibility on her shoulders of seeing that everything was done in this emergency so as to secure the approval of the world. Though her mind was full of exultation, she was most anxious not to show it; not to be spoken of as heartless or worldly. A slight fear that she had committed herself to the attendants of the sick room, and that they had penetrated her true feelings, troubled her a little; but what did a couple of nurses matter? She was so late that morning that she did not as usual see the night nurse, with her lugubrious countenance, shaking her head as she went to take her necessary rest. Letitia liked the night nurse best. She had always thought the other too hopeful; but what did it matter now what one thought or the other? She went direct to the sick room when she left her own, putting on as she went the necessary solemnity of countenance with which to receive what there would be no doubt would be bad news. It startled her a little to hear an unusual murmur of voices in the ante-room where the doctor was in the habit of pausing to give his directions. She could not hear what they said, but there was something in the tone of the consultation which struck her, like a sudden dart thrown from some unseen hand. What did it mean? She went into the room quickly, her composure disturbed, though she would not allow herself to think there was any reason. What reason could there be? The first thing Letitia saw was the nurse crying—the cheerful nurse—the fool of an optimist who had always said he would get better. Ah! all was over then? This woman had the folly to allow herself to get interested in the case; and, besides, might well be crying too for the end of a good job. A spirit of malice and fierce opposition somehow sprung up in Letitia’s mind, and prompted this mean thought. Yes, it was the end of a good job, of good feeding and good pay, and very easy work. No wonder she cried; and to make herself interesting, too, in the doctor’s eyes. This flashed through Mrs. Parke’s mind in a second, while she was walking into the room. It broke up her calm, but rather with a fierce impulse of impatience and desire to take the hussy by the shoulders than with any real fear.

The doctor was stooping over the table writing a prescription. A prescription! What did they want with such a thing now? He looked up when he heard her step. His face was beaming. He put down his pen and came forward, holding out both hands. “I have the best of news for you this morning, my dear lady,” he said.

Letitia was too much startled to speak. She would not, could not permit herself to believe her eyes. She drew her hands impatiently from his clasp.

“The crisis has come—and passed,” he said. “The fever has gone. I find his temperature almost normal, and the pulse quite quiet.”

“What?” said Letitia. She would not believe her ears. She had no time to regulate her countenance to look as if she were glad. Her jaw fell, her eyes glared. “What?” she said, and she could say no more.

“I do not wonder you are overcome. I feel myself as if it were too much. Sit down and take a moment to recover——”

She sat down mechanically and glared at him. Her feeling was that if there had been a knife on the table she would have struck at him with it—a sharp one that would have turned that smile into a grimace and made an end of it. Too much! The fever gone, gone! She panted for breath, fiercely, like a wild beast.

“It is wonderful, but it is true,” said Dr. Barker. He added after a moment: “It is curious the different ways we take it. This good little woman, who always hoped the best—cries—and you, Mrs. Parke, you——”

“Do you mean that he will live?” Letitia said.

“I hope so—I hope so. The only danger now is weakness; if we can feed him up and keep him quiet. It is all a question of strength——”

“You have said that ever since you were called in.”

“Ah, yes, that is true, but in a different sense. Strength to struggle with a fever is one thing; strength to pick up when it is gone is another. Yesterday, every moment the fire was flaming, burning out his life—now every moment is a gain. Look at him. He’s asleep. He hasn’t been asleep, to call sleeping—not honest sleep—for days and nights.”

All this was but as the blowing of the wind to Letitia. She did not hear the words. She heard only over and over again, “the fever is gone——” But by this time she had begun to call her strength to her, to remember dully that she must not betray herself. She interrupted the doctor in the midst of his phrase.

“Do you mean that he will live?” she said again.

“As long, I hope,” said the doctor, promptly, “as his best friends could desire.”

“I don’t seem to understand,” Letitia said. “I thought all hope was over. I thought he was dying. Why did you make me think so—and my husband, too?”

“I am sorry if I have given you unnecessary pain, Mrs. Parke——”

“Oh, unnecessary! it was all unnecessary, I suppose. You have—you have frightened us for nothing, Dr. Barker; given us such days—and nights.” She broke into a little wild laugh. “And all the time there was nothing in it!” she cried.

The nurse had dried her eyes and was staring at this strange exhibition, and Letitia had begun to perceive that she had got out of her own control, and could not recover the command of her words and looks. She had been so taken by surprise, so overwhelmed by the sudden shock that the commotion in her brain was like madness. It was all she could do not to shriek out, to fly at the spectators like a wild cat. How dared they look and see what she had not the strength to conceal?

“I will go,” she said, “and call John; he will tell you what he thinks,” with the impulse of a maddened woman to bring a man’s strength into her quarrel and punish her adversary. What she thought John could do to Dr. Barker she did not know; and indeed she did not go to tell John. She returned to her room which she had left only a few minutes before, and from which she chased the frightened housemaids with a stamp on the floor which made them fly wildly, leaving brooms and dusters behind. The windows were all open, the sunshine bursting in in a great twinkling of light after yesterday’s rain. She locked the door that she might be alone, and closed the windows one after another with a sound like thunder. To give expression to the rage that devoured her was something, a necessity, the only way of getting out her passion. The fever gone, the fever gone! the fever which was her friend, which had worked for her, which had promised everything—everything that her heart desired. And they looked her in the face and told her it was gone! the fools and hypocrites, that vile woman crying in her falseness, the man triumphing over her, pretending to congratulate her when he must have known—— How could they help knowing? They must have known! They had done it on purpose to make her betray herself, to surprise her thoughts, to exult over her. And she had been so sure, so easy in her mind, so certain that everything was going well! Oh, oh!—her breath of rage could command no more expression than that common monosyllable. She could not appeal to God as people do in such wild shocks of passion. It was not God who could be appealed to. The other perhaps if she had known how—there are times when devil-worship might be a relief if it could be done.

“My God!” said Dr. Barker, who was not so restrained. “She is wild with disappointment and rage. Did she wish the boy to die?”

“Oh, doctor—she wished her own boy to be in his place,” said the nurse, who perhaps had a semi-maternal light upon the matter. The doctor kept on shaking his head as he finished his prescription.

“Don’t wake him for this or anything—not even for food; but give him the food as I told you.”

“I know, I know,” said the nurse, on whom the overstrain of her nerves was telling, too; “don’t you think I know, sir, how important it is.”

“Don’t you go off, too—don’t leave him for a moment. Avoid all noise or discussion. Try and keep everyone out, especially——” He did not finish his sentence, but it was unnecessary.

“All I can do, doctor—all I can do. But Mrs. Parke is the mistress of the house.”

“She will not come back again,” he said, “she will be in a terrible fright when she knows how she betrayed herself. Poor thing! as you say, it was to put her boy in his place. They were wild before when this boy was born. Well, perhaps there is some excuse for them.”

“But you will come back to-night?”

“I should think so, indeed,” he said, “and before to-night. And I shall see John Parke as I go.”

But by that strange influence which nobody can explain, before the doctor left the room the news had somehow flashed through the house. The fever gone! John Parke came out into the hall as Dr. Barker came downstairs. “Is it true?” he said. It would be vain to assert that there was not a dull throb which was not of pleasure or gratitude through John Parke’s being when that rumor had come to him. The cup was dashed from his lips again, and this time for ever. He had to pause a moment in the library, where he was sitting, thinking involuntarily of the new life, to gulp down something—which shamed him to the bottom of his heart. But when he came out to meet the doctor that very shock had brought all his tenderer feelings back. “Is it true?” he said with a quiver of emotion in his voice. And at that moment Letty came flying in from the park and flung herself upon his neck, and kissed him like a whirlwind. “Oh, papa, Mar’s better!” she said, her voice between a soft shout and song of joy ringing through the great house. There was no doubt, no hesitation in Letty’s rapture and thankfulness. And it was with almost as true a heart, notwithstanding his momentary pang of feeling, that John grasped the doctor’s hand and said “Thank God.”

How the news ran through the house! It was known before it was ever spoken at all to the cook, who immediately rose from the retirement in which she was considering her menu, and ordered a delicate young chicken to be prepared to make soup. “I know what’s wanted after a fever. Something hevery hour,” said that dignitary. It swept up like a breeze to the housemaids upstairs busy with their work. “Oh, that’s what’s put the Missis in such a passion,” they said with unerring logic. Tiny, released from her lessons by the same instinctive consciousness of something, danced a wild jig round the hall to the tune of “Mar’s better. Mar’s better!” all her hair floating about her, and her shoes coming off in her frenzy. And thus nature and human feeling held the day and reigned triumphant, notwithstanding the fierce tragedy, indescribable, terrible—a passion which rent the very soul, and to which no crime, no horror was impossible, which raged and exhausted itself in the silence, shut up with itself and all devilish impulses in the best room, in the bosom of the mistress of the house.

CHAPTER XLVI.

“Oh, mamma, he’s better! the fever is gone, he is going to get well,” cried Tiny, who was still dancing about the hall.

“Is that all?” said Mrs. Parke, “I heard that hours ago”—and she drove away without a smile, without a word of satisfaction, or even pretended satisfaction—her face a blank as if it had been cut out of stone. They watched the carriage turn the corner into the avenue with a chill at their hearts. “Was mamma angry?” Tiny asked. John Parke made no answer to his child’s question, but went back to the library, and took up his paper with a heavy heart. He had felt it himself, more shame to him, more or less: a sort of horrible pang of disappointment: but she—it troubled him to divine how she must be feeling it. What awful sensations and sentiments were in her heart? It was not for herself, John said, trying to excuse her—it was for Duke and for him. If she only would understand that he did not mind, that he was glad, very glad, that his brother’s son was getting better, that Mar was far too much like his own child to make his recovery anything but a happy circumstance! John’s heart ached for that unmoving, fixed face. Oh, if she could be persuaded that neither Duke nor he would have been happy in the promotion that came through harm to Mar!

Letitia sank back in the corner of the brougham where nobody could see. She had been in almost a frenzy of rage and pain, walking about the room, throwing herself on the sofa and even on the floor in the abandonment of her fierce misery, hurting herself like a passionate child. No shame, no pride had restrained her. She had locked her door and closed her windows and given herself up to the paroxysm which would have been shameful if any one had seen it—yet which gave a certain horrible relief to the sensations that rent her to pieces. To have it all snatched from her hands again when she had made up her mind to it, when everything was so certain! To be proved a fool, a fool, again trusting in a chance which never would come! It seemed to Letitia that God was her enemy, and a malignant one, exulting in her disappointment, laughing at her pangs. She was too angry, too cruelly outraged to be content with thinking of chance, or that it was her luck, as some people say. She wanted someone to hate for it—someone whose fault it was, whom she could revile and affront and defy to his face. The deception of circumstances, the disappointment of hopes, the cruel way in which she had been lulled into security only to be the more bitterly awakened from her illusion, made her mad. Not as Mary had been made mad, not with any confusion of mind, but with a horrible and intense subversion, a sense of being at war with everything, and living only to revenge herself upon God and man. She had revenged herself upon herself first of all, beating her head against the wall, digging her nails into her flesh, because she had been such a fool, oh, such a fool! as to believe that what she wished was to be. And then there formed in her mind an awful thought, a movement of resistance, a refusal to be overthrown. She would not, she would not allow herself to be played with, to be beaten, to be foiled, to have the cup snatched from her lips just when she was about to drink. No, she would not submit! Though God was the Master, yet there were ways of overcoming Him—yes, there were ways of overcoming. Though He said life, a human creature though so weak, if she had but courage enough, could say death, and He would not be able to prevent it. In the madness of her disappointment and rebellion there came into Letitia’s mind a suggestion, an idea. It did not seem so much in order to have her own will, and her own advantage, as in order to get the better of God, who had shaped things the other way. He thought, perhaps, there was nothing she could do, that she would have to bear it. No, then! she would not! He should see—He was a tyrant. He had the power; but there were ways of baffling Him—there was a way——

Never in all Letitia’s struggles had this thought come into her mind before. Mar had been helpless in her hands for years, but her arm had never armed itself against him. She had never sought to harm him. If she had exaggerated and cultivated his weakness it had been half, as she said, in a kind of scornful precaution, that nothing might happen to him in her house, and half from a grudge, lest he should emulate her own sturdy boys, over whom he had so great and undeserved an advantage. She had never thought of harming him. After, when he was really ill, when Providence itself (for her mind could be pious when this influence which shapes events was on her side) had seemed to arrange for his removal, as she piously said, to a better world, it would have been more than nature had not her mind rushed forward to that evidently approaching conclusion which would make so great a difference. Oh, the difference it would make! enough to deaden the sense of pity, to sharpen every covetous desire. But still she had not thought of doing anything to secure the end she desired. No, no! all the other way—nothing had been neglected, nothing refused that would help him—nothing except her desire, her strong unspoken wish, had been against him. And what had that to do with the issue one way or the other? A woman cannot pray to God that a boy may die. Thus the only unfair advantage which the intensity of her wish might have given her was taken away. On the other side they had this unfair advantage—they could pray, and pray as long as they pleased if that was any good. She had only her strong, persistent, never-suspended wish. Nothing, nothing had she done against him. She had never once thought of assisting or hastening fate.

But now that God had turned everything the wrong way and dashed the cup from her lips, and set Himself against her, now in the frenzy that filled her bosom, the rage, the shame, the rebellion, the wild and overwhelming passion, a new furious light had blazed in upon the boiling waves. Ah, God was great, they said. He could restore life when everything pointed to another conclusion. He could work a miracle—but a woman could foil Him. She could kill though He made alive. A moment of time, an insignificant action—and all His healing and restoration would come to nothing. Where did it come from—that awful suggestion? How did it arise? In what way was it shaped? From what source did it come—the horrible thought? It came cutting through her mind and all her agitation in a moment as if it had been flung into her soul from outside. It came like a flash of lightning, like an arrow, like a pointed dart that cut into the flesh. It was not there one moment, and the next it was there, dominating all the commotion, penetrating all the fever and the tumult—a master thought.

She drove along the country roads in the corner of her carriage, seeing nothing—through the noonday sunshine and the shade of the trees, through villages and by cornfields where the storing of the harvest had begun—and heard nothing and noticed nothing. At last she pulled the string strongly and told the coachman not to go to Ridding but in the other direction to another little town, to a certain house where she had a call to make. And she made the call; and came out of the house while the coachman was walking his horses up and down, and went into the chief street of the place and made a few purchases, then returned to the house of her friend and got into the brougham and drove home. The coachman had not been aware that she had done anything but come out of the house where she had been calling when he drew up. And he drove home very quickly, having himself come out before his dinner-hour, a thing that did not please him. Letitia was very pale when she came home and tired with her long drive, but she eat her luncheon and did not again shut herself from her family—nor did she avoid speaking of Mar. She went to look at him after she had rested a little.

“But I see very little difference,” she said. “He seems to me just as ill as ever, too weak to move, and scarcely opening his eyes.”

“But the fever is gone,” they all cried together.

Letitia shook her head, “I hope the doctor was not mistaken,” she said. Her words threw a cold chill upon the household after the delight of the morning. But that was all. “Missis was always one to take the worst view of everything,” the cook remarked, to whom the undeniable proof of improvement which Mar had shown by swallowing his chicken broth was a proof that needed no confirmation. She sent up a little of the same broth to Mrs. Parke, hearing that she had a headache, and received a message back to the effect that the soup was very good, and that it must be kept always going, always ready, as the young gentleman was able to take it. “But I’ll try him with a bit of chicken to-morrow, no more slops,” said the cook. Thus, though she shook her head and owned that she was not herself so hopeful as Dr. Barker, Letitia sanctioned more or less the satisfaction of the household, and spent the afternoon in a legitimate way. She was frightfully pale, and complained of a headache, which she partly attributed to fatigue and partly to the sun. Yet she saw one or two people who called, and explained Mar’s condition to them: “presumably so much better,” she said, “but I fear, I fear the doctor takes too sanguine a view. A week hence, if all is well—— But,” she said, “the strain of suspense is terrible, almost worse than anything that is certain.” There were people who saw her that day who declared afterwards that they could not understand why it was said of Mrs. Parke that she had no heart. Why, if ever there was a woman who felt deeply, it was Mrs. Parke. The suspense about her poor nephew and his long illness had worn her to a shadow; it had nearly killed her—especially as, poor thing, she was not one who took a cheerful view.

Letitia paid several visits in the evening to the sick room, or to the ante-room connected with it, after the night nurse had begun her duty. The other attendant was not in sympathy with the mistress of the house: but she stood with the night nurse at the door of the room and peered at Mar, and they mutually shook their heads and gave each other meaning looks. “I wish I could see him with Nurse Robinson’s eyes,” the attendant said, and Mrs. Parke replied with a sigh that she hoped most earnestly the doctor was not mistaken. “For I see no difference, nurse.” “And neither do I, ma’am,” said the gloomy woman. She paused for a moment, and then she added in a whisper, “I’ve no business to interfere, but I can’t bear to see you looking so pale. I do wish, Mrs. Parke, that you would go to bed.”

“I thought the same of you, nurse,” said Mrs. Parke, “indeed I wanted to offer to sit up half the night to let you have a little rest.”

“Thank you very much, but I must keep to my post,” the woman said.

“Then you must let me give you some of my cordial,” said Mrs. Parke. “I have an old mixture that has been in the family for a long time. You must take a little of it from my hand: it will strengthen you.” There was a little argument over this, all whispered at the door of Mar’s room, and at last the nurse consented. She was so touched that when Letitia came back carrying the drink, she ventured to give Mrs. Parke a timid kiss, and to say, “Dear lady, I wish you would go to bed yourself and get a good rest. It is almost more trying when one begins to hope, and you are frightfully pale.” Letitia took the kiss in very good part (for the nurse was a lady), and promised to go and rest. It was still early, the household not yet settled to the quiet of the night, and John had not come upstairs: so that there was nobody to note Letitia’s movements, who went and came through the half-lit corridor in a dark dressing-gown, and with a noiseless foot, stealing from her own room to that of the patient. She had made this little pilgrimage several times, when, listening in the ante-room, she heard at last the heavy regular breathing of the attendant in Mar’s room, which proved to her that what she intended had come to pass. Letitia paused for a moment outside the door. She was a little light woman, still slim, even thin, as in her younger days. She moved like a ghost, making no sound; but when she perceived that all was ready for her purpose, there was something that almost betrayed her, and that was the laboring, gasping breath of excitement, which it was all she could do to keep down. Her lungs, her heart, were so strained by the effort to be calm, that her hurried respiration came like the breath of a furnace, hot and interrupted. She stood holding on to the framework of the door, looking in from the comparative light of the room in which she stood to the shaded room in which Mar lay, with the light falling upon the table by his bedside, where were his drinks and medicines—and faintly upon the white pillow with the dark head sunk upon it, in a ghostly stillness. The nurse sat in an easy chair behind, out of the light, with her head fallen back, wrapped in sleep, breathing regularly and deep. Letitia stood and watched for a whole long minute, which might have been a year, peering with her white and ghastly face, like a visible spirit of evil. When she had a little subdued the panting of her heart she pushed the door noiselessly, and stole into the room. She kept her eyes upon the sleeping nurse, ready to draw back if she should move; but that was the only interruption Letitia feared. She had left the door open for her own safe retreat. It had not occurred to her that anyone could follow behind her. She went over to the bedside to the table on which the light fell. And then she stood still again for another terrible moment. Did her heart fail her, did any hand of grace hold her back? She might have done what she had to do three times over while she stood there with one hand upon her breast keeping down her panting breath. Then she put her right hand for a moment over the glass with the milk that stood ready, the drink for the sick boy. That was all. It was the affair of a moment. She might have done it in the nurse’s presence, and no one would have been the wiser. When she had done it she made a step backward, meaning to pass away as she had come. But instead of moving freely through the open air she came suddenly against something, some one, who stood behind, and who grasped without a word her clenched right hand. Letitia’s laboring heart leaped as if it would have burst out of her breast. There came from her a choked and horrible sound, not a cry, for she durst not cry. She kept her senses, her consciousness by a terrible effort. No! whoever it was, if it was John, her husband, if it was one of her children who had discovered her in this awful moment—whoever it was, she would not fall down there at Mar’s bedside like a murderer caught in the act. No! out of the room, at least, out of the scene—somewhere, where they might kill her if they pleased, but not there—not there!

He or she who had seized her from behind stretched a hand over her shoulder and took the milk from the table, and then the two figures in a strange, noiseless, mingling, half struggle, half accord, passed from the darkened room into the light, and looked in a horror, beyond words, into each other’s faces. And then all the forces of self control could no longer restrain the affrighted heart-stricken cry—“Mary!” which came from Letitia’s dry lips.