A Terrible Secret, May Agnes Fleming [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

jealousy finished him. You're a very clever girl, Edith, and I wish you a great deal of joy."

"Thank you; you say it as if you did. I don't take the trouble to deny your charges; they're not worth it--they are false, and you know them to be so. I never sought out Sir Victor Catheron, either in New York, on board ship, or elsewhere. If he had been a prince, instead of a baronet, I would not have done it. I have borne a great deal, but even you may go too far, Trixy. Sir Victor has done me the honor of falling in love with me--for he does love me, and he has asked me to be his wife. I have accepted him, of course; it was quite impossible I could do otherwise. If, at Killarney, he was stupid, and you made a blunder, am I to be held accountable? He does not dream for a moment of the misunderstanding between you. He thinks he made his meaning as clear as day. And now I will leave you; if I stay longer we may quarrel, and I--I don't want to quarrel with you, Trixy."

Her voice broke suddenly. She turned to the door, and all the smallness of her own conduct dawned upon Trix. Her generous heart--it _was_ generous in spite of all this--smote her with remorse.

"Oh, come back, Edith!" she said; "don't go. I won't quarrel with you. I'm a wretch. It's dreadfully mean and contemptible of me, to make such a howling about a man that does not care a straw for me. When I told you, _you_ wished me joy. Just come back and give me time to catch my breath, and I'll wish you joy too. But it's so sudden, so unexpected. O Dithy, I thought you liked Charley all this while!"

_How_ like Charley's the handsome dark gray eyes were! Edith Darrell could not meet them; she turned and looked out of the window.

"I like him, certainly; I would be very ungrateful if I did not. He is like a brother to me."

"A brother! Oh, bother," retorted Trix, with immeasurable scorn and dignity. "Edith, honor bright! Haven't you and Charley been in love with each other these two years?"

Edith laughed.

"A very leading question, and a very absurd one. I don't think it is in either your brother or me to be very deeply in love. _He_ would find it feverish and fatiguing--you know how he objects to fatigue; and I--well, if love be anything like what one reads of in books, an all-absorbing, all consuming passion that won't let people eat or sleep, I have never felt it, and I don't want to. I think that sort of love went out of fashion with Amanda Fitzallen. You're a sentimental goose, Miss Stuart, and have taken Byron and Miss Landon in too large doses."

"But you like him," persisted his sister, "don't you, Dithy?"

"Like him--_like_ him!" Her whole face lit up for a second with a light that made it lovely. "Well, yes, Trix, I don't mind owning that much--I do like Charley--like him so well that I won't marry and ruin him. For it means just that, Trixy--ruin. The day we become anything more than friends and cousins your father would disinherit him, and your father isn't the heavy father of the comedy, to rage through four acts, and come round in the fifth, with his fortune and blessing. Charley and I have common-sense, and we have shaken hands and agreed to be good friends and cousins, nothing more."

"What an admirable thing is common-sense! Does Sir Victor know about the hand-shaking and the cousinly agreement?"

"Don't be sarcastic, Beatrix; it isn't your forte! I have nothing to confess to Sir Victor when I am married to him; neither your brother nor any other man will hold the place in my heart (such as it is) that he will. Be very sure of that."

"Ah! such as it is," puts in Trix cynically; "and when, is it to be, Dithy--the wedding?"

"My dear Trix, I only said yes this morning. Gentlemen don't propose and fix the wedding-day all in a breath. It will be ages from now, no doubt. Of course Lady Helena will object."

"You don't mind that?"

"Not a whit. A grand-aunt is--a grand-aunt, nothing more. She is his only living relative, he is of age, able to speak and act for himself. The true love of any good man honors the woman who receives it. In that way Sir Victor Catheron honors me, and in no other. I have neither wealth nor lineage; in all other things, as God made us, I am his equal!"

She moved to the door, her dark eyes shining, her head erect, looking in her beauty and her pride a mate for a king.

"There is to be a driving-party to Eastlake Abbey, after luncheon," she said; "you are to be carried down to the barouche and ride with your father and mother, and Lady Helena--Charley and Captain Hammond for your cavaliers."

"And you?"

"Sir Victor drives me."

"Alone, of course?" Trixy says, with a last little bitter sneer.

"Alone, of course," Edith answers coldly. Then she opens the door and disappears.


CHAPTER XI.

HOW LADY HELENA TOOK IT.

But the driving-party did not come off. The ruins of Eastlake Abbey were unvisited that day, at least. For while Edith and Trixy's somewhat unpleasant interview was taking place in one part of the house, an equally unpleasant, and much more mysterious, interview was taking place in another, and on the same subject.

Lady Helena had left the guests for awhile and gone to her own rooms. The morning post had come in, bringing her several letters. One in particular she seized, and read with more eagerness than the others, dated London, beginning "My Dear Aunt," and signed "Inez." While she sat absorbed over it, in deep and painful thought evidently, there came a tap at the door; then it opened, and her nephew came in.

She crumpled her letter hurriedly in her hand, and put it out of sight. She looked up with a smile of welcome; he was the "apple of her eye," the darling of her life, the Benjamin of her childless old age--the fair-haired, pleasant-faced young baronet.

"Do I intrude?" he asked. "Are you busy? Are your letters _very_ important this morning? If so--"

"Not important at all. Come in, Victor. I have been wishing to speak to you of the invitations for next week's ball. Is it concerning the driving-party this afternoon you want to speak?"

"No, my dear aunt; something very much pleasanter than all the driving-parties in the world; something much more important to me."

She looked at him more closely. His face was flushed, his eyes bright, a happy smile was on his lips. He had the look of a man to whom some great good fortune had suddenly come.

"Agreeably important, then, I am sure, judging by your looks. What a radiant face the lad has!"

"I have reason to look radiant. Congratulate me, Aunt Helena; I am the happiest man the wide earth holds."

"My dear Victor!"

"Cannot you guess?" he said, still smiling; "I always thought female relatives were particularly sharp-sighted in these matters. Must I really tell you? Have you no suspicions of my errand here?"

"I have not, indeed;" but she sat erect, and her fresh-colored, handsome old face grew pale. "Victor, what is it? Pray speak out."

"Very well. Congratulate me once more; I am going to be married."

He stopped short, for with a low cry that was like a cry of fear, Lady Helena rose up. If he had said "I am going to be hanged," the consternation of her face could not have been greater. She put out her hand as though to ward off a blow.

"No, no!" she said, in that frightened voice; "not married. For God's sake, Victor, don't say that!"

"Lady Helena!"

He sat looking at her, utterly confounded.

"It can't be true," she panted. "You don't mean that. You don't want to be married. You are too young--you are. I tell you I won't hear of it! What do boys like you want of wives!--only three-and-twenty!"

He laughed good-humoredly.

"My dear aunt, boys of three-and-twenty are tolerably well-grown; it isn't a bad age to marry. Why, according to Debrett, my father was only three-and-twenty when he brought home a wife and son to Catheron Royals."

She sat down suddenly, her head against the back of a chair, her face quite white.

"Aunt Helena," the young man said anxiously, approaching her, "I have startled you; I have been too sudden with this. You look quite faint; what shall I get you?"

He seized a carafe of water, but she waved it away.

"Wait," she said, with trembling lips; "wait. Give me time--let me think. It _was_ sudden; I will be better in a moment."

He sat down feeling uncommonly uncomfortable. He was a practical sort of young man, with, a man's strong dislike of scenes of all kinds, and this interview didn't begin as promisingly as he had hoped.

She remained pale and silent for upward of five very long minutes; only once her lips whispered, as if unconsciously:

"The time has come--the time has come."

It was Sir Victor himself who broke the embarrassing pause.

"Aunt Helena," he said pettishly, for he was not accustomed to have his sovereign will disputed, "I don't understand this, and you will pardon me if I say I don't like it. It must have entered your mind that sooner or later I would fall in love and marry a wife, like other men. That time has come, as you say yourself. There is nothing I can see to be shocked at."

"But not so soon," she answered brokenly. "O Victor, not so soon."

"I don't consider twenty-three years too soon. I am old-fashioned, very likely, but I do believe in the almost obsolete doctrine of early marriage. I love her with all my heart." His kindling eyes and softened voice betrayed it. "Thank Heaven she has accepted me. Without her my life would not be worth the having."

"Who is she?" she asked, without looking up. "Lady Gwendoline, of course."

"Lady Gwendoline?" He smiled and lifted his eyebrows.

"No, my dear aunt; a very different person from Lady Gwendoline. Miss Darrell."

She sat erect and gazed at him--stunned.

"Miss Darrell! Edith Darrell--the American girl, the--Victor, if this is a jest--"

"Lady Helena, am I likely to jest on such a subject? It is the truth. This morning Miss Darrell--Edith--has made me the happiest man in England by promising to be my wife. Surely, aunt, you must have suspected--must have seen that I loved her."

"I have seen nothing," she answered blankly, looking straight before her--"nothing. I am only an old woman--I am growing blind and stupid, I suppose. I have seen nothing."

There was a pause. At no time was Sir Victor Catheron a fluent or ready speaker--just at present, perhaps, it was natural he should be rather at a loss for words. And her ladyship's manner was the reverse of reassuring.

"I have loved her from the first," he said, breaking once more the silence--"from the very first night of the party, without knowing it. In all the world, she is the only one I can ever marry. With her my life will be supremely happy, superbly blessed; without her--but no! I do not