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

day since she was born--you had but to look into her bright eyes and clear complexion to be sure of it. She is not dead, in the natural course of things, and she isn't one of the kind that ever take their lives in their own hands. She had too much courage and too much common-sense."

"Perhaps so, and yet suffering tells--look at poor Victor."

"Ah, poor Victor indeed! But the case is different--it was only her pride, not her heart, that bled. He loved her--he loves her with a blind, unreasoning passion that it is a misfortune for any human creature to feel for another. And she never cared for him--not as much as you do for the sewing in your hand. That is what breaks my heart--to see him dying before my eyes for love of a girl who has no feeling for him but hatred and contempt."

Inez sighed.

"It is natural," she said. "Think how she was left--in her very bridal hour, without one word of explanation. Who could forgive it?"

"No one, perhaps; it is not for that I feel indignant with her. It is for her ever accepting him at all. She loved her cousin--he would have married her; and for title and wealth she threw him over and accepted Victor. In that way she deserved her fate. She acted heartlessly; and yet, one can't help pitying her too. I believe she would have done her best to make him a good wife, after all. I wish--I wish he could find her."

"She might be found readily enough," Inez answered, "if Victor would but employ the usual means--I allude, of course, to the detective police. But he won't set a detective on her track if she is never found--he persists in looking for her himself. He is wearing his life out in the search. If ever I saw death pictured on any face, I saw it in his when he was here last. If he would but consult that German doctor who is now in London, and who is so skilful in all diseases of the heart--hark!" she broke off suddenly, "here he is at last."

Far off a gate had opened and shut--no one had a key to that ever-locked outer gate but Sir Victor, and the next moment the roll of his night-cab up the drive was heard. The house door opened, his familiar step ascended the stairs, not heavy and dragging as usual, but swift and light, almost as it used to be. Something had happened! They saw it in his face at the first glance. There was but one thing that _could_ happen. Lady Helena dropped her book, Inez started to her feet; neither spoke, both waited breathless.

"Aunt! cousin!" the young man cried, breathless and hoarse, "she is found!"

There was a cry from his aunt. As he spoke he dropped, panting and exhausted with his speed, into a chair and laid his hand upon his breast to still its heavy, suffocating throbs.

"Found!" exclaimed Lady Helena; "where--when--how?"

"Wait, aunt," the voice of Inez said gently; "give him time. Don't you see he can scarcely pant? Not a word yet Victor--let me fetch you a glass of wine."

She brought it and he drank it. His face was quite ghastly, livid, bluish rings encircling his mouth and eyes. He certainly looked desperately ill, and more fitted for a sick-bed than a breathless night ride from St. James Street to St, John's Wood. He lay back in his chair, closed his eyes, struggled with his panting breath. They sat and waited in silence, far more concerned for him than for the news he bore.

He told them at last, slowly, painfully, of his chance meeting with Lady Portia Hampton, of his enforced visit to the Oxford Street dress-maker--of his glimpse of the tall girl with the dark hair--of his waiting, of his seeing, and recognizing Edith, his following her, and of his sudden giddy faintness that obliged him to give up the chase.

"You'll think me an awful muff," he said; "I haven't an idea how I came to be such a mollicoddle, but I give you my word I fainted dead away like a school-girl when I got to my room. I suppose it was partly this confounded palpitation of the heart, and partly the shock of the great surprise and joy. Jamison brought me all right somehow, after awhile, and then I came here. I had to do something, or I believe I should have gone clear out of my senses."

Then there was a pause. The two women looked at each other, then at him, his eager eyes, his excited, wild-looking, haggard face.

"Well," he cried impatiently, "have you nothing to say? Is it nothing to you that after all these months--months--great Heavens! it seems centuries. But I have found her at last--toiling for her living, while we--oh! I can't think of it--I dare not; it drives me mad!"

He sprang up and began pacing to and fro, looking quite as much like a madman as a sane one.

"Be quiet, Victor," his aunt said. "It is madness indeed for you to excite yourself in this way. Of course we rejoice in all that makes you happy. She is found--Heaven be praised for it!--she is alive and well--thank Heaven also for that. And now--what next?"

"What next?" He paused and looked at her in astonishment "You ask what next? What next can there be, except to go the first thing to-morrow morning and take her away."

"Take her away!" Lady Helena repeated, setting her lips; "take her _where_, Victor? To you?"

His ghastly face turned a shade ghastlier. He caught his breath and grasped the back of the chair as though a spasm of unendurable agony had pierced his heart. In an instant his aunt's arms were about him, tears streaming down her cheeks, her imploring eyes lifted to his:

"Forgive me, Victor, forgive me! I ought not to have asked you that. But I did not mean--I know _that_ can never be, my poor boy. I will do whatever you say. I will go to her, of course--I will fetch her here if she will come."

"If she will come!" he repeated hoarsely, disengaging himself from her; "what do you mean by _if_? There can be no 'if' in the matter. She is my wife--she is Lady Catheron--do you think she is to be left penniless and alone drudging for the bread she eats? I tell you, you _must_ bring her; she _must_ come!"

His passionate, suppressed excitement terrified her. In pain and fear and helplessness she looked at her niece. Inez, with that steady self-possession that is born of long and great endurance, came to the rescue at once.

"Sit down, Victor!" her full, firm tones said, "and don't work yourself up to this pitch of nervous excitement. It's folly--useless folly, and its end will be prostration and a sick-bed. About your wife, Aunt Helena will do what she can, but--what can she do? You have no authority over her now; in leaving her you resigned it. It is unutterably painful to speak of this, but under the circumstances we must. She refused with scorn everything you offered her before; unless these ten past months have greatly altered her, she will refuse again. She seems to have been a very proud, high-spirited girl, but her hard struggle with the world may have beaten down that--and--"

"Don't!" he cried passionately; "I can't bear it. O my God! to think what I have done--what I have been forced to do! what I have made her suffer--what she must think of me--and that I live to bear it! To think I have endured it all, when a pistol-ball would have ended my torments any day!"

"When you talk such wicked folly as that," said Inez Catheron, her strong, steady eyes fixed upon his face, "I have no more to say. You did your duty once: you acted like a hero, like a martyr--it seems a pity to spoil it all by such cowardly rant as this."

"My duty!" he exclaimed, huskily "Was it my duty? Sometimes I doubt it; sometimes I think if I had never left her, all might have been well. Was it my duty to make my life a hell on earth, to tear my heart from my bosom, as I did in the hour I left her, to spoil her life for her, to bring shame, reproach, and poverty upon her? If I had not left her, could the worst that might have happened been any worse than that?"

"Much, worse--infinitely worse. You are the sufferer, believe me, not she. What is all she has undergone in comparison with what _you_ have endured? And one day she will know all, and love and honor you as you deserve."

He hid his face in his hands, and turned away from the light.

"One day," they heard him murmur; "one day--the day of my death. Pray Heaven it may be soon."

"I think," Inez said after a pause, "you had better let _me_ go and speak instead of Aunt Helena. She has undergone so much--she isn't able, believe me, Victor, to undergo more. Let me go to your wife; all Aunt Helena can say, all she can urge, I will. If it be in human power to bring her back, I will bring her. All I dare tell her, I will tell. But, after all, it is so little, and she is so proud. Don't hope too much."

"It is so little," he murmured again, his face still hidden; "so little, and there is so much to tell. Oh!" he broke forth, with a passionate cry, "I can't bear this much longer. If she will come for nothing else, she will come for the truth, and the truth shall be told. What are a thousand promises to the living or the dead to the knowledge that she hates and scorns me!"

They said nothing to him--they knew it was useless--they knew his paroxysm would pass, as so many others had passed, and that by to-morrow he would be the last to wish to tell.

"You will surely not think of returning to St. James Street to-night?" said Inez by way of diversion. "You will remain here, and at the earliest possible hour to-morrow you will drive me to Oxford Street. I will do all I can--you believe that, my cousin, I know. And if--_if_ I am successful, will"--she paused and looked at him--"will you meet her, Victor?"

"I don't know yet; my head is in a whirl. To-night I feel as though I could do anything, brave anything--to-morrow I suppose I will feel differently. Don't ask me what I will do to-morrow until to-morrow comes. I will remain all night, and I will go to my room at once; I feel dazed and half sick. Good-night."

He left them abruptly. They heard him toil wearily up to his room and lock the door. Long after, the two women sat together talking with pale, apprehensive faces.

"She won't come--I am as sure of it as that I sit here," were Lady Helena's parting words as they separated for the night. "I know her better than he does, and I am not carried away by his wild hopes. She will not come."

Sir Victor descended to breakfast, looking unutterably pallid and haggard in the morning light. Well he might; he had not slept for one moment.

But he was more composed, calm, and quiet, and there was almost as little hope in his heart as in Lady Helena's. Immediately after breakfast, Miss Catheron, closely veiled, entered the cab