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

up her abode. It seems to her she will be a sort of feminine Wandering Jew all her life. That life lacks something that renders her restless--she does not care to think what. She may stay all winter--she may pack up and start any day for England.

September passes, and she has not gone. A few of the acquaintances she made when here before with the Stuarts call upon her, but they can tell her nothing of them. If the Stuarts were all dead and buried they could not more completely have dropped out of the lives of their summer-time friends. It must be true, she thinks, what Mrs. Featherbrain told her. Trixy is married and settled somewhere with her mother, and Charley is thousands of miles away, "seeking his fortune."

Then, all at once, she resolves to go back to England. Her handsome jointure house awaits her, Lady Helena and Inez long for her, love her--she will go back to them--try to be at peace like other women, try to live her life out and forget. She has some purchases to make before she departs. She goes into a Broadway store one day, advances to a counter, and says:

"I wish to see some black Lyons velvet." Then she pauses, and looks at some black kid gloves lying before her.

"What is the number?" she asks, lifting a pair.

The young man behind the counter makes no reply.

She raises her eyes to his face for the first time, and sees--Charley Stuart!


CHAPTER VIII.

FORGIVEN OR--FORGOTTEN?

Charley Stuart! The original of the pictured face that lies over her heart by night and day. Charley--unchanged, calm, handsome, eminently self-possessed as ever, looking at her with grave gray eyes.

She turns giddy, with the utter shock of the great surprise--she leans for a second heavily against the counter, and looks at him with eyes that cannot believe what they see.

"Charley!"

"Edith!"

Yes, it is his voice, his smile, and he stretches his hand across the counter and takes hers. Then she sinks into a seat, and for a moment the store, and the faces, swim about her in a hot mist. But her heart has given one great glad leap, and she knows she has found what all unconsciously she has been longing for, seeking for--Charley!

He is the first to recover himself--if indeed he has lost himself for an instant--and speaks:

"This is a staggerer," he says; "and yet I don't know why it should be either, since everybody, high and low, who visits New York drops in here for the necessaries of life, sooner or later. I began to think, however, that you must have gone away again."

She looks at him. He is in no way changed that she can see--the very same Charley of three years before. "You knew I was here!" she asks.

"Certainly, Lady Catheron. I read the morning papers, and _always_ look out for distinguished arrivals. Like the scent of the roses, my aristocratic tastes cling to me still. I thought you would hardly endure a month of Sandypoint--delightful, no doubt, as that thriving township is. I don't need to ask you how you have been--I can see for myself you never looked better."

He meets her steady, reproachful gaze with perfect _sang-froid_. "You knew I was here, and you would not come to see me," those dark luminous eyes say. His perfectly careless, indifferent manner stings her to the quick.

"Trixy knew I was here too, of course!" she says in a very low voice.

"No," Charley answers; "I don't think she did. _I_ didn't tell her, and I am pretty sure if she had found it out for herself her family circle would have heard of it. I greatly doubt even whether she would not have taken the liberty of calling upon you."

She lifts her eyes again, with a reproach her lips will not speak.

"I have deserved it," that dark, sad glance says, "but you might spare me."

"We were all very sorry to hear of Sir Victor Catheron's death," Charley resumes gravely. "Hammond told us; he writes occasionally. Heart disease, wasn't it?--poor fellow! I hope Lady Helena Powyss is quite well?"

"She is quite well."

Then there is a pause--her heart is full, and he stands here so utterly unmoved, talking common-places, and looking as though even the memory of the past were dead and buried. As no doubt indeed it is. She handles the gloves she still holds nervously, for once in her life at a loss.

"Your mother and Trix are well?" she says after that pause.

"Quite well."

She looks up desperately:

"Charley," she exclaims; "_mayn't_ I see them? I have wanted to see them so much--to--" No, her voice breaks, she cannot finish the sentence.

"Certainly you can see them," Mr. Stuart answers promptly; "they will be delighted, I am sure. They might not feel at liberty to call upon you, Lady Catheron, of course, but all the same they will only be too happy if Lady Catheron will so far honor _them_."

He says this in the old lazy, pleasant voice, but it is quite evident he does not mean to spare her--his half-sarcastic accent makes her wince as though in actual bodily pain.

"I'll give you the address if you like," he goes on; "it's not the most aristocratic neighborhood in the world, but it's perfectly quiet and safe." He scribbles something in pencil. "Here it is--due east you see. Trix won't be home until seven; she's at work in a fancy shop in Sixth avenue, you know--no, you don't know of course, but she is, and I generally call round for her at closing-up time. But you're safe to find her at home any evening you may name, Lady Catheron, after seven P.M."

She takes the slip of paper very humbly--very unlike the Edith he used to know--her lips quivering, as he can see.

"May I go at once?" she asks in that humble little voice; "I can't wait. I want to see your mother, and I will stay until Trixy comes."

"My mother will be there, and charmed to see you. Of course you can go at once--why should you hesitate--it's very kind of you and all that I would escort you there if I could, but unhappily I'm on duty. You'll have no trouble at all finding it."

He is perfectly cordial--perfectly indifferent. He looks at her as he might look at Mrs. Featherbrain herself. Edith, it is all over for you!

"I thought you were in California," she says as she rises to go; "and that Trixy was married."

"No, I have never left New York, and Trix is pining in single blessedness still. We are going to alter all that shortly though--for further particulars, apply to Trix. Are you going? good-by, for the present, Lady Catheron."

She is out in the bright sunshine, feeling as though she were in a dream.

She summons a hack, and is driven away eastward to the address he has given her. She finds it--a tall tenement house in a close street, smelling of breweries, and she ascends a long flight of carpetless stairs, and knocks at a door on the upper landing. It is opened, and the well-remembered face of Aunt Chatty looks out.

"Mrs. Stuart!"

A darkly, beautiful face is before her, two black gloved hands are outstretched, two brown brilliant eyes shine upon her through tears. And Mrs. Stuart recoils with a gasp.

"Oh, dear me!" she says, "it _is_ Edith!"

Yes, it is Edith, with tears large and thick in her eyes, who kisses the familiar face, and who is sitting beside her, how, Mrs. Stuart never knows in her amaze and bewilderment, in the humble little front room.

How changed it all is from the splendor of that other house in Fifth Avenue. How different this dingy black alpaca dress and rusty widow's cap from the heavy silks and French millinery of other days. But Aunt Chatty's good, easy, kindly face is the same.

A hundred questions are asked and answered. Edith tells her how long she has been in New York, of how only an hour ago she chanced upon Charley, and found out their whereabouts. And now, if Aunt Chatty pleases, she is going to take off her bonnet and wait until Beatrix comes home.

"Of course you will wait! take off your things right away. Dear me! and it is really our Edith; won't Trix be surprised and glad. It isn't much of a place this," says poor Mrs. Stuart, glancing about her ruefully; "not what you're used to, my dear, but such as it is--"

An impetuous kiss from Edith closes her lips.

"Ah hush!" she says; "_you_ are in it--and glad to see me. I ask no more."

"And you are a widow too, dear child," Mrs. Stuart sighs, touching her black dress compassionately; "it is very hard--so young, and only one short year his wife. Captain Hammond told us--he writes to Trixy, you know. Poor Sir Victor! so nice as he was, and that good pleasant Lady Helena. We were all so sorry. And you, my dear--how have you been?"

"Perfectly well," Edith answers, but she will not talk of herself. Aunt Chatty must tell her all about their trouble. Aunt Chatty tells plaintively, only too glad to pour her sorrows into sympathizing ears.

"It was very hard at first--dreadfully hard. Poor Mr. Stuart died--it was too much for him. Everything was sold--everything--we were left beggars. Work was difficult to get--then I fell ill. Charley was in despair almost--he grew thin and hollow-eyed, the very ghost of himself. All our old friends seemed to drop off and only Providence sent Nellie Seton along, we might all have died or gone to the almshouse."

"Nellie Seton?" Edith inquired; "who is she? what did she do?"

"She was a school friend of Trixy's, in reduced circumstances like ourselves, who came to our succor like an angel in human form. She got Trix a situation in a fancy store, she nursed me, and kept me alive on wine and jellies when I could touch nothing else. She cheered up Charley and kept him from dying of despair. To Nellie Seton, under Heaven, we owe it that we are alive at all"

"She is a young lady--this good Miss Seton?" Edith asks, with a sharp contraction of the heart.

"Yes; about Trixy's age, and wonderfully clever. She writes poetry and gets paid for it, and the prettiest stories for the magazines, and is quite rich. She is one of the family now almost,--very likely she will be home presently with Charley and Trix--they're always together. And now, if you will excuse me Edith, I'll go and get tea."

She bustles away, and Edith sits in the little parlor alone. And she feels, with a heart like a stone, that what she has lost forever, this brave, good Nellie Seton has won. Well! she deserves it; she will try to like her, Edith thinks; but somehow even at the thought, her heart revolts. The old feeling for Mrs. Featherbrain, for Lady Gwendoline, tries to come back, in spite of her, for this unseen Miss Seton. She is an altered woman--a better woman, a more unselfish woman, but the old leaven of iniquity is not dead yet.

The moments drag on--it is drawing near seven. How will Trixy receive her, she wonders. Will she be generous, and forget the past, or will she make her feel it, as her brother has done? Seven. Mrs. Stuart has