A Terrible Secret by May Agnes Fleming (world of reading txt) 📖

will Hammond. Rustic lanes and hawthorn ledges are all very pretty, but there's a possibility of their palling on depraved New York minds. I pine for stone and mortar, and the fog and smoke of London."

Whatever he may have felt, he bore it easily to all outward seeming, as the men who feel deepest mostly do. He could not be said to actually avoid her, but certainly since that afternoon in the drawing-room, they had never been for five seconds alone.

Mr. Stuart, senior, had agreed, with almost feverish eagerness, to the proposed change. Life had been very pleasant in Cheshire, with picnics, water-parties down the Dee, drives to show-places, lawn billiards, and croquet, but a month of it was enough. Sir Victor was immersed in his building projects and his lady-love; Lady Helena, ever since the coming and going of the lady in black, had not been the same. Powyss place was a pleasant house, but enough was enough. They were ready to say good-by and be off to "fresh fields and pastures new."

"And, my dear child," said Lady Helena to Edith, when the departure was fixed, "I think you had much better remain behind."

There was an emphasis in her tone, a meaning glance in her eye, that brought the conscious blood to the girl's cheek. Her eyes fell--her lips quivered for an instant--she made no reply.

"Certainly Edith will remain," Sir Victor interposed impetuously. "As if we could survive down here without her! And, of course, just at present it is impossible for me to leave. They don't need her half as much as we do--Miss Stuart has Hammond, Prince Charley has Gwendoline Drexel; Edith would only be in the way!"

"It is settled, then?" said Lady Helena again, watching Edith with a curiously intent look. "You remain?"

"I will remain," Edith answered, very lowly and without lifting her eyes.

"My own idea is," went on the young baronet confidentially, to his lady love, "that they are glad to be gone. Something seems to be the matter with Stuart _pere_--under a cloud, rather, just at present. Has it struck you, Dithy?"

He had caught the way of calling her by the pet name Trix and Charley used. She lifted her eyes abstractedly now, as he asked the question.

"Mr. Stuart? What did you say, Sir Victor? Oh--under a cloud. Well, yes, I have noticed it. I think it is something connected with his business in New York. In papa's last letter he alluded to it."

"In papa's last letter," Mr. Frederick Darrell had said this:

"One of their great financial crises, they tell me, is approaching in New York, involving many failures and immense loss. One of the most deeply involved, it is whispered, will be James Stuart. I _have_ heard he is threatened with ruin. Let us hope, however, this may be exaggerated. Once I fancied it would be a fine thing, a brilliant match, if my Edith married James Stuart's son. How much better Providence has arranged it! Once more, my dearest daughter, I congratulate you on the brilliant vista opening before you. Your step-mother, who desires her best love, never wearies of spreading the wonderful news that our little Edie is so soon to be the bride of a great English baronet."

Miss Darrell's straight black brows met in one frowning line as she perused this parental and pious epistle. The next instant it was torn into minute atoms, and scattered to the four winds of heaven.

There seemed to be some foundation for the news. Letters without end kept coming for Mr. Stuart; little boys bearing the ominous orange envelopes of the telegraph company, came almost daily to Powyss Place. After these letters and cable messages the gloom on Mr. Stuart's face deepened and darkened. He lost sleep, he lost appetite; some great and secret fear seemed preying upon him. What was it? His family noticed it, and inquired about his health. He rebuffed them impatiently; he was quite well--he wanted to be let alone--why the unmentionable-to-ears-polite need they badger him with questions? They held their peace and let him alone. That it in any way concerned commercial failure they never dreamed; to them the wealth of the husband and father was something illimitable--a golden river flowing from a golden ocean. That ruin could approach them never entered their wildest dreams.

He had gone to Edith one day and offered her a thousand-dollar check.

"For your trousseau, my dear," he had said. "It isn't what I expected to give you--what I would give you, if--" He gulped and paused. "Things have changed with me lately. You will accept this, Edie--it will at least buy your wedding-dress."

She had shrunk back, and refused--not proudly, or angrily--very humbly, but very firmly. From Charley's father she could never take a farthing now.

"No" she said, "I can't take it. Dear Mr. Stuart, I thank you all the same; you have given me more already than I deserve or can ever repay. I cannot take this. Sir Victor Catheron takes me as I am--poor, penniless. Lady Helena will give me a white silk dress and veil to be married in. For the rest, after my wedding-day, whatever my life may lack, it will not lack dresses."

He had replaced the check in his pocket-book, inwardly thankful, perhaps, that it had not been accepted. The day was past when a thousand dollars would have been but as a drop in the ocean to him.

The time of departure was fixed at length; and the moment it _was_ fixed, Trix flew upstairs, and into Edith's room, with the news.

"Oh, let us be joyful," sang Miss Stuart, waltzing in psalm time up and down the room; "we're off at last, the day after to-morrow, Dithy; so go pack up at once. It's been very jolly, and all that, down here, for the past four weeks, and _you've_ had a good time, I know; but I, for one, will be glad to hear the bustle and din of city life once more. One grows tired doing the pastoral and tooral-ooral--I mean truly rural--and craves for shops, and gaslight, and glitter, and crowds of human beings once more. Our rooms are taken at Langham's, Edie, and that blessed darling, Captain Hammond, goes with us. Lady Portia, Lady Gwendoline, and Lady Laura are coming also, and I mean to plunge headlong into the giddy whirl of dissipation, and mingle with the bloated aristocracy. Why don't you laugh? What are you looking so sulky about?"

"Am I looking sulky?" Edith said, with a faint smile. "I don't feel sulky. I sincerely hope you may enjoy yourself even more than you anticipate."

"Oh--you do!" said Trix, opening her eyes; "and how about yourself--don't you expect to enjoy yourself at all?"

"I would, no doubt, only--I am not going."

"Not going!" Thunderstruck, Trix repeats the words.

"No; it has been decided that I remain here. You won't miss me, Trix--you will have Captain Hammond."

"Captain Hammond may go hang himself. I want _you_, and you I mean to have. Let's sit down and reason this thing out. Now what new crotchet has got into your head? May I ask what your ladyship-elect means to do?"

"To remain quietly here until--until--you know."

"Oh, I know!" with indescribable scorn; "until you are raised to the sublime dignity of a baronet's wife. And you mean to mope away your existence down here for the next two months listening to love-making you don't care _that_ about. Oh, no need to fire up; I know how much you care about it. And I say you shan't. Why, you are fading away to a shadow now under it. You shall come up to London with us and recuperate. Charley shall take you everywhere."

She saw her wince--yes, that was where the vital place lay. Miss Stuart ran on:

"The idea of living under the same roof for two mortal months with the young man you are going to marry! You're a great stickler for etiquette--I hope you don't call _that_ etiquette? Nobody ever heard of such a thing. I'm not sure but that it would be immoral. Of course, there's Lady Helena to play propriety, and there's the improvements at Catheron Royals to amuse you, and there's Sir Victor's endless 'lovering' to edify you, but still I say you shall come. You started with us, and you shall stay with us--you belong to us, not to him, until the nuptial knot is tied. I wouldn't give a fig for London without you. I should die of the dismals in a week."

"What, Trix--with Captain Hammond?"

"Bother Captain Hammond! I want you. O Edie, do come!"

"I can't, Trix." She turned away with an impatient sigh. "I have promised. Sir Victor wishes it, Lady Helena wishes it. It is impossible."

"And Edith Darrell wishes it. Oh, say it out, Edith," Trix retorted bitterly. "Your faults are many, but fear of the truth used not to be among them. You have promised. Is it that they are afraid to trust you out of their sight?"

"Let me alone, Trix. I am tired and sick--I can't bear it."

She laid her face down upon her arm--tired, as she said--sick, soul and body. Every fibre of her heart was longing to go with them--to be with him while she might, treason or no to Sir Victor; but it could not be.

Trix stood and looked at her, pale with anger.

"I will let you alone, Miss Darrell. More--I will let you alone for the remainder of your life. All the past has been bad enough. Your deceit to me, your heartlessness to Charley--this is the last drop in the cup. You throw us over when we have served your turn for newer, grander friends--it is only the way of the world, and what one might expect from Miss Edith Darrell. But I didn't expect it--I didn't think ingratitude was one among your failings. I was a fool!" cried Trix, with a burst. "I always was a fool and always will be. But I'll be fooled by you no longer. Stay here, Miss Darrell, and when we say good-by day after to-morrow, it shall be good-by forever."

And then Miss Stuart, very red in the face, very flashing in the eyes, bounced out of the room, and Edith was left alone.

Only another friend lost forever. Well, she had Sir Victor Catheron left--he must suffice for all now.

All that day and most of the next she kept her room. It was no falsehood to say she was ill--she was. She lay upon her bed, her dark eyes open, her hands clasped over her head, looking blankly before her. To-morrow they must part, and after to-morrow--but her mind gave it up; she could not look beyond.

She came downstairs when to-morrow came to say farewell. The white wrapper she wore was not whiter than her face. Mr. Stuart shook hands in a nervous, hurried sort of way that had grown habitual to him of late. Mrs. Stuart kissed her fondly, Miss Stuart just touched her lips formally to her cheek, and Mr. Charles Stuart held her cold fingers for two seconds in his warm clasp, looked, with his own easy, pleasant smile, straight into her eyes, and said good-by precisely as he said it to Lady Helena. Then it was all over; they were gone; the wheels that bore them away crashed over the gravel: Edith Darrell felt as though they were crashing over her heart.

That night the Stuarts were established in elegant apartments at Langham's Hotel.

But alas for the frailty of human hopes! "The splendid time"