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

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"My darling," he said tremulously. "What was it? What can I do for you? Tell me."

"Go away," was the dull answer; "only that--go away everybody, and leave me alone."

They strove to reason with her--some one sought to stay with her. Lady Helena, Sir Victor--either would give up their place at dinner and remain at the bedside.

"No, no, no!" was her answering cry, "they must not. She was better again--she needed no one, she wanted nothing, _only_ to be left alone."

They left her alone--she was trembling with nervous excitement, a little more and hysterics would set in--they dared not disobey. They left her alone, with a watchful attendant on the alert in the dressing-room.

She lay upon the dainty French bed, her dark hair, from which the flowers had been taken, tossed over the white pillows, her hands clasped above her head, her dark, large eyes fixed on the opposite wall. So she lay motionless, neither, speaking nor stirring for hours, with a sort of dull, numb aching at her heart. They stole in softly to her bedside many times through the night, always to find her like that, lying with blank, wide-open eyes, never noticing nor speaking to them. When morning broke she awoke from a dull sort of sleep, her head burning, her lips parched, her eyes glittering with fever.

They sent for the doctor. He felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, asked questions, and shook his head. Overwrought nerves the whole of it. Her mind must have been over-excited for some time, and this was the result. No danger was to be apprehended; careful nursing would restore her in a week or two, combined with perfect quiet. Then a change of air and scene would be beneficial--say a trip to Scarborough or Torquay now. They would give her this saline draught just at present and not worry about her. The young lady would be all right, on his word and honor, my dear Sir Victor, in a week or two.

Sir Victor listened very gloomily. He had heard from the hall porter of Mr. Stuart's flying visit, and of his brief interview with Miss Darrell. It was very strange--his hasty coming, his hasty going, without seeing any of them, his interview with Edith, and her fainting-fit immediately after. Why had he come? What had transpired at that interview? The green-eyed monster took the baronet's heart between his finger and thumb, and gave it a most terrible twinge.

He watched over her when they let him into that darkened chamber, as a mother may over an only and darling child. If he lost her!

"O Heaven!" he cried passionately, rebelliously, "rather let me die than that!"

He asked her no questions--he was afraid. His heart sank within him, she lay so cold, so white, so utterly indifferent whether he came or went. He was nothing to her--nothing. Would he ever be?

Lady Helena, less in love, and consequently less a coward, asked the question her nephew dared not ask: "What had brought Mr. Charles Stuart to Powyss Place? What had made her, Edith, faint?"

The dark sombre eyes turned from the twilight prospect, seen through the open window, and met her ladyship's suspicious eyes steadily. "Mr. Stuart had come down to tell her some very bad news. His father had failed--they were ruined. They had to leave England in two days for home--he had only come to bid her a last farewell."

Then the sombre brown eyes went back to the blue-gray sky, the crystal July moon, the velvet, green grass, the dark murmuring trees, the birds twittering in the leafy branches, and she was still again.

Lady Helena was shocked, surprised, grieved. But--why had Edith fainted?

"I don't know," Edith answered. "I never fainted before in my life. I think I have not been very strong lately. I felt well enough when I returned to the drawing-room--a minute after I grew giddy and fell. I remember no more."

"We will take you away, my dear," her ladyship said cheerfully. "We will take you to Torquay. Changes of air and scene, as the doctor says, are the tonics you need to brace your nerves. Ah! old or young, all we poor women are martyrs to nerves."

They took her to Torquay in the second week of July. A pretty little villa near Hesketh Crescent had been hired; four servants from Powyss Place preceded them; Sir Victor escorted them, and saw them duly installed. He returned again--partly because the work going on at Catheron Royals needed his presence, partly because Lady Helena gravely and earnestly urged it.

"My dear Victor," she said, "don't force too much of your society upon Edith. I know girls. Even if she were in love with you"--the young man winced--"she would grow tired of a lover who never left her sight. All women do. If you want her to grow fond of you, go away, write to her every day--not _too_ lover-like love-letters; one may have a surfeit of sweets; just cheerful, pleasant, sensible letters--as a young man in love _can_ write. Come down this day three weeks, and, if we are ready, take us home."

The young man made a wry face--much as he used to do when his good aunt urged him to swallow a dose of nauseous medicine.

"In three weeks! My dear Lady Helena, what are you thinking of? We are to be married the first week of September."

"October, Victor--October--not a day sooner. You must wait until Edith is completely restored. There is no such desperate haste. You are not likely to lose her."

"I am not so sure of that," he said, half sullenly under his breath; "and a postponed marriage is the most unlucky thing in the world."

"I don't believe in luck; I do in common-sense," his aunt retorted, rather sharply. "You are like a spoiled child, Victor, crying for the moon. It is Edith's own request, if you will have it--this postponement. And Edith is right. You don't want a limp, pallid, half-dying bride, I suppose. Give her time to get strong--give her time to learn to like you--your patient waiting will go far towards it. Take my word, it will be the wiser course."

There was nothing for it but obedience. He took his leave and went back to Cheshire. It was his first parting from Edith. How he felt it, no words can tell. But the fact remained--he went.

She drew a long, deep breath as she said good-by, and watched him away. Ah! what a different farewell to that other only two short weeks ago. She tried not to think of that--honestly and earnestly; she tried to forget the face that haunted her, the voice that rang in her ears, the warm hand-clasp, the kisses that sealed their parting. Her love, her duty, her allegiance, her thoughts--all were due to Sir Victor now. In the quiet days that were to be there, she would try to forget the love of her life--try to remember that of all men on earth Sir Victor Catheron was the only man she had any right to think of.

And she succeeded partly. Wandering along the tawny sands, with the blue bright sea spreading away before her, drinking in the soft salt air, Edith grew strong in body and mind once more. Charley Stuart had passed forever out of her life--driven hence by her own acts; she would be the most drivelling of idiots, the basest of traitors, to pine for him now. Her step grew elastic, her eye grew bright, her beauty and bloom returned. She met hosts of pleasant people, and her laugh came sweetly to Lady Helena's ears. Since her nephew _must_ marry--since his heart was set on this girl--Lady Helena wished to see her a healthy and happy wife.

Sir Victor's letters came daily; the girl smiled as she glanced carelessly over them, tore them up, and answered--about half. Love him she did not; but she was learning to think very kindly of him. It is quite in the scope of a woman's complex nature to love one man passionately, and like another very much. It was Edith's case--she liked Sir Victor; and when, at the end of three weeks, he came to join them, she could approach and give him her hand with a frank, glad smile of welcome. The three weeks had been as three centuries to this ardent young lover. His delight to see his darling blooming, and well, and wholly restored, almost repaid him. And three days after the triad returned together to Powyss Place, to part, as he whispered, no more.

It was the middle of August now. In spite of Edith's protest, grand preparations were being made for the wedding--a magnificent trousseau having been ordered.

"Simplicity is all very well," Lady Helena answered Miss Darrell, "but Sir Victor Catheron's bride must dress as becomes Sir Victor Catheron's station. In three years from now, if you prefer white muslin and simplicity, prefer it by all means. About the wedding-dress, you will kindly let me have my own way."

Edith desisted; she appealed no more; passive to all changes, she let herself drift along. The third of October was to be the wedding-day; my ladies Gwendoline and Laura Drexel, the two chief bridesmaids--then three others, all daughters of old friends of Lady Helena. The pretty, picturesque town of Carnarvon, in North Wales, was to be the nest of the turtledoves during the honeymoon--then away to the Continent, then back for the Christmas festivities at Catheron Royals.

Catheron Royals was fast becoming a palace for a princess--its grounds a sort of enchanted fairy-land. Edith walked through its lofty, echoing halls, its long suites of sumptuous drawing-rooms, libraries, billiard and ball rooms. The suite fitted up for herself was gorgeous in purple and gold-velvet and bullion fringe--in pictures that were wonders of loveliness--in mirror-lined walls, in all that boundless wealth and love could lavish on its idol. Leaning on her proud and happy bridegroom's arm, she walked through them all, half dazed with all the wealth of color and splendor, and wondering if "I be I." Was it a fairy tale, or was all this for Edith Darrell?--Edith Darrell, who such a brief while gone, used to sweep and dust, sew and darn, in dull, unlovely Sandypoint, and get a new merino dress twice a year? No, it could not be--such transformation scenes never look place out of a Christmas pantomime or a burlesque Arabian Night--it was all a dream--a fairy fortune that, like fairy gold, would change to dull slate stones at light of day. She would never be Lady Catheron, never be mistress of this glittering Aladdin's Palace. It grew upon her day after day, this feeling of vagueness, of unreality. She was just adrift upon a shining river, and one of these days she would go stranded ashore on hidden quicksands and foul ground. Something would happen. The days went by like dreams--it was the middle of September. In little more than a fortnight would come the third of October and the wedding-day. But something would happen. As surely as she lived and saw it all, she felt that something would happen.

Something did. On the eighteenth of September there came from London, late in the evening, a telegram for Lady Helena. Sir Victor was with Edith at the piano in the drawing-room. In hot haste his aunt sent for him; he went at once. He found her pale, terrified, excited; she held out the telegram to him without a word. He read it slowly: "Come at once. Fetch Victor. _He_ is dying.--INEZ."


CHAPTER XIX.

AT POPLAR LODGE.

Half an hour had passed and