The Hoyden by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (best value ebook reader TXT) 📖

are on the subject, and as you compel me to it, I----"

"No, don't speak. _Don't!"_ says she quickly.

She seems to cower away from him. She had solicited his condemnation, yet when it came to the point she had no strength to bear it. And after all, is she had only known, he was merely going to accuse himself of having been over-foolish when he induced Tita to ask her to Oakdean on a visit.

"As you will," says he listlessly. "I was merely thinking of----"

"I know--I know. Of course _she_ would make me out the worst in the world, and I have reason to know that her cousin, Miss Hescott, told you stories about me. There was a night when----

"When----"

"Ah, I was wrong there. I was merely thinking of----"

"Wrong!" says Rylton slowly.

His thoughts have gone back to that last interview with Margaret, and what she had said about his folly in asking Marian on a visit to Oakdean, considering all that had been said and done between them in the old time.

"You remember it, then?" asks Marian. She looks at him. Her face is still livid, and as she speaks she throws back her head and laughs aloud--such a cruel, hateful laugh! "Well, I know it--I lied. I lied then most abominably."

"Then?"

"That night on the balcony--I confess it. I know Minnie Hescott told you."

Rylton's mind goes quickly back.

"That night," says he slowly, as if thinking, as if concentrating his thoughts, "the night you led me to where----"

He hesitates.

"Does it hurt you to name her in my presence?" asks Mrs. Bethune in a tone like velvet. "Well, spare yourself. Let us call her 'she'--the immaculate 'she.' Now you can go on with safety."

Her tone, her sneer, so evidently directed at Tita, maddens Rylton.

"You _say_ you lied that night," says he, with barely suppressed fury. "And--I believe you. I was on the balcony with you, and you told me then that you did not know where my wife was. At all events, you gave me the _impression_ that you did not know where she was. You made me a bet--you can't have forgotten it--that she was with her cousin in the garden. I took the bet, and then you led me to the arbour--the arbour where you _knew_ she was. All things seemed to swear against her--all things save her cousin, Minnie Hescott."

"Minnie Hescott!" Marian Bethune laughs aloud. "Minnie and Tom Hescott! Would a brother swear against a brother? Would a sister give a brother away? No. And I will tell you why. Because it is to the interest of each to support the other. Minnie Hescott would lie far deeper than I did to save her brother's reputation, for with her brother's reputation her own would sink. _I_ lied when I said I did not know where your precious wife was at that moment, but I lied for _your_ sake, Maurice--to save you from a woman who was betraying you, and who would drag you down to the very dust with her."

Rylton lifts his head.

"To what woman are you alluding?" asks he shortly, icily.

"To Tita," returns she boldly. "I knew where she was that night; I knew she would be with her cousin at that moment--the cousin she had known and loved all her life. The cousin she had cast aside, _for the moment,_ to take your title, and mount by it to a higher rank in life." She takes a step towards him, her large eyes blazing. _"Now_ you know the truth," says she, with a vehemence that shakes her. "Your love may be dead to me, but you shall know _her_ as she is! Faithless! False as hell she is! _She_ shall not supplant me!"

She stands back from him, her hands outstretched and clenched. She looks almost superb in her wicked wrath.

Rylton regards her steadily.

"You are tired," says he coldly. "You ought to get some rest. You will sleep here to-night?"

There is a question in his tone.

"Why not? In this my old home--my home for years--your mother's home."

"My mother is in Scotland," says he briefly.

Something is tearing at his breast. Her deliberate, her most cruel attack on Tita has touched him to the quick.

"Don't be frightened!" says Mrs. Bethune, bursting out laughing. "What are you thinking of--your reputation?"

"No!"

Manlike, he refrains from the obvious return. But she, in her mad frenzy of despair and anger, supplies it.

"Mine, then? It is not worth a thought, eh? Who cares for me? Whether I sink with the vile, or swim with the good? No! I'll tell you what you are thinking of, Maurice." She lays her hand upon her throat quickly, as if stifling, yet laughs gaily. "You are thinking that that little _idiot_ may hear of my being here, and that she will make a fuss about it--all underbred people love a fuss--and that----"

She would have gone on, but Rylton has given up his neutral position on the hearthrug--he has made one step forward, his face dark with passion.

"Not another word!" says he in a sharp, imperious tone. "Not another word about--MY WIFE!"

The last two words explain all. Mrs. Bethune stand still, as if struck to the heart.

For a full minute she so stands, and then--"You are right. I should not be here," says she. She turns, and rests her eyes steadily on him. "So _that_ is my fault," says she, "that you love--_her!"_

Shame holds him silent.

"You _do_ love her?" persists she, playing with her misery, insisting on it. She lays her hand upon her heart as if to stay its beating. Is it going to burst its bonds? Oh, if it only might, and at this moment! To think that she--that _girl_--should take her place! And yet, had she not known? All through, had she not known? She had felt a superstitious fear about her, and now--"You do not speak?" says she. "Is it that you cannot? God knows I do not wonder! Well," slowly, "good-night! good-bye!"

She goes to the door.

"You cannot go like this," says Rylton, with some agitation. "Stay here to-night. I shall have time to catch the up-train, and I have business in town; and besides----"

"Do not lie!" says she. She stops and faces him; her eyes are aflame, and she throws out her right arm with a gesture that must be called magnificent. It fills him with a sort of admiration. "I want no hollow courtesies from you." She stoops, and gathering up her wraps, folds them around her. Then she turns to him again. "As all is dead between us." She stops short. "Oh no!"--laying her hand upon her heart.--"As all is dead in _you_----"

Whether her strength forsakes her here, or whether she refuses to say more, he never knows. She opens the door and goes into the hall, and, seeing a servant, beckons to him.

Rylton follows her, but, seeing him coming, she turns and waves him back. One last word she flings at him.

"Remember your reputation."

He can hear the bitterness of her laugh as she runs down the stone steps into the fly outside. She had evidently told the man to wait.


CHAPTER XXIV.

HOW TITA PLEADS HER CAUSE WITH MARGARET; AND HOW MARGARET REBUKES HER; AND HOW STEPS ARE HEARD, AND TITA SEEKS SECLUSION BEHIND A JAPANESE SCREEN; AND WHAT COMES OF IT.


"What hour did he say he was coming?" asks Tita, looking up suddenly from the book she has been pretending to read.

"About four. I wish, dearest, you would consent to see him."

"_I_ consent? Four, you say? And it is just three now. A whole hour before I feel his hated presence in the house. Where are you going to receive him?"

"In the small drawing-room, I suppose."

"You _suppose._ Margaret, is it possible you have not given directions to James? Why, he might show him in _here."_

"Well, even if he did," says Margaret impatiently, "I don't suppose he would do you any bodily harm. Once you saw him the ice would be broken, and----"

"We should both fall in and be drowned. It would only make matters worse, I assure you."

"It would be a change at all events, and 'variety is charming.' As it is, you have both fallen out."

"You are getting too funny for anything," says Tita, tilting her chin saucily.

"Now, if you were to do as you suggest, fall in--in _love_--with each other----"

"Really, Margaret, this is beneath you," says Tita, laughing in spite of herself. "No! no! no! I tell you," starting to her feet, "I'd rather _die_ than meet him again. When you and Colonel Neilson are married----"

"Oh! as to _that,"_ says Margaret, but she colours faintly.

"I shall take a tiny cottage in the country, and a tiny maid; and I'll have chickens, and a big dog, and a pony and trap, and----"

"A desolate hearth. No, Tita, you were not born for the old maid's joys."

"Well, I was not born to be tyrannized over, any way," says Tita, raising her arms above her head, her fingers interlaced, and yawning lightly. "And old maid has liberty, at all events."

"I don't see that mine does me much good," says Margaret ruefully.

"That's why you are going to give it up. Though anyone who could call _you_ an old maid would be a fool. I sometimes"--wistfully-- "wish you _were_ going to be one, Meg, because then I could live with you for ever."

"Well, you shall."

"No; not I. Three is trumpery."

"There won't be three."

"I wish I had a big bet on that. I wish someone would bet me my old dear home, my Oakdean, upon that. I should be a happy girl again."

A great sadness grows within her eyes.

"Tita, you could be happy if you chose."

"You are always saying that," says Lady Rylton, looking full at her. "But how--_how_ can I be happy!"

_"See_ Maurice! Make it up with him. Put an end to this foolish quarrel."

"What should I gain by agreeing to live again with a man who cares nothing for me? I tell you, Margaret, that I desire no great things. I did not expect to wring from life extraordinary joys. I have never been exorbitant in my demands. I did not even ask that Maurice should _love_ me. I asked only that he should _like_ me--be--be _fond_ of me. I"--her voice beginning to tremble--"have had _so_ few people to be fond of me; and to _live_ with anyone, Margaret, to see him all day long, and know he cared nothing for me, that he thought me in his way, that he so hated me that he couldn't speak to me without scolding me, or saying hurtful words! Oh, no! I could not do that again."

"Maurice has been most unfortunate," says Margaret, very sadly. "Do you really believe all this of him, Tita?"

"I believe he loved Mrs. Bethune all the time," returns she simply. "And even if it be true what you say, that he does not love her now--still he does not love me either."

"And you?"

"Oh, I--I am like the 'miller of the Dee.'" She had been on the verge of tears, but now she laughs.


"'I care for nobody, no, not I,
And nobody