第50章

"Nothing," she answered, and took up her embroidery again.There he sat at her side, anxiously looking at her--his hope in the future centered in his marriage! In a week more, if she chose, she might enter that ancient family of which he had spoken so proudly, as his wife."Oh!" she thought, "if I didn't love him! if I had only his merciless mother to think of!"Uneasily conscious of some estrangement between them, Horace spoke again."Surely I have not offended you?" he said.

She turned toward him once more.The work dropped unheeded on her lap.Her grand eyes softened into tenderness.A smile trembled sadly on her delicate lips.She laid one hand caressingly on his shoulder.All the beauty of her voice lent its charm to the next words that she said to him.The woman's heart hungered in its misery for the comfort that could only come from his lips.

" You would have loved me, Horace--without stopping to think of the family name?"The family name again! How strangely she persisted in coming back to that! Horace looked at her without answering, trying vainly to fathom what was passing in her mind.

She took his hand, and wrung it hard--as if she would wring the answer out of him in that way.

" You would have loved me?" she repeated.

The double spell of her voice and her touch was on him.He answered, warmly, "Under any circumstances! under any name!"She put one arm round his neck, and fixed her eyes on his."Is that true?" she asked.

"True as the heaven above us!"

She drank in those few commonplace words with a greedy delight.She forced him to repeat them in a new form.

"No matter who I might have been? For myself alone?""For yourself alone."

She threw both arms round him, and laid her head passionately on his breast."I love you! I love you!! I love you!!!" Her voice rose with hysterical vehemence at each repetition of the words--then suddenly sank to a low hoarse cry of rage and despair.The sense of her true position toward him revealed itself in all its horror as the confession of her love escaped her lips.Her arms dropped from him; she flung herself back on the sofa-cushions, hiding her face in her hands."Oh, leave me!" she moaned, faintly."Go! go!"Horace tried to wind his arm round her, and raise her.She started to her feet, and waved him back from her with a wild action of her hands, as if she was frightened of him."The wedding present!" she cried, seizing the first pretext that occurred to her."You offered to bring me your mother's present.I am dying to see what it is.Go and get it!"Horace tried to compose her.He might as well have tried to compose the winds and the sea.

"Go!" she repeated, pressing one clinched hand on her bosom."I am not well.Talking excites me--I am hysterical; I shall be better alone.Get me the present.Go!""Shall I send Lady Janet? Shall I ring for your maid?""Send for nobody! ring for nobody! If you love me--leave me here by myself! leave me instantly!""I shall see you when I come back?"

"Yes! yes!"

There was no alternative but to obey her.Unwillingly and forebodingly, Horace left the room.

She drew a deep breath of relief, and dropped into the nearest chair.If Horace had stayed a moment longer--she felt it, she knew it--her head would have given way; she would have burst out before him with the terrible truth."Oh!" she thought, pressing her cold hands on her burning eyes, "if I could only cry, now there is nobody to see me!"The room was empty: she had every reason for concluding that she was alone.And yet at that very moment there were ears that listened--there were eyes waiting to see her.

Little by little the door behind her which faced the library and led into the billiard-room was opened noiselessly from without, by an inch at a time.As the opening was enlarged a hand in a black glove, an arm in a black sleeve, appeared, guiding the movement of the door.An interval of a moment passed, and the worn white face of Grace Roseberry showed itself stealthily, looking into the dining-room.

Her eyes brightened with vindictive pleasure as they discovered Mercy sitting alone at the further end of the room.Inch by inch she opened the door more widely, took one step forward, and checked herself.A sound, just audible at the far end of the conservatory, had caught her ear.

She listened--satisfied herself that she was not mistaken--and drawing back with a frown of displeasure, softly closed the door again, so as to hide herself from view.The sound that had disturbed her was the distant murmur of men's voices (apparently two in number) talking together in lowered tones, at the garden entrance to the conservatory.

Who were the men? and what would they do next? They might do one of two things: they might enter the drawing-room, or they might withdraw again by way of the garden.Kneeling behind the door, with her ear at the key-hole, Grace Roseberry waited the event.

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