Little Novels

me had begun on the day when I left off taking his remedies. 'Can you explain it?' I asked.

He answered that no such 'resurrection from the dead' (as he called it) had ever happened in his long experience. On leaving me, he asked for the latest prescriptions that had been written. I inquired what he was going to do with them. 'I mean to go to the chemist,' he replied, 'and to satisfy myself that your medicines have been properly made up.'

I owed it to Mrs. Mozeen's true interest in me to tell her what had happened. The same day I wrote to her. I also mentioned what the doctor had said, and asked her to call on him, and ascertain if the prescriptions had been shown to the chemist, and if any mistake had been made.

A more innocently intended letter than this never was written. And yet there are people who have declared that it was inspired by suspicion of Mrs. Mozeen!

EIGHTH EPOCH.

WHETHER I was so weakened by illness as to be incapable of giving my mind to more than one subject for reflection at a time (that subject being now the extraordinary recovery of my health)—or whether I was preoccupied by the effort, which I was in honor bound to make, to resist the growing attraction to me of Susan's society—I cannot presume to say. This only I know: when the discovery of the terrible position toward Rothsay in which I now stood suddenly overwhelmed me, an interval of some days had passed. I cannot account for it. I can only say—so it was.

Susan was in the room. I was wholly unable to hide from her the sudden change of color which betrayed the horror that had overpowered me. She said, anxiously: 'What has frightened you?'

I don't think I heard her. The play was in my memory again—the fatal play, which had wound itself into the texture of Rothsay's life and mine. In vivid remembrance, I saw once more the dramatic situation of the first act, and shrank from the reflection of it in the disaster which had fallen on my friend and myself.

'What has frightened you?' Susan repeated.

I answered in one word—I whispered his name: 'Rothsay!'

She looked at me in innocent surprise. 'Has he met with some misfortune?' she asked, quietly.

'Misfortune'—did she call it? Had I not said enough to disturb her tranquillity in mentioning Rothsay's name? 'I am living!' I said. 'Living—and likely to live!'

Her answer expressed fervent gratitude. 'Thank God for it!'

I looked at her, astonished as she had been astonished when she looked at me.

'Susan, Susan,' I cried—'must I own it? I love you!'

She came nearer to me with timid pleasure in her eyes—with the first faint light of a smile playing round her lips.

'You say it very strangely,' she murmured. 'Surely, my dear one, you ought to love me? Since the first day when you gave me my French lesson—haven't I loved You?'

'You love me?' I repeated. 'Have you read—?' My voice failed me; I could say no more.

She turned pale. 'Read what?' she asked.

'My letter.'

'What letter?'

'The letter I wrote to you before we were married.'

Am I a coward? The bare recollection of what followed that reply makes me tremble. Time has passed. I am a new man now; my health is restored; my happiness is assured: I ought to be able to write on. No: it is not to be done. How can I think coolly? how force myself to record the suffering that I innocently, most innocently, inflicted on the sweetest and truest of women? Nothing saved us from a parting as absolute as the parting that follows death but the confession that had been wrung from me at a time when my motive spoke for itself. The artless avowal of her affection had been justified, had been honored, by the words which laid my heart at her feet when I said 'I love you.'

She had risen to leave me. In a last look, we had silently resigned ourselves to wait, apart from each other, for the day of reckoning that must follow Rothsay's return, when we heard the sound of carriage-wheels on the drive that led to the house. In a minute more the man himself entered the room.

He looked first at Susan—then at me. In both of us he saw the traces that told of agitation endured, but not yet composed. Worn and weary he waited, hesitating, near the door.

'Am I intruding?' he asked.

'We were thinking of you, and speaking of you,' I replied, 'just before you came in.'

'We?' he repeated, turning toward Susan once more. After a pause, he offered me his hand—and drew it back.

'You don't shake hands with me,' he said.

'I am waiting, Rothsay, until I know that we are the same firm friends as ever.'

For the third time he looked at Susan.

'Will you shake hands?' he asked.

She gave him her hand cordially. 'May I stay here?' she said, addressing herself to me.

In my situation at that moment, I understood the generous purpose that animated her. But she had suffered enough already—I led her gently to the door. 'It will be better,' I whispered, 'if you will wait downstairs in the library.' She hesitated. 'What will they say in the house?' she objected, thinking of the servants and of the humble position which she was still supposed to occupy. 'It matters nothing what they say, now.' I told her. She left us.

'There seems to be some private understanding between you,' Rothsay said, when we were alone.