'You claim my promise after what you have done at the inn?'
She steadied herself against the table with one hand, and put the other hand to her head. Her brain was giddy. The effort to think was too much for her. She said to herself, vacantly, 'The inn? What did I do at the inn?'
'I have had a lawyer's advice, mind! I know what I am talking about.'
She appeared not to have heard him. She repeated the words, 'What did I do at the inn?' and gave it up in despair. Holding by the table, she came close to him and laid her hand on his arm.
'Do you refuse to marry me?' she asked.
He saw the vile opportunity, and said the vile words.
'You're married already to Arnold Brinkworth.'
Without a cry to warn him, without an effort to save herself, she dropped senseless at his feet; as her mother had dropped at his father's feet in the by-gone time.
He disentangled himself from the folds of her dress. 'Done!' he said, looking down at her as she lay on the floor.
As the word fell from his lips he was startled by a sound in the inner part of the house. One of the library doors had not been completely closed. Light footsteps were audible, advancing rapidly across the hall.
He turned and fled, leaving the library, as he had entered it, by the open window at the lower end of the room.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.
GONE.
BLANCHE came in, with a glass of wine in her hand, and saw the swooning woman on the floor.
She was alarmed, but not surprised, as she knelt by Anne, and raised her head. Her own previous observation of her friend necessarily prevented her from being at any loss to account for the fainting fit. The inevitable delay in getting the wine was—naturally to her mind—alone to blame for the result which now met her view.
If she had been less ready in thus tracing the effect to the cause, she might have gone to the window to see if any thing had happened, out-of-doors, to frighten Anne—might have seen Geoffrey before he had time to turn the corner of the house—and, making that one discovery, might have altered the whole course of events, not in her coming life only, but in the coming lives of others. So do we shape our own destinies, blindfold. So do we hold our poor little tenure of happiness at the capricious mercy of Chance. It is surely a blessed delusion which persuades us that we are the highest product of the great scheme of creation, and sets us doubting whether other planets are inhabited, because other planets are not surrounded by an atmosphere which
After trying such simple remedies as were within her reach, and trying them without success, Blanche became seriously alarmed. Anne lay, to all outward appearance, dead in her arms. She was on the point of calling for help —come what might of the discovery which would ensue—when the door from the hall opened once more, and Hester Dethridge entered the room.
The cook had accepted the alternative which her mistress's message had placed before her, if she insisted on having her own time at her own sole disposal for the rest of that day. Exactly as Lady Lundie had desired, she intimated her resolution to carry her point by placing her account-book on the desk in the library. It was only when this had been done that Blanche received any answer to her entreaties for help. Slowly and deliberately Hester Dethridge walked up to the spot where the young girl knelt with Anne's head on her bosom, and looked at the two without a trace of human emotion in her stern and stony face.
'Don't you see what's happened?' cried Blanche. 'Are you alive or dead? Oh, Hester, I can't bring her to! Look at her! look at her!'
Hester Dethridge looked at her, and shook her head. Looked again, thought for a while and wrote on her slate. Held out the slate over Anne's body, and showed what she had written:
'Who has done it?'
'You stupid creature!' said Blanche. 'Nobody has done it.'
The eyes of Hester Dethridge steadily read the worn white face, telling its own tale of sorrow mutely on Blanche's breast. The mind of Hester Dethridge steadily looked back at her own knowledge of her own miserable married life. She again returned to writing on her slate—again showed the written words to Blanche.
'Brought to it by a man. Let her be—and God will take her.'
'You horrid unfeeling woman! how dare you write such an abominable thing!' With this natural outburst of indignation, Blanche looked back at Anne; and, daunted by the death-like persistency of the swoon, appealed again to the mercy of the immovable woman who was looking down at her. 'Oh, Hester! for Heaven's sake help me!'
The cook dropped her slate at her side and bent her head gravely in sign that she submitted. She motioned to Blanche to loosen Anne's dress, and then—kneeling on one knee—took Anne to support her while it was being done.
The instant Hester Dethridge touched her, the swooning woman gave signs of life.
A faint shudder ran through her from head to foot—her eyelids trembled—half opened for a moment—and closed again. As they closed, a low sigh fluttered feebly from her lips.
Hester Dethridge put her back in Blanche's arms—considered a little with herself—returned to writing on her slate—and held out the written words once more:
'Shivered when I touched her. That means I have been walking over her grave.'
Blanche turned from the sight of the slate, and from the sight of the woman, in horror. 'You frighten me!' she said. 'You will frighten
