“I cannot make any such bargain,” she said, gently, “for I cannot measure your sadness tonight. You are altogether a mysterious person. I have not even begun to understand you. But I hope you may come back soon, when our roses are in bloom and our nightingales are singing, and if their welcome is not enough for you I will promise to add mine.”
There was a tender playfulness in her tone which was unspeakably sweet to him. They were quite alone, in a part of the carriage drive where the trees grew thickest, the shadow of chestnut leaves folding them round, the low breath of the evening wind whispering in their ears. It was an hour for tender avowals, for unworldly thoughts.
John Treverton took Laura’s hand, and held it unreproved.
“Tell me that you do not hate the memory of my cousin Jasper because of that absurd will,” he said.
“Could I hate the memory of one who was so good to me, the only father I ever knew?”
“Say then that you do not hate me because of my cousin’s will.”
“It would be very unchristian-like to hate you for an act of which you are innocent.”
“No doubt, but I can imagine a woman hating a man under such circumstances. You take away your hand. Yes, I feel convinced that you detest me.”
“I took away my hand because I thought you had forgotten to let it go,” said Laura, determined not to be too serious. “Will it really make you more satisfied with yourself if I tell you that I heartily forgive my adopted father for his will?”
“Infinitely.”
“And that, in spite of our ridiculous position towards each other, I do not quite—hate you.”
“Laura, you are making me the happiest of men.”
“But I am saying very little.”
“If you knew how much it is to me. A world of hope, a world of delight, an incentive to high thoughts and worthy deeds, a regeneration of body and soul.”
“You are talking wildly.”
“I am wild with gladness. Laura, my love, my darling.”
“Stop,” she said, suddenly, turning to him with earnest eyes, very pale in the dim light, now completely serious. “Is it me or your cousin’s estate you love? If it is the fortune you think of let there be no stage play of lovemaking between us. I am willing to obey your cousin—as I would have obeyed him living, honouring him and submitting to him as a father—but let us be true and loyal to each other. Let us face life honestly and earnestly, and accept it for what it is worth. Let us be faithful friends and companions, but not sham lovers.”
“Laura, I love you for yourself and yourself only. As I live that is the truth. Come to me tomorrow penniless, and tell me that Jasper Treverton’s will was a forgery. Come to me and say, ‘I am a pauper like yourself, John, but I am yours,’ and see how fond and glad a welcome I will give you. My dearest, I love you truly, passionately. It is your lovely face, your tender voice, yourself I want.”
He put his arm round her, and drew her, not unwilling, to his breast, and kissed her with the first lover’s kiss that had ever crimsoned her cheek.
“I like to believe you,” she said softly, resting contentedly in his arms.
This was their parting.
VIII
“Days That Are Over, Dreams That Are Done”
There was excitement and agitation in Cibber Street, Leicester Square, that essentially dramatic, musical, and terpsichorean nook in the great forest of London. La Chicot had narrowly escaped death. It had been all but death at the moment of the accident. It might be absolute death at any hour of the night and day that followed the catastrophe. At least this is what the inhabitants of Cibber Street told each other, and they were one and all as graphic and as full of detail as if they had just left La Chicot’s bedside.
“She has never stirred since they laid her in her bed,” said the shoemaker’s wife, at the dingy shop for ladies’ boots, two doors from the Chicot domicile; “she lies there like a piece of waxwork, pore thing, and every five minutes they takes and wets her lips with a feather dipped in brandy; and sometimes she says ‘more, more,’ very weak and pitiful!”
“That looks as if she was sensible, at any rate,” answered the good woman’s gossip, a letter of lodgings at the end of the street.
“I don’t believe it’s sense, Mrs. Bitters; I believe it’s only an inward craving. She feels that low in her inside that the brandy’s a relief to her.”
“Have they set her leg yet?”
“Lord love you, Mrs. Bitters, it’s a compound fracture, and the swelling ain’t begun to go down. They’ve got a perfessional nurse from one of the hospitals, and she’s never left off applying cooling lotion, night or day, to keep down the inflammation. The doctor hasn’t left the house since it happened.”
“Is it Mr. Mivart?”
“Lor, no; it’s quite a stranger; a young man that’s just been walking the orspital, but they say he’s very clever. He was at the Prince Frederick when it happened, and see it all; and helped to bring her home, and if she was a duchess he couldn’t be more careful over her.”
“Where’s the husband?” asked Mrs. Bitters.
“Away in the country, no one knows where, for she hasn’t sense to tell ’em, pore lamb. But from what Mrs. Evitt tells me, they was never the happiest of couples.”
“Ah!” sighed Mrs. Bitters, with an air of widest worldly experience, “dancers and suchlike didn’t ought to marry. What do they want with ’usbands, courted and run after as they are? Out every night too, like tomcats. ’Ow can they make a ’ome ’appy?”
“I can’t say
