Lucy Bulstrode read a High-Church novel, while her husband sat with the Times before his face, thinking of all that had happened to him since he had first met the banker’s daughter. How far away that old love-story seemed to have receded since the quiet domestic happiness of his life had begun in his marriage with Lucy! He had never been false, in the remotest shadow of a thought, to his second love; but now that he knew the secret of Aurora’s life, he could but look back and wonder how he should have borne that cruel revelation if John’s fate had been his; if he had trusted the woman he loved in spite of the world, in spite of her own strange words, which had so terribly strengthened his worst fears, so cruelly redoubled his darkest doubts.
“Poor girl!” he thought; “it was scarcely strange that she should shrink from telling that humiliating story. I was not tender enough. I confronted her in my obstinate and pitiless pride. I thought of myself rather than of her, and of her sorrow. I was barbarous and ungentlemanly; and then I wondered that she refused to confide in me.”
Talbot Bulstrode, reasoning after the fact, saw the weak points of his conduct with a preternatural clearness of vision, and could not repress a sharp pang of regret that he had not acted more generously. There was no infidelity to Lucy in this thought. He would not have exchanged his devoted little wife for the black-browed divinity of the past, though an all-powerful fairy had stood at his side ready to cancel his nuptials and tie a fresh knot between him and Aurora. But he was a gentleman, and he felt that he had grievously wronged, insulted and humiliated a woman whose worst fault had been the trusting folly of an innocent girl.
“I left her on the ground in that room at Felden,” he thought—“kneeling on the ground, with her beautiful head bowed down before me. O my God, can I ever forget the agony of that moment! Can I ever forget what it cost me to do that which I thought was right!”
The cold perspiration broke out upon his forehead as he remembered that bygone pain, as it may do with a cowardly person who recalls too vividly the taking out of a three-pronged double-tooth, or the cutting off of a limb.
“John Mellish was ten times wiser than I,” thought Mr. Bulstrode; “he trusted to his instinct, and recognized a true woman when he met her. I used to despise him at Rugby because he couldn’t construe Cicero. I never thought he’d live to be wiser than me.”
Talbot Bulstrode folded the Times newspaper, and laid it down in the empty seat by his side. Lucy shut the third volume of her novel. How should she care to read when it pleased her husband to desist from reading?
“Lucy,” said Mr. Bulstrode, taking his wife’s hand (they had the carriage to themselves—a piece of good fortune which often happens to travellers who give the guard half-a-crown)—“Lucy, I once did your cousin a great wrong; I want to atone for it now. If any trouble, which no one yet foresees, should come upon her, I want to be her friend. Do you think I am right in wishing this, dear?”
“Right, Talbot!”
Mrs. Bulstrode could only repeat the word in unmitigated surprise. When did she ever think him anything but the truest and wisest and most perfect of created beings?
Everything seemed very quiet at Mellish when the visitors arrived. There was no one in the drawing-room, nor in the smaller room within the drawing-room; the Venetians were closed, for the day was close and sultry; there were vases of fresh flowers upon the tables; but there were no open books, no litter of frivolous needlework or drawing-materials, to indicate Aurora’s presence.
“Mr. and Mrs. Mellish expected you by the later train, I believe, sir,” the servant said, as he ushered Talbot and his wife into the drawing-room.
“Shall I go and look for Aurora?” Lucy said to her husband. “She is in the morning-room, I dare say.”
Talbot suggested that it would be better, perhaps, to wait till Mrs. Mellish came to them. So Lucy was fain to remain where she was. She went to one of the open windows, and pushed the shutters apart. The blazing sunshine burst into the room, and drowned it in light. The smooth lawn was aflame with scarlet geraniums and standard roses, and all manner of gaudily-coloured blossoms; but Mrs. Bulstrode looked beyond this vividly-tinted parterre to the thick woods, that loomed darkly purple against the glowing sky.
It was in that very wood that her husband had declared his love for her; the same wood that had since been outraged by violence and murder.
“The—the man is buried, I suppose, Talbot?” she said to her husband.
“I believe so, my dear.”
“I should never care to live in this place again, if I were Aurora.”
The door opened before Mrs. Bulstrode had finished speaking, and the mistress of the house came towards them. She welcomed them affectionately and kindly, taking Lucy in her arms, and greeting her very tenderly; but Talbot saw that she had changed terribly within the few days that had passed since her return to Yorkshire, and his heart sank as he observed her pale face and the dark circles about her hollow eyes.
Could she have heard—? Could anybody
