“Avoids you, dear?”
“Yes, avoids me. We have scarcely spoken a dozen words to each other since the night of our return. He was so good to me, so tender and devoted during the journey home, telling me again and again that this discovery had not lessened his love, that all the trial and horror of the past few days had only shown him the great strength of his affection; but on the night of our return, Lucy, he changed—changed suddenly and inexplicably; and now I feel that there is a gulf between us that can never be passed again. He is alienated from me forever!”
“Aurora, all this is impossible,” remonstrated Lucy. “It is your own morbid fancy, darling.”
“My fancy!” cried Aurora bitterly. “Ah, Lucy, you cannot know how much I love my husband, if you think that I could be deceived in one look or tone of his. Is it my fancy that he averts his eyes when he speaks to me? Is it my fancy that his voice changes when he pronounces my name? Is it my fancy that he roams about the house like a ghost, and paces up and down his room half the night through? If these things are my fancy, Heaven have mercy upon me, Lucy; for I must be going mad.”
Mrs. Bulstrode started as she looked at her cousin. Could it be possible that all the trouble and confusion of the past week or two had indeed unsettled this poor girl’s intellect?
“My poor Aurora!” she murmured, smoothing the heavy hair away from her cousin’s tearful eyes: “my poor darling! how is it possible that John should change towards you? He loved you so dearly, so devotedly; surely nothing could alienate him from you.”
“I used to think so, Lucy,” Aurora murmured in a low, heartbroken voice; “I used to think nothing could ever come to part us. He said he would follow me to the uttermost end of the world; he said that no obstacle on earth should ever separate us; and now—”
She could not finish the sentence, for she broke into convulsive sobs, and hid her face upon her cousin’s shoulder, staining Mrs. Bulstrode’s pretty silk dress with her hot tears.
“Oh, my love, my love!” she cried piteously, “why didn’t I run away and hide myself from you? why didn’t I trust to my first instinct, and run away from you forever? Any suffering would be better than this! any suffering would be better than this!”
Her passionate grief merged into a fit of hysterical weeping, in which she was no longer mistress of herself. She had suffered for the past few days more bitterly than she had ever suffered yet. Lucy understood all that. She was one of those people whose tenderness instinctively comprehends the griefs of others. She knew how to treat her cousin; and in less than an hour after this emotional outbreak Aurora was lying on her bed, pale and exhausted, but sleeping peacefully. She had carried the burden of her sorrow in silence during the past few days, and had spent sleepless nights in brooding over her trouble. Her conversation with Lucy had unconsciously relieved her, and she slumbered calmly after the storm. Lucy sat by the bed watching the sleeper for some time, and then stole on tiptoe from the room.
She went, of course, to tell her husband all that had passed, and to take counsel from his sublime wisdom.
She found Talbot in the drawing-room alone; he had eaten a dreary luncheon in John’s company, and had been hastily left by his host immediately after the meal. There had been no sound of carriage-wheels upon the gravelled drive all that morning; there had been no callers at Mellish Park since John’s return; for a horrible scandal had spread itself throughout the length and breadth of the county, and those who spoke of the young squire and his wife talked in solemn undertones, and gravely demanded of each other whether some serious step should not be taken about the business which was uppermost in everybody’s mind.
Lucy told Talbot all that Aurora had said to her. This was no breach of confidence in the young wife’s code of morality; for were not she and her husband immutably one, and how could she have any secret from him?
“I thought so!” Mr. Bulstrode said, when Lucy had finished her story.
“You thought what, dear?”
“That the breach between John and Aurora was a serious one. Don’t look so sorrowful, my darling. It must be our business to reunite these divided lovers. You shall comfort Aurora, Lucy; and I’ll look after John.”
Talbot Bulstrode kissed his little wife, and went straight away upon his friendly errand. He found John Mellish in his own room—the room in which Aurora had written to him upon the day of her flight; the room from which the murderous weapon had been stolen by some unknown hand. John had hidden the rusty pistol in one of the locked drawers of his Davenport; but it was not to be supposed that the fact of its discovery could be locked up or hidden away. That had been fully discussed in the servants’ hall; and who shall doubt that it had travelled further, percolating through some of those sinuous channels which lead away from every household?
“I want you to come for a walk with me, Mr. John Mellish,” said Talbot, imperatively; “so put on your hat, and come into the park. You are the most agreeable gentleman I ever had the honour to visit, and the attention you pay your guests is really something remarkable.”
Mr. Mellish made no reply to this speech. He stood before his friend, pale, silent, and sullen. He was no more like the hearty Yorkshire squire whom we have known, than he was like Viscount Palmerston or Lord Clyde. He
