It was easy for Mr. Mellish to make this mental vow, believing fully that the storm was past, and that lasting fair weather had set in.
“Lolly darling,” he said, winding his great arm round his wife’s waist, “I thought I had lost you.”
She looked up at him with a sad smile.
“Would it grieve you much, John,” she said in a low voice, “if you were really to lose me?”
He started as if he had been struck, and looked anxiously at her pale face.
“Would it grieve me, Lolly!” he repeated; “not for long; for the people who came to your funeral would come to mine. But, my darling, my darling, what can have made you ask this question? Are you ill, dearest? You have been looking pale and tired for the last few days, and I have thought nothing of it. What a careless wretch I am!”
“No, no, John,” she said; “I don’t mean that. I know you would grieve, dear, if I were to die. But suppose something were to happen which would separate us forever—something which would compel me to leave this place never to return to it—what then?”
“What then, Lolly?” answered her husband, gravely. “I would rather see your coffin laid in the empty niche beside my mother’s in the vault yonder,”—he pointed in the direction of the parish church, which was close to the gates of the park—“than I would part with you thus. I would rather know you to be dead and happy than I would endure any doubt about your fate. Oh, my darling, why do you speak of these things? I couldn’t part with you—I couldn’t! I would rather take you in my arms and plunge with you into the pond in the wood; I would rather send a bullet into your heart, and see you lying murdered at my feet.”
“John, John, my dearest and truest!” she said, her face lighting up with a new brightness, like the sudden breaking of the sun through a leaden cloud, “not another word, dear: we will never part. Why should we? There is very little upon this wide earth that money cannot buy; and it shall help to buy our happiness. We will never part, darling; never.”
She broke into a joyous laugh as she watched his anxious, half-wondering face.
“Why, you foolish John, how frightened you look!” she said. “Haven’t you discovered yet that I like to torment you now and then with such questions as these, just to see your big blue eyes open to their widest extent? Come, dear; Mrs. Powell will look white thunder at us when we go in, and make some meek conventional reply to our apologies for this delay, to the effect that she doesn’t care in the least how long she waits for dinner, and that on the whole she would rather never have any dinner at all. Isn’t it strange, John, how that woman hates me?”
“Hates you, dear, when you’re so kind to her!”
“But she hates me for being kind to her, John. If I were to give her my diamond-necklace, she’d hate me for having it to give. She hates us because we’re rich and young and handsome,” said Aurora, laughing; “and the very opposite of her namby-pamby, pale-faced self.”
It was strange that from this moment Aurora seemed to regain her natural gaiety of spirits, and to be what she had been before the receipt of Mr. Pastern’s letter. Whatever dark cloud had hovered over her head, since the day upon which that simple epistle had caused such a terrible effect, seemed to have been suddenly removed. Mrs. Walter Powell was not slow to perceive this change. The eyes of love, clear-sighted though they may be, are dull indeed beside the eyes of hate. Those are never deceived. Aurora had wandered out of the drawing-room, listless and dispirited, to stroll wearily upon the lawn;—Mrs. Powell, seated in one of the windows, had watched her every movement, and had seen her in the distance speaking to someone (she had been unable to distinguish the “Softy” from her post of observation);—and this same Aurora returned to the house almost another creature. There was a look of determination about the beautiful mouth (which female critics called too wide), a look not usual to the rosy lips, and a resolute brightness in the eyes, which had some significance surely, Mrs. Powell thought, if she could only have found the key to that hidden meaning. Ever since Aurora’s brief illness, the poor woman had been groping for this key—groping in mazy darknesses which baffled her utmost powers of penetration. Who and what was this groom, that Aurora should write to him, as she most decidedly had written? Why was he to express no surprise, and what cause could there be for his expressing any surprise in the simple economy of Mellish Park? The mazy darknesses were more impenetrable than the blackest night, and Mrs. Powell well-nigh gave up all hope of ever finding any clue to the mystery. And now behold a new complication had arisen in Aurora’s altered spirits. John Mellish was delighted with this alteration. He talked and laughed until the glasses near him vibrated with his noisy mirth. He drank so much sparkling Moselle that his butler Jarvis (who
