She understood it all, and though she was moved to continual solitary tears by this ineffable tenderness, yet she rebelled against them. They should never cheat her back into happiness by such wiles as that! It was not fit that she should yield to them. As a woman utterly disgraced it could not become her again to laugh and be joyful, to give and take loving embraces, to sit and smile, perhaps a happy mother, at another man’s hearth. For their love she was grateful. For his love she was more than grateful. How constant must be his heart, how grand his nature, how more than manly his strength of character, when he was thus true to her through all the evil she had done! Love him! Yes;—she would pray for him, worship him, fill the remainder of her days with thinking of him, hoping for him, and making his interests her own. Should he ever be married—and she would pray that he might—his wife, if possible, should be her friend, his children should be her darlings; and he should always be her hero. But they should not, with all their schemes, cheat her into disgracing him by marrying him.
At last her father came, and it was he who told her that Arthur was expected on the day before Christmas. “Why did you not tell me before, papa, so that I might have asked you to take me away?”
“Because I thought, my dear, that it was better that you should be constrained to meet him. You would not wish to live all your life in terror of seeing Arthur Fletcher?”
“Not all my life.”
“Take the plunge and it will be over. They have all been very good to you.”
“Too good, papa. I didn’t want it.”
“They are our oldest friends. There isn’t a young man in England I think so highly of as John Fletcher. When I am gone, where are you to look for friends?”
“I’m not ungrateful, papa.”
“You can’t know them all, and yet keep yourself altogether separated from Arthur. Think what it would be to me never to be able to ask him to the house. He is the only one of the family that lives in London, and now it seems that Everett will spend most of his time down here. Of course it is better that you should meet him and have done with it.” There was no answer to be made to this, but still she was fixed in her resolution that she would never meet him as her lover.
Then came the morning of the day on which he was to arrive, and his coming was for the first time spoken openly of at breakfast. “How is Arthur to be brought from the station?” asked old Mrs. Fletcher.
“I’m going to take the dogcart,” said Everett. “Giles will go for the luggage with the pony. He is bringing down a lot of things;—a new saddle, and a gun for me.” It had all been arranged for her, this question and answer, and Emily blushed as she felt that it was so.
“We shall be so glad to see Arthur,” said young Mrs. Fletcher to her.
“Of course you will.”
“He has not been down since the Session was over, and he has got to be quite a speaking man now. I do so hope he’ll become something some day.”
“I’m sure he will,” said Emily.
“Not a judge, however. I hate wigs. Perhaps he might be Lord Chancellor in time.” Mrs. Fletcher was not more ignorant than some other ladies in being unaware of the Lord Chancellor’s wig and exact position.
At last he came. The 9 a.m. express for Hereford—express, at least, for the first two or three hours out of London—brought passengers for Wharton to the nearest station at 3 p.m., and the distance was not above five miles. Before four o’clock Arthur was standing before the drawing-room fire, with a cup of tea in his hand, surrounded by Fletchers and Whartons, and being made much of as the young family member of Parliament. But Emily was not in the room. She had studied her Bradshaw, and learned the hours of the trains, and was now in her bedroom. He had looked around the moment he entered the room, but had not dared to ask for her suddenly. He had said one word about her to Everett in the cart, and that had been all. She was in the house, and he must, at any rate, see her before dinner.
Emily, in order that she might not seem to escape abruptly, had retired early to her solitude. But she, too, knew that the meeting could not be long postponed. She sat thinking of it all, and at last heard the wheels of the vehicle before the door. She paused, listening with all her ears, that she might recognise his voice, or possibly his footstep. She stood near the window, behind the curtain, with her hand pressed to her heart. She heard Everett’s voice plainly as he gave some direction to the groom, but from Arthur she heard nothing. Yet she was sure that he was come. The very manner of the approach and her brother’s word made her
