It was a sound—of intolerable woe, indignation, and wrath from behind the wall. Catherine was listening, with her hands clasped hard to keep herself up. It was not a cry which would have betrayed her, but an involuntary rustle or movement, a gasp, indistinguishable from so many other utterances of the night.
“I suppose it was nothing,” he added. “Hester, come; we can’t stand here like two—thieves, as you say, to be found out by anybody. There’s that villain Marshall, Catherine’s spy, always on the outlook. He tells his mistress everything. However, that does not matter much now. By tomorrow, dear, neither you nor I need mind what they say. There will be plenty said—we must make up our minds to that. I suppose you gave your mother a hint—”
“My mother, a hint? Edward! how could I dare to say to her—What would she think? but oh, that comes so long a way after! The first thing is, you cannot go; Edward, you must not go, a man cannot be a traitor. It is just the one thing—If all was plain sailing, well; but when things are going badly—Oh no, no, I will not hear you say so. You cannot desert your post.”
He took hold of her arm in the intensity of his vexation and rage.
“You are a fool,” he said, hoarsely. “Hester! I love you all the same, but you are a fool! Didn’t I tell you at first I was risking everything. Heavens, can’t you understand! Desert my post! I have no post. It will be better for them that I should be out of the way. I—must go—confound it! Hester, for God’s sake, haven’t you made up your mind! Do you know that every moment I stand here I am in danger? Come! come! I will tell you everything on the way.”
She gave a cry as if his pressure, the almost force he used to draw her with him, had hurt her. She drew her hand out of his.
“I never thought it possible,” she said, “I never thought it possible! Oh, Edward! danger, what is danger? There’s no danger but going wrong. Stop: my love—yes, you are my love—there has never been anyone between us. If you have been foolish in your speculations, or whatever they are, or even wrong—stay, Edward, stay, and put it right. Oh, stay, and put it right! There can be no danger if you will stand up and say ‘I did it, I will put it right;’ and I—if you care for me—I will stand by you through everything. I will be your clerk; I will work for you night and day. There is no trouble I will not save you, Edward. Oh, Edward, for God’s sake, think of Catherine, how good she has been to you; and it will break her heart. Think of Vernon’s, which we have all been so proud of, which gives us our place in the country. Edward, think of—Won’t you listen to me? You will be a man dishonoured, they will call you—they will think you—Edward!”
“All this comes finely from you,” he cried, “beautifully from you! You have a right to set up on the heights of honour, and as the champion of Vernon’s. You, John Vernon’s daughter, the man that ruined the bank.”
“The man that—Oh, my God! Edward, what are you saying—my father! the man—”
He laughed out—laughed aloud, forgetting precautions.
“Do you mean to say you did not know—the man that was such a fool, that left it a ruin on Catherine’s hands? You did not know why she hated you? You are the only one in the place that does not. I have taken the disease from him, through you; it must run in the blood. Come, come, you drive me into heroics too. There is enough of this; but you’ve no honour to stand upon, Hester; we are in the same box. Come along with me now.”
Hester felt that she had been stricken to the heart. She drew away from him till she got to the rough support of the wall, and leant upon it, hiding her face, pressing her soft cheek against the roughness of the brick. He drew her other arm into his, trying to lead her away; but she resisted, putting her hand on him, and pushing him from her with all her force.
“There is not another word to be said,” she cried. “Go away, if you will go; go away. I will never go with you! All that is over now.”
“This is folly,” he said. “Why did you come here if you had not made up your mind? And if I tell you a piece of old news, a thing that everybody knows, is that to make a breach between us? Hester! where are you going? the other way—the other way!”
She was feeling her way along the wall to the gate. It was very dark, and they were like shadows, small, vague, under the black canopy of the tree. She kept him away with her outstretched arm which he felt rather than saw.
“I never knew it—I never knew it,” she said, with sobs. “I am going to Catherine to ask her pardon on my knees.”
“Hester, for God’s sake don’t be a fool—To Catherine! You mean to send out after me, to stop me, to betray me! but by—”
The oath never got uttered, whatever it was. Another figure, tall and shadowy, appeared behind them in the opening of the gate. Edward gave one startled look, then flung from him the hand of Hester which he had grasped unawares, and hurried away towards the town, with the speed of a ghost. He flung it with such force that the girl’s relaxed and drooping figured followed, and she fell before the third person, the newcomer, and lay across
