“Oh yes, I shall be sorry,” cried poor Lady Car, drawing herself out of her mother’s hold—“sorry to have been unkind, sorry to have betrayed myself; but I must, I must. I cannot hold my peace. Oh, father, let me alone! What good will that do you to make me wretched? What good has it done you? Nothing, nothing! I might have been poor and happy, instead of all I have come through; and what difference would it have made to you? You have killed me once; but oh, think how cruel, how tyrannous, if you tried to kill me again! And you see nobody speaks for me; I am alone to defend myself. Father, you shall not interfere again.”
She had resumed her hold on his arm, grasping it half to support herself, half to enforce what she was saying. He now put his hand upon hers and detached it gently, still keeping down his anger, retaining his tone of calm. “My poor child, you are overdone; let your mother take care of you,” he said compassionately. “Mr. Beaufort, we are both out of place here at this moment. Lady Caroline has had a great deal to try her; we had better leave her with her mother.” Nobody could be more reasonable, more temperate. His compassionate voice and gentle action, and the way in which he seemed about to sweep away with him the somewhat irresolute figure of the man who had no right to be there, filled Carry with a wild pang. It seemed to her that, notwithstanding all her protest and passion, he was about to be victorious once more, and to rob her of all life and hope again. She stretched out her arms wildly, with a cry of anguish: “Edward, are you going to forsake me too?”
Edward Beaufort was very pertinacious in his love, very faithful, poetically tender and true, but he was not strong in an emergency, and the calmness and friendliness of Lord Lindores’ address deceived him. He cried “Never!” with the warmest devotion: but then he changed his tone a little: “Lord Lindores is perhaps right—for the moment. I must not—bring ill-natured remark—”
Lady Car burst into a little wild laugh. “You have no courage—you either,” she said, “even you. It is only I, a poor coward, that am not afraid. It is not natural to me, everybody knows; but when a soul is in despair—Then just see how bold I am,” she cried suddenly, “father and mother! If there is any holding back, it is his, not mine. I have been ready—ready from the first, as I am now. I care nothing about remark, or what anybody says. I will hear no reason; I will have no interference. Do you hear me, all? Do you hear what I say?”
“I hear—what I am very sorry to hear, Carry—what you cannot mean. Mr. Beaufort is too much a gentleman to take advantage of this wild talk, which is mere excitement and overstrained feeling.”
She laughed again, that laugh, which is no laugh, but an expression of all that is inarticulate in the highest excitement. “I am ready—to fulfil our old engagement, our old, old, broken engagement, that we made before God and heaven. I have been like Dante,” she said; “I have lost my way, and made that dreadful round before I could find it, through hell and purgatory; yes, that is it—through hell—And now, whenever Edward pleases. It is not I that am holding back. Yes, go, go!” she said; “oh, though I love you, you are not like me, you have not suffered like me! go—but don’t go with my father. He will find some way of putting everything wrong again.”
The two gentlemen walked solemnly, one behind the other, to the door: on the threshold Lord Lindores paused. “I don’t suppose you will suspect me of any designs upon your life,” he said, with a bitter smile, “if I repeat that you will be welcome at Lindores.”
“I had made all my arrangements,” said Beaufort, with some confusion, “to stay at Dunearn.”
Lord Lindores paused for a moment before mounting his horse. “All that she has been saying is folly,” he said; “you may be certain that it will not be permitted—”
“Who is to stop it? I don’t think, if we are agreed, anyone has the power.”
“It will not be permitted. It would be disgraceful to you. It would be a step that no gentleman could take. A foolish young woman, hysterical with excitement and exhaustion and grief—”
“Lord Lindores, you forget what that young woman has been to me—ever since I have known her. I have never wavered—”
“Then you have committed a sin,” the Earl said. He stood there discomfited, in the darkness of the night, scarcely remembering the servants, who were within hearing—not knowing what further step to take. He raised his foot to put it in the stirrup, then turned back again. “If you will not come with me—where we could talk this out at our leisure—at least you will go away from here,” he said. Beaufort did not reply in words, but hastened away, disappearing in the gloom of the avenue. Lord Lindores mounted his horse, and followed slowly, in a tumult of thought. He had not been prepared for it—he was unable now to realise the power of wild and impassioned resistance which was in Carry. He was giddy with astonishment, as if his horse or his dog had turned round upon him and defied him. But he
