not been able to answer that question. She had sounded the young man several times upon his feelings towards her stepdaughter; but he had met her hints and insinuations with perfect frankness, declaring that Mary seemed as much a child to him now as she had appeared nearly nine years before in Oakley Street, and that the pleasure he took in her society was only such as he might have felt in that of any innocent and confiding child. "Her simplicity is so bewitching, you know, Livy," he said; "she looks up in my face, and trusts me with all her little secrets, and tells me her dreams about her dead father, and all her foolish, innocent fancies, as confidingly as if I were some play fellow of her own age and sex. She's so refreshing after the artificial belles of a Calcutta ball-room, with their stereotyped fascinations and their complete manual of flirtation, the same for ever and ever. She is such a pretty little spontaneous darling, with her soft, shy, brown eyes, and her low voice, which always sounds to me like the cooing of the doves in the poultry-yard." I think that Olivia, in the depth of her gloomy despair, took some comfort from such speeches as these. Was this frank expression of regard for Mary Marchmont a token of love? No; not as the widow understood the stormy madness. Love to her had been a dark and terrible passion, a thing to be concealed, as monomaniacs have sometimes contrived to keep the secret of their mania, until it burst forth at last, fatal and irrepressible, in some direful work of wreck and ruin. So Olivia Marchmont took an early dinner alone, and drove away from the Towers at four o'clock on a blazing summer afternoon, more at peace perhaps than she had been since Edward Arundel's coming. She paid her dutiful visit to her father, sat with him for some time, talked to the two old servants who waited upon him, walked two or three times up and down the neglected garden, and then drove back to the Towers. The first object upon which her eyes fell as she entered the hall was Edward Arundel's fishing-tackle lying in disorder upon an oaken bench near the broad arched door that opened out into the quadrangle. An angry flush mounted to her face as she turned upon the servant near her. "Mr. Arundel has come home?" she said. "Yes, ma'am, he came in half an hour ago; but he went out again almost directly with Miss Marchmont." "Indeed! I thought Miss Marchmont was in her room?" "No, ma'am; she came down to the drawing-room about an hour after you left. Her head was better, ma'am, she said.” "And she went out with Mr. Arundel? Do you know which way they went ?" "Yes, ma'am ; I heard Mr. Arundel say he wanted to look at the old boat-house by the river." "And they have gone there?" "I think so, ma'am." "Very good; I will go down to them. Miss Marchmont must not stop out in the night-air. The dew is falling already." The door leading into the quadrangle was open, and Olivia swept across the broad threshold, haughty and self-possessed, very stately-looking in her long black garments. She still wore mourning for her dead husband. What inducement had she ever had to cast off that sombre attire? What need to trick herself out in gay colours? What loving eyes would be charmed by her splendour? She went out of the door, across the quadrangle, under a stone archway, and into the low stunted wood, which was gloomy even in the summer-time. The setting sun was shining upon the western front of the Towers; but here all seemed cold and desolate. The damp mists were rising from the sodden ground beneath the trees. The frogs were croaking down by the river-side. With her small white teeth set, and her breath coming in fitful gasps, Olivia Marchmont hurried to the water's edge, winding in and out between the trees, tearing her black dress amongst the brambles, scorning all beaten paths, heedless where she trod, so long as she made her way speedily to the spot she wanted to reach. At last the black sluggish river and the old boat-house came in sight, between a long vista of ugly distorted trunks and gnarled branches of pollard oak and willow. The building was dreary and dilapidated looking, for the improvements commenced by Edward Arundel five years ago had never been fully carried out; but it was sufficiently substantial, and bore no traces of positive decay. Down by the water's edge there was a great cavernous recess for the shelter of the boats, and above this there was a pavilion, built of brick and stone, containing two decent-sized chambers, with latticed windows overlooking the river. A flight of stone steps with an iron balustrade led up to the door of this pavilion, which was supported upon the solid side-walls of the boat-house below. In the stillness of the summer twilight Olivia heard the voices of those whom she came to seek. They were standing down by the edge of the water, upon a narrow pathway that ran along by the sedgy brink of the river, and only a few paces from the pavilion. The door of the boathouse was open; a long-disused wherry lay rotting upon the damp and mossy flags. Olivia crept into the shadowy recess. The door that faced the river had fallen from its rusty hinges, and the slimy woodwork lay in ruins upon the threshold of the dark recess. Sheltered by the stone archway that had once been closed by this door, Olivia listened to the voices beside the still water. Mary Marchmont was standing close to the river's edge; Edward stood beside her, leaning against the trunk of a willow that grew close to the water. "My childish darling," the young man murmured, as if in reply to something his companion had said, " and so you think, because you are simple-minded and innocent, I am not to love you. It is your innocence I love, Polly dear,-let me call you Polly, as I used five years ago,—and I wouldn't have you otherwise for all the world. Do you know that sometimes I am almost sorry I ever came back to Marchmont Towers?" "Sorry you came back ?" cried Mary, in a tone of alarm. "Oh, why do you say that, Mr. Arundel ?” "Because you are heiress to eleven thousand a year, Mary, and the Moated Grange behind us; and this dreary wood, and the river,—the river is yours, I dare say, Miss Marchmont;-and I wish you joy of the possession of so much sluggish water and so many square miles of swamp and fen." "But what then?" Mary asked wonderingly. "What then? Do you know, Polly darling, that if I ask you to marry me people will call me a fortune-hunter, and declare that I came to Marchmont Towers bent upon stealing its heiress's innocent heart, before she had learned the value of the estate that must go along with it? God knows they'd wrong me, Polly, as cruelly as ever an honest man was wronged; for, so long as I have money to pay my tailor and tobacconist, -and I've more than enough for both of them,-I want nothing further of the world's wealth. What should I do with all this swamp and fen, Miss Marchmont with all that horrible complication of expired leases to be renewed, and income-taxes to be appealed against, that rich people have to endure? If you were not rich, Polly, I-" He stopped and laughed, striking the toe of his boot amongst the weeds, and knocking the pebbles into the water. The woman crouching in the shadow of the archway listened with whitened cheeks and glaring eyes; listened as she might have listened to the sentence of her death, drinking in every syllable, in her ravenous desire to lose no breath that told her of her anguish. "If I were not rich!" murmured Mary; "what if I were not rich ?" "I should tell you how dearly I love you, Polly, and ask you to be my wife by and by." The girl looked up at him for a few moments in silence, shyly at first, and then more boldly, with a beautiful light kindling in her eyes. "I love you dearly too, Mr. Arundel," she said, at last; "and I would rather you had my money than any one else in the world; and there was something in papa's will that made me think—” "He would wish this, Polly," cried the young man, clasping the trembling little figure to his breast. "Mr. Paulette sent me a copy of the will, Polly, when he sent my diamond-ring; and I think there were some words in it that hinted at such a wish. Your father said he left me this legacy, darling,—I have his letter still,-the legacy of a helpless girl. God knows I will try to be worthy of such a trust, Mary dearest; God knows I will be faithful to my promise, made nine years ago." The woman listening in the dark archway sank down upon the damp flags at her feet, amongst the slimy rotten wood and rusty iron nails and hinges. She sat there for a ong time, not unconscious, but quite motionless, her white face leaning against the moss-grown arch, staring blankly out of the black shadows. She sat there and listened, while the lovers talked in low tender murmurs of the sorrowful past and of the unknown future; the beautiful untrodden region, in which they were to go hand in hand through all the long years of quiet happiness between that moment and the grave. She sat and listened till the moonlight faintly shimmered upon the water, and the footsteps of the lovers died. away upon the narrow pathway by which they went back to the house. Olivia Marchmont did not move until an hour after they had gone. Then she raised herself with an effort, and walked with stiffened limbs slowly and painfully to the house, and to her own room, where she locked her door, and flung Lerself upon the ground in the darkness. Mary came to her to ask why she did not come to the drawing-ro om, and Mrs. Marchmont answered, with a hoarse voice, that she was ill, and wished to be alone. Neither Mary, nor the old woman-servant who had nursed Olivia, and had some little influence over her, could get any other answer than this. Why? CAME three of the Angels of God to my bed: Confused in one sweetness, their voices at first Breath'd as one breath, like a cluster of bloom; But, I tell you, I felt there were three in the room, God's Angels, that spake to my grief at its worst. Not long together, but each after each, Nobly they spake, as the people of Heaven Speak, so they said, to the spirits forgiven, Faint souls whom they lead to the footstool and teach. Light shined in my prison of darkness and died, Leap'd out a voice like the life of the light, And "I am that Angel" (it said) "which by night Was sent to one chain'd, whom I smote on the side." Another spake soft to my grief while I wept: "I am that Angel which troubled the Pool." As the Red Sea o'er Pharaoh rush'd solemn and full, Then the deeps of a voice o'er my mutiny swept, And it spake to the silent rebellious Why, The bitter rebellious Why in my soul, And "I am that Angel" (it said) "which did roll The stone from the tomb, with the dawn in the sky. "God's flower is not blown, but it opens, it glows; Touch'd by that sunrise, its calyx was riven ! Resolv'd is the Why, here on earth, there in Heaven, Through wisdom of faith in the Great One that knows." M. B. |