A Perilous Secret Part 18

"Go to your room, my child," said he, "and try and compose yourself. I am not angry with you. I ought to have watched you. But you are so young, and I trusted to that woman."

Mary retired, sobbing, and he sent for Mrs. Easton.

"Mrs. Easton," said he, "for the first time in all these years I have a fault to find with you."

"What is that, sir, if you please?"

"Young Clifford has been courting that child, and you have encouraged it."

"Nay, sir," said the woman, "I have not done that. She never spoke to me, nor I to her."

"Well, then, you never interfered."

"No, sir; no more than you did."

"Because I never observed it till to-day."

"How could I know that, sir? Everybody else observed it. Mr. Hope would have been the first to see it, if he had been in your place." This sudden thrust made Bartley wince, and showed him he had a tougher customer to deal with than poor Mary.

"You can't bear to be found fault with, Easton," said he, craftily, "and I don't wonder at it, after fourteen years' fidelity to me."

"I take no credit for that," said the woman, doggedly. "I have been paid for it."

"No doubt. But I don't always get the thing I pay for. Then let by-gones be by-gones; but just a.s.sist me now to cure the girl of this folly."

"Sir," said the woman, firmly, "it is not folly; it is wisest and best for all; and I can't make up my mind to lift a finger against it."

"Do you mean to defy me, then?"

"No, sir. I don't want to go against you, nor yet against my own conscience, what's left on't. I have seen a pretty while it must come to this, and I have written to my sister Sally. She keeps a small hotel at the lakes. She is ready to have me, and I'm not too old to be useful to her. I'm worth my board. I'll go there this very day, if you please. I'm as true to you as I can be, sir. For I see by Miss Mary crying so you have spoken to her, and so now she is safe to come to me for comfort; and if she does, I shall take her part, you may be sure, for I love her like my own child." Here the dogged voice began to tremble; but she recovered herself, and told him she would go at once to her sister Gilbert, that lived only ten miles off, and next day she would go to the little hotel at the lakes, and leave him to part two true lovers if he could and break both their hearts; she should wash her hands of it.

Bartley asked a moment to consider.

"Shall we be friends still if you leave me like that? Surely, after all these years, you will not tell your sister? You will not betray me?"

"Never, sir," said she. "What for? To bring those two together? Why, it would part them forever. I wonder at you, a gentleman, and in business all your life, yet you don't seem to see through the muddy water as I do that is only a plain woman."

She then told him her clothes were nearly all packed, and she could start in an hour.

"You shall have the break and the horses," said he, with great alacrity.

Everything transpires quickly in a small house, and just as she had finished packing, in came Mary in violent distress. "What, is it true?

Are you going to leave me, now my heart is broken? Oh, nurse! nurse!"

This was too much even for stout-hearted Nancy Easton.

"Oh, my child! my child!" she cried, and sat down on her box sobbing violently, Mary infolded in her arms, and then they sat crying and rocking together.

"Papa does not love me as I do him," sobbed Mary, turning bitter for the first time. "He breaks my heart, and sends you away the same day, for fear you should comfort me."

"No, my dear," said Mrs. Easton; "you are wrong. He does not send me away; I go by my own wish."

"Oh, nurse, you desert me! then you don't know what has happened."

"Oh yes, I do; I know all about it; and I'm leaving because I can't do what he wishes. You see it is this way, Miss Mary--your father has been very good to me, and I am his debtor. I must not stay here and help you to thwart him--that would be ungrateful--and yet I can't take his side against you. Master has got reasons why you should not marry Walter Clifford, and--"

"He told me so himself," said Mary.

"Ah, but he didn't tell you his reasons."

"No."

"No more must I. But, Miss Mary, I'll tell you this. I know his reasons well; his reasons why you should not marry Walter Clifford are my reasons why you should marry no other man."

"Oh, nurse! oh, you dear, good angel!"

"So when friends differ like black and white, 'tis best to part. I'm going to my sister Gilbert this afternoon, and to-morrow to my sister Sally, at her hotel."

"Oh, nurse, must you? must you? I shall have not a friend to advise or console me till Mr. Hope comes back. Oh, I hope that won't be long now."

Mrs. Easton dropped her hands upon her knees and looked at Mary Bartley.

"What, Miss Mary, would you go to Mr. Hope in such a matter as this?

Surely you would not have the face?"

"Not take my breaking heart to Mr. Hope!" cried Mary, with a sudden flood of tears. "You might as well tell me not to lay my trouble before my G.o.d. Dear, dear Mr. Hope, who saved my life in those deep waters, and then cried over me, darling dear! I think more of that than of his courage. Do you think I am blind? He loves me better than my own father does; and it is not a young man's love; it is an angel's. Not cry to _him_ when I am in the deep waters of affliction? I could not write of such a thing to him for blushing, but the moment he returns I shall find some way to let him know how happy I have been, how broken-hearted I am, and that papa has reasons against _him_, and they are your reasons for him, and that you are both afraid to let _me_ know these _curious_ reasons--me, the poor girl whose heart is being made a foot-ball of in this house. Oh! oh! oh!"

"Don't cry, Miss Mary," said Nurse Easton, tenderly; "and pray don't excite yourself so. Why, I never saw you like this before."

"Had I ever the same reason? You have only known the happy, thoughtless child. They have made a woman of me now, and my peace is gone. I _must_ not defy my father, and I _will_ not break poor Walter's heart--the truest heart that ever beat. Not tell dear Mr. Hope? I'll tell him everything, if I'm cut in pieces for it." And her beautiful eyes flashed lightning through her tears.

"Hum!" said Mrs. Easton, under her breath, and looking down at her own feet.

"And pray what does 'hum' mean?" asked Mary, fixing her eyes with prodigious keenness on the woman's face.

"Well, I don't suppose 'hum' means anything," said Mrs. Easton, still looking down.

"Doesn't it?" said Mary. "With such a face as _that_ it means a volume.

And I'll make it my business to read that volume."

"Hum!"

"And Mr. Hope shall help me."

CHAPTER IX.