April's Lady Part 71

"I suppose"--he hesitates, and then goes on with an effort--"I suppose it would be too much to ask of you----"

"What?"

"That you would sometimes write me a letter--however short."

"I am a bad correspondent," says she, feeling as if she were choking.

"Ah! I see. I should not have asked, of course. Yes, you are right. It was absurd my hoping for it."

"When people choose to go away so far as that----" she is compelling herself to speak, but her voice sounds to herself a long way off.

"They must hope to be forgotten. 'Out of sight out of mind,' I know. It is such an old proverb. Well----You are cold," says he suddenly, noting the pallor of the girl's face. "Whatever you were before, you are certainly chilled to the bone now. You look it. Come, this is no time of year to be lingering out of doors without a coat or hat."

"I have this shawl," says she, pointing to the soft white, fleecy thing that covers her.

"I distrust it. Come."

"No," says she, faintly. "Go on; you give your message to Barbara. As for me, I shall be happier here."

"Where I am not," says he, with a bitter laugh. "I suppose I ought to be accustomed to that thought now, but such is my conceit that it seems ever a fresh shock to me. Well, for all that," persuadingly, "come in.

The evening is very cold. I shan't like to go away, leaving you behind me suffering from a bad cough or something of that kind. We have been friends, Joyce," with a rather sorry smile. "For the sake of the old friendship, don't send me adrift with such an anxiety upon my mind."

"Would you really care?" says she.

"Ah! That is the humor of it," says he. "In spite of all I should still really care. Come." He makes an effort to unclasp the small, pretty fingers that are grasping the rails so rigidly. At first they seem to resist his gentle pressure, and then they give way to him. She turns suddenly.

"Felix,"--her voice is somewhat strained, somewhat harsh, not at all her own voice,--"do you still love me?"

"You know that," returns he, sadly. If he has felt any surprise at the question he has not shown it.

"No, no," says she, feverishly. "That you like me, that you are fond of me, perhaps, I can still believe. But is it the same with you that it used to be? Do you," with a little sob, "love me as well now as in those old days? Just the same! Not," going nearer to him, and laying her hand upon his breast, and raising agonized eyes of inquiry to his--"not one bit less?"

"I love you a thousand times more," says he, very quietly, but with such intensity that it enters into her very soul. "Why?" He has laid his own hand over the small nervous one lying on his breast, and his face has grown very white.

"Because I love you too!"

She stops short here, and begins to tremble violently. With a little shamed, heartbroken gesture she tears her hand out of his and covers her face from his sight.

"Say that again!" says he, hoa.r.s.ely. He waits a moment, but when no word comes from her he deliberately drags away the sheltering hands and compels her to look at him.

"Say it!" says he, in a tone that is now almost a command.

"Oh! it is true--true!" cries she, vehemently. "I love you; I have loved you a long time, I think, but I didn't know it. Oh, Felix! Dear, dear Felix, forgive me!"

"Forgive you!" says he, brokenly.

"Ah! yes. And don't leave me. If you go away from me I shall die. There has been so much of it--a little more--and----" She breaks down.

"My beloved!" says he in a faint, quick way. He is holding her to him now with all his might. She can feel the quick pulsations of his heart.

Suddenly she slips her soft arms around his neck, and now with her head pressed against his shoulder, bursts into a storm of tears. It is a last shower.

They are both silent for a long time, and then he, raising one of her hands, presses the palm against his lips. Looking up at him, she smiles, uncertainly but happily, a very rainbow of a smile, born of sunshine, and, raindrops gone, it seems to beautify her lips. But Felix, while acknowledging its charm, cannot smile back at her. It is all too strange, too new. He is afraid to believe. As yet there is something terrible to him in this happiness that has fallen into his life.

"You mean it?" he asks, bending over her. "If to-morrow I were to wake and find all this an idle dream, how would it be with me then? Say you mean it!"

"Am I not here?" says she, tremulously, making a slight but eloquent pressure on one of the arms that are round her. He bends his face to hers, and as he feels that first glad eager kiss returned--he knows!

CHAPTER LIII.

"True love's the gift which G.o.d has given To man alone beneath the heaven:

It is the secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart and mind to mind In body and in soul can bind."

Of course Barbara is delighted. She proves charming as a confidante.

Nothing can exceed the depth of her sympathy.

When Joyce and Felix came in together in the darkening twilight, entering the house in a burglarious fashion through the dining-room window, it so happens that Barbara is there, and is at once struck by a sense of guilt that seems to surround and envelop them. They had not, indeed, antic.i.p.ated meeting Barbara in that room of all others, and are rather taken aback when they come face to face with her.

"I a.s.sure you we have not come after the spoons," says Felix, in a would-be careless tone that could not have deceived an infant, and with a laugh, so frightfully careless that it would have terrified the life out of you.

"You certainly don't look like it," says Mrs. Monkton, whose heart has begun to beat high with hope. She hardly knows whether it is better to fall upon their necks forthwith and declare she knows all about it, or else to pretend ignorance. She decides upon the latter as being the easier; after all they mightn't like the neck process. Most people have a fancy for telling their own tales, to have them told for one is annoying. "You haven't the requisite murderous expression," she says, unable to resist a touch of satire. "You look rather frightened you two.

What have you been doing?" She is too good natured not to give them an opening for their confession.

"Not much, and yet a great deal," says Felix. He has advanced a little, while Joyce, on the contrary, has meanly receded farther into the background. She has rather the appearance, indeed, of one who, if the wall could have been induced to give way, would gladly have followed it into the garden. The wall, however, declines to budge. "As for burglary," goes on Felix, trying to be gay, and succeeding villainously.

"You must exonerate your sister at all events. But I--I confess I have stolen something belonging to you."

"Oh, no; not stolen," says Joyce, in a rather faint tone. "Barbara, I know what you will think, but----"

"I know what I do think!" cries Barbara, joyously. "Oh, is it, can it be true?"

It never occurs to her that Felix now is not altogether a brilliant match for a sister with a fortune--she remembers only in that lovely mind of hers that he had loved Joyce when she was without a penny, and that he is now what he had always seemed to her, the one man that could make Joyce happy.

"Yes; it is true!" says Dysart. He has given up that unsuccessful gayety now and has grown very grave; there is even a slight tremble in his voice. He comes up to Mrs. Monkton and takes both her hands. "She has given herself to me. You are really glad! You are not angry about it? I know I am not good enough for her, but----"

Here Joyce gives way to a little outburst of mirth that is rather tremulous, and coming away from the unfriendly wall, that has not been of the least use to her, brings herself somewhat shamefacedly into the only light the room receives through the western window. The twilight at all events is kind to her. It is difficult to see her face.

"I really can't stay here," says she, "and listen to my own praises being sung. And besides," turning to Felix a lovely but embarra.s.sed face, "Barbara will not regard it as you do; she will, on the contrary, say you are a great deal too good for me, and that I ought to be pilloried for all the trouble I have given through not being able to make up my own mind for so long a time."

"Indeed, I shall say nothing but that you are the dearest girl in the world, and that I'm delighted things have turned out so well. I always said it would be like this," cries Barbara exultantly, who certainly never had said it, and had always indeed been distinctly doubtful about it.

"Is Mr. Monkton in?" says Felix, in a way that leads Monkton's wife to imagine that if she should chance to say he was out, the news would be hailed with rapture.

"Oh, never mind him," says she, beaming upon the happy but awkward couple before her. "I'll tell him all about it. He will be just as glad as I am. There, go away you two; you will find the small parlor empty, and I dare say you have a great deal to say to each other still. Of course you will dine with us, Felix, and give Freddy an opportunity of saying something ridiculous to you."