Cynthia Wakeham's Money Part 17

"Now you do not know me," he protested.

But she heeded neither his words nor his pleading look.

"I know human nature," she avowed, "and if I do not mingle much with the world I know the pa.s.sions that sway it. I can never be the wife of any man, Mr. Etheridge, much less of one so generous and so self-forgetting as yourself."

"Do you--are you certain?" he asked.

"Certain."

"Then I have not succeeded in raising one throb of interest in your breast?"

She opened her lips and his heart stood still for her answer, but she closed them again and remained standing so long with her hands locked together and her face downcast, that his hopes revived again, and he was about to put in another plea for her hand when she looked up and said firmly:

"I think you ought to know that my heart does not respond to your suit.

It may make any disappointment which you feel less lasting."

He uttered a low exclamation and stepped back.

"I beg your pardon," said he, "I ought not to have annoyed you. You will forget my folly, I hope."

"Do you forget it!" cried she; but her lips trembled and he saw it.

"Hermione! Hermione!" he murmured, and was down at her feet before she could prevent it. "Oh, how I love you!" he breathed, and kissed her hand wildly, pa.s.sionately.

XII.

HOW MUCH DID IT MEAN?

Frank Etheridge left the presence of Hermione Cavanagh, carrying with him an indelible impression of her slender, white-robed figure and pallid, pa.s.sion-drawn face. There was such tragedy in the latter, that he shuddered at its memory, and stopped before he reached the gate to ask himself if the feeling she displayed was for him or another. If for another, then was that other Dr. Sellick, and as the name formed itself in his thoughts, he felt the dark cloud of jealousy creep over his mind, obscuring the past and making dangerous the future.

"How can I know," thought he, "how can I know?" and just as the second repet.i.tion pa.s.sed his lips, he heard a soft step near him, and, looking up, saw the gentle Emma watering her flowers.

To gain her side was his first impulse. To obtain her confidence the second. Taking the heavy watering-pot from her hand, he poured its contents on the rose-bush she was tending, and then setting it down, said quietly:

"I have just made your sister very unhappy, Miss Cavanagh."

She started and her soft eyes showed the shadow of an alarm.

"I thought you were her friend," she said.

He drew her around the corner of the house towards the poplar trees.

"Had I been only that," he avowed, "I might have spared her pain, but I am more than that, Miss Cavanagh, I am her lover."

The hesitating step at his side paused, and though no great change came into her face, she seemed to have received a shock.

"I can understand," said she, "that you hurt her."

"Is she so wedded to the past, then?" he cried. "Was there some one, is there some one whom she--she----"

He could not finish, but the candid-eyed girl beside him did not profess to misunderstand him. A pitiful smile crossed her lips, and she looked for a minute whiter than her sister had done, but she answered firmly:

"You could easily overcome any mere memory, but the decision she has made never to leave the house, I fear you cannot overcome."

"Does it spring--forgive me if I go beyond the bounds of discretion, but this mystery is driving me mad--does it spring from that past attachment you have almost acknowledged?"

She drooped her head and his heart misgave him. Why should he hurt both these women when his whole feeling towards them was one of kindness and love?

"Pardon me," he pleaded. "I withdraw the question; I had no right to put it."

"Thank you," said she, and looked away from him towards the distant prospect of hill and valley lying before them.

He stood revolving the matter in his disturbed mind.

"I should have been glad to have been the means of happiness to your sister and yourself. Such seclusion as you have imposed upon yourselves seems unnecessary, but if it must be, and this garden wall is destined to be the boundary of your world, it would have been a great pleasure to me to have brought into it some freshness from the life which lies beyond it. But it is destined not to be."

The sad expression in her face changed into one of wistfulness.

"Then you are not coming any more?" said she.

He caught his breath. There was disappointment in her tones and this could mean nothing but regret, and regret meant the loss of something which might have been hope. She felt, then, that he might have won her sister if he had been more patient.

"Do you think it will do for me to come here after your sister has told me that it was useless for me to aspire to her hand?"

She gave him for the first time a glance that had the element of mirthfulness in it.

"Come as my friend," she suggested; then in a more serious mood added: "It is her only chance of happiness, but I do not know that I would be doing right in influencing you to pursue a suit which may not be for yours. _You_ know, or will know after reflection (and I advise you to reflect well), whether an alliance with women situated as we are would be conducive to your welfare. If you decide yes, think that a woman taken by surprise, as my sister undoubtedly was, may not in the first hurried moment of decision know her own mind, but also remember that no woman who has taken such a decision as she has, is cast in the common mould, and that you may but add to your regrets by a persistency she may never fully reward."

Astonished at her manner and still more astonished at the intimation conveyed in her last words, he looked at her as one who would say:

"But you also share her fate and the resolve that made it."

She seemed to understand him.

"Free Hermione," she whispered, "from the shackles she has wound about herself and you will free me."

"Miss Emma," he began, but she put her finger on her lips.

"Hush!" she entreated; "let us not talk any more about it. I have already said what I never meant should pa.s.s my lips; but the affection I bear my sister made me forget myself; she does so need to love and be loved."

"And you think I----"

"Ah, sir, you must be the judge of your own chances. You have heard her refusal and must best know just how much it means."

"How much it means!" Long did Frank muse over that phrase, after he had left the sweet girl who had uttered it. As he sat with Edgar at supper, his abstracted countenance showed that he was still revolving the question, though he endeavored to seem at home with his friend and interested in the last serious case which had occupied the attention of the newly settled doctor. How much it means! Not much, he was beginning to say to himself, and insensibly his face began to brighten and his manner to grow less restrained, when Edgar, who had been watching him furtively, broke out: