Portia Part 59

"Yes."

Even if he _should_ prove unrelenting, she tells herself, it will be better to be an old maid than an unloving wife. She will be rid of this hateful entanglement that has been embittering her life for months, and--and, of course, he _won't_ keep her to this absurd arrangement after a while.

"You swear it?"

"I swear it," says Dulce, answering as one might in a dream. Hers is a dream, happy to recklessness, in which she is fast losing herself.

"It is an oath," he says again, as if to give her a last chance to escape.

"It is," replies she, softly, still wrapt in her dream of freedom. She may now love Roger without any shadow coming between them, and--ah! how divine a world it is!--he may perhaps love her too!

"Remember," says Gower, sternly, letting each word drop from him as if with the settled intention of imprinting or burning them upon her brain, "I shall never relent about this. You have given me your solemn oath, and--I shall _keep you to it_! I shall never absolve you from it, as I have absolved you from your first promise to-day. Never. Do not hope for that. Should you live to be a hundred years old, you cannot marry your cousin without my consent, and that I shall never give. You quite understand?"

"Quite." But her tone has grown faint and uncertain. What has she done?

Something in his words, his manner, has at last awakened her from the happy dream in which she was reveling.

"Now you can return to your old lover," says Stephen, with an indescribably bitter laugh, "and be happy. For your deeper satisfaction, too, let me tell you that for the future you shall see very little of me."

"You are going abroad?" asks she, very timidly, in her heart devoutly hoping that this may be the reading of his last words.

"No; I shall stay here. But the Court I shall trouble with my presence seldom. I don't know," exclaims he, for the first time losing his wonderful self control and speaking querulously, "what is the matter with me. Energy has deserted me with all the rest. You have broken my heart, I suppose, and that explains everything. There, _go_," turning abruptly away from her; "your being where I can see you only makes matters worse."

Some impulse prompts Dulce to go up to him and lay her hand gently on his arm.

"Stephen," she says, in a low tone, "if I have caused you any unhappiness forgive me now."

"Forgive you?" exclaims he, so fiercely that she recoils from him in absolute terror.

Lifting her fingers from his arm as though they burn him, he flings them pa.s.sionately away, and, plunging into the short thick underwood, is soon lost to sight.

Dulce, pale and frightened, returns by the path by which she had come, but not to those she had left. She is in no humor now for questions or curious looks; gaining the house without encountering any one, she runs up-stairs, and seeks refuge in her own room.

But if she doesn't return to gratify the curiosity of the puzzled group on the rustic-seat, somebody else does.

Jacky, panting, dishevelled, out of breath with quick running rushes up to them, and precipitates himself upon his mother.

"It's all right," he cries, triumphantly. "He didn't do a bit to her. I watched him all the time and he never _touched_ her."

"Who? What?" demands the bewildered Julia. But Jacky disdains explanations.

"He only talked, and talked, and talked," he goes on, fluently; "and he said she did awful things to him. And he made her swear at him--and--and--"

"_What?_" says Sir Mark.

"It's impossible to know anybody," sighs d.i.c.ky Browne, regretfully, shaking his head at this fresh instance of the frailty of humanity. "Who could have believed Dulce capable of using bad language? I hope her school-children and her Sunday cla.s.s won't hear it, poor little things.

It would shake their faith forever."

"How do you know he is talking of Dulce?" says Julia, impatiently.

"Jacky, how _dare_ you say dear Dulce swore at any one?"

"He _made_ her," says Jacky.

"He must have behaved awfully bad to her," says d.i.c.ky, gravely.

"He said to her to swear, and she did it at once," continues Jacky, still greatly excited.

"_Con amore_," puts in Mr. Browne.

"And he scolded her very badly," goes on Jacky, at which Roger frowns angrily; "and he said she broke something belonging to him, but I couldn't hear what; and then he told her to go away, and when she was going she touched his arm, and he pushed her away awfully roughly, but he didn't try to _murder_ her at all."

"What on earth is the boy saying?" says Julia, perplexed in the extreme, "Who didn't try to murder who?"

"I'm telling you about Dulce and Stephen," says Jacky, in an aggrieved tone, though still ready to burst with importance. "When he took her away from this, I followed 'm; I kept my eyes on 'm. d.i.c.ky said Stephen looked murderous; so I went to see if I could help her. But I suppose he got sorry, because he let her off. She is all right; there isn't a _scratch_ on her."

Sir Mark and d.i.c.ky were consumed with laughter. But Roger, taking the little champion in his arms, kisses him with all his heart.

CHAPTER XXV.

"For aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth."

--_Midsummer Night's Dream._

WHEN dinner comes Dulce is wonderfully silent. That is the misfortune of being a rather talkative person, when you want to be silent you can't, without attracting universal attention. Every one now stares at Dulce secretly, and speculates about what Stephen may, or may not, have said to her.

She says yes and no quite correctly to everything, but nothing more, and seems to find no comfort in her dinner--which is rather a good one. This last sign of depression appears to d.i.c.ky Browne a very serious one, and he watches her with the gloomiest doubts as he sees dish after dish offered her, only to be rejected.

This strange fit of silence, however, is plainly not to be put down to ill temper. She is kindly, nay, even affectionate, in her manner to all around, except, indeed, to Roger, whom she openly avoids, and whose repeated attempts at conversation she returns with her eyes on the table-cloth, and a general air about her of saying anything she _does_ say to him under protest.

To Roger this changed demeanor is maddening; from it he instantly draws the very blackest conclusions; and, in fact, so impressed is he by it that later on, in the drawing-room, when he finds his tenderest glances and softest advances still met with coldness and resistance, and when his solitary effort at explanation is nervously, but remorselessly, repulsed, he caves in altogether, and, quitting the drawing-room, makes his way to the deserted library, where, with a view to effacing himself for the remainder of the evening, he flings himself into an arm-chair, and gives himself up a prey to evil forebodings.

Thus a quarter of an hour goes by, when the door of the library is opened by Dulce. Roger, sitting with his back to it, does not see her enter, or, indeed, heed her entrance, so wrapt is he in his unhappy musings. Not until she has lightly and timidly touched his shoulder does he start, and, looking round, become aware of her presence.

"It is I," she says, in a very sweet little voice, that brings Roger to his feet and the end of his musings in no time.

"Dulce! What has happened?" he asks, anxiously, alluding to her late strange behavior. "Why won't you speak to me?"

"I don't know," says Dulce, faintly, hanging her head.

"What can I have done? Ever since you went away with Stephen, down to the Beeches to-day, your manner toward me has been utterly changed.

Don't--_don't_ say you have been persuaded by him to name your wedding day!" He speaks excitedly, as one might who is at last giving words to a fear that has been haunting him for long.

"So far from it," says Miss Blount, with slow solemnity, "that he sought an opportunity to-day to formally release me from my promise to him!"

"He has released you?" Words are too poor to express Roger's profound astonishment.

"Yes; on one condition."