XV.

THE BEGINNING OF CHANGES.

As Frank went by the house early the next morning on his way to the train, he paused and glanced at one of the upper windows, where he had once before seen Hermione's face looking out. The blinds were closed, but the slats were slightly turned, and through them he thought, but he could not be quite sure, he caught the glimpse of a pair of flashing eyes. In the hope that this was so, he laid his hand upon the gate and then glanced up again, as if asking permission to open it. The blinds moved and in another instant fell back, and he saw the face he loved, looking very pale but sweet, bending towards him from the clustering honeysuckles.

"May I come in," he asked, "just for a few words more? You know we were interrupted last night."

She shook her head, and his heart sank; then she seemed to repent her decision and half opened her lips as if to speak, but no words came. He kept his hand on the gate, and his face grew eloquent.

"You cannot say no," he now pleaded, smiling at the blush that was slowly mantling on her cheek. "I may not be here again for weeks, and if you do not let me say good-by I shall always think I have displeased you, and that will not add to my happiness or peace."

"Wait," came in sudden eagerness from her lips, and he saw her disappear from the window and appear, almost before he could realize his own relief, in the open door-way before him. "Come in," said she, with the first full glad smile he had ever seen on her lips.

But though he bounded up the steps he did not enter the house. Instead of that he seized her hand and tried to induce her to come out in the open air to him. "No close rooms," said he, "on such a morning as this. Come into the poplar-walk, come; let me see you with the wind blowing your hair about your cheeks."

"No, no!" burst from her lips in something almost like fright. "Emma goes into the garden, but not I. Do not ask me to break the habit of months, do not."

But he was determined, tenderly, firmly determined.

"I must," said he; "I must. Your white cheeks and worn face demand the freshness of out-door air. I do not say you must go outside the gate, but I do say you must feel again what it is to have the poplars rustle above your head and the grass close lovingly over your feet. So come, Hermione, come, for I will not take no, I will not, even from the lips whose business it shall be to command me in everything else."

His eyes entreated her, his hand constrained her; she sought to do battle with his will, but her glances fell before the burning ardor of his. With a sudden wild heave of her breast, she yielded, and he drew her down into the garden and so around to the poplar-walk. As she went the roses came out on her cheeks, and she seemed to breathe like a creature restored to life.

"Oh, the blue, blue sky!" she cried, "and oh, the hills! I have not seen them for a year. As for the poplars, I should love to kiss their old boughs, I am so glad to be beneath them once more."

But as she proceeded farther her spirits seemed to droop again, and she cast him furtive looks as much as to say:

"Is it right? ought I to be enjoying all this bliss?"

But the smile on his face was so assured, she speedily took courage again, and allowed him to lead her to the end of the poplar-walk, far up in those regions where his eye had often strayed but his feet never been even in fancy. On a certain bench they sat down, and he turned towards her a beaming face.

"Now I feel as if you were mine," he cried. "Nothing shall part us after this, not even your own words."

But she put her hands out with a meek, deprecating gesture, very unlike the imperious one she had indulged in before.

"You must not say that," she cried. "My coming out may have been a weakness, but it shall not be followed by what you yourself might come to regard as a wrong. I am here, and it was for your pleasure I came, but that commits me to nothing and you to nothing, unless it be to the momentary delight. Do you hear that bird sing?"

"You are lovely with that flickering sunlight on your face," was all the reply he made.

And perhaps he could have made no better, for it gave her a sweet sense of helplessness in the presence of this great love, which to a woman who had been so long bearing herself up in solitary assertion had all the effect of rest and relief.

"You make me feel as if my youth was not quite gone," said she; "but," she added, as his hand stole towards hers, "you have not yet made me feel that I must listen to all the promptings of love. There is a gulf between me and you across which we cannot shake hands. But we can speak, friend, to one another, and that is a pleasure to one who has travelled so long in a wilderness alone. Shall we not let that content us, or do you wish to risk life and all by attempting more?"

"I wish to risk everything, anything, so as to make you mine."

"You do not know what you are saying. We are talking pure foolishness," was her sudden exclamation, as she leapt to her feet. "Here, in this pure air, and in sight of the fields and hills, the narrow, confining bands which have held me to the house seem to lose their power and partake of the unsubstantiality of a dream. But I know that with my recrossing of the threshold they will resume their power again, and I shall wonder I could ever talk of freedom or companionship with one who does not know the secrets of the house or the shadow which has been cast by them upon my life."

"You know them, and yet you would go back," he cried. "I should say the wiser course would be to turn away from a place so fatal to your happiness and hopes, and, yielding to my entreaties, go with me to the city, where we will be married, and——"

"Frank, what a love you have for me! a love which questions nothing, not even my past, notwithstanding I say it is that past which separates us and makes me the recluse I am."

"You have filled me with trust by the pure look in your eyes," said he. "Why should I ask you to harrow up your feelings by telling me what you would have told me long ago, if it had not been too painful?"

"You are a great, good man," she cried. "You subdue me who have never been subdued before, except by my own passionate temper. I reverence you and I—love—you. Do not ask me to say anything more." And the queenly, imperious form swayed from side to side, and the wild tears gushed forth, and she fled from his side down the poplar-walk, till she came within sight of the house, when she paused, gathering up her strength till he reached the place where she stood, when she said:

"You are coming again, some time?"

"I am coming again in a week."

"You will find a little packet awaiting you in the place where you stay. You will read it before you see me again?"

"I will read it."

"Good-by," said she; and her face in its most beautiful aspect shone on him for a moment; then she retreated, and was lost to his view in the shrubbery.

As he passed the house on his way to the gate, he saw Doris casting looks of delight down the poplar-walk, where her young mistress was still straying, and at the same instant caught a hurried glimpse of Mrs. Lovell and Emma, leaning from the window above, in joyful recognition of the fact that a settled habit had been broken, and that at his inducement Hermione had consented to taste again the out-door air.

He was yet in time for the train, for he had calculated on this visit, and so made allowances for it. He was therefore on the point of turning towards the station, when he saw the figure of a man coming down the street, and stopped, amazed. Was it—could it be—yes, it was Hiram Huckins. He was dressed in black, and looked decent, almost trim, but his air was that of one uncertain of himself, and his face was disfigured by an ingratiating leer which Etheridge found almost intolerable. He was the first to speak.

"How do you do, Mr. Etheridge?" said he, ambling up, and bowing with hypocritical meekness. "You didn't expect to see me here, did you? But business calls me. My poor, dear sister Harriet is said to have been in Marston, and I have come to see if it is true. I do not find her, do you?"

The sly, half-audacious, half-deprecating look with which he uttered these words irritated Frank beyond endurance.

"No," he rejoined. "Your valuable time will be wasted here. You will have to look elsewhere for your dear sister."

"It has taken you a long time to find that out," insinuated the other, with his most disagreeable leer. "I suppose, now, you thought till this very last night that you would find her in the graveyard or in some of these old houses. Else why should you waste your valuable time in a place of such mean attractions."

They were standing directly in front of the Cavanagh house and Frank was angry enough to lift his hand against him at these words, for the old man's eyes—he was not old but he always presented the appearance of being so—had wandered meaningly towards the windows above him, as if he knew that behind them, instead of in any graveyard, centred the real attractions of the place for Frank.

But though a lawyer may have passions, he, as a rule, has learned to keep a curb upon them, especially in the presence of one who is likely to oppose him.

So bowing with an effort at politeness, young Etheridge acknowledged that he had only lately given up his hope, and was about to withdraw in his haste to catch the train, when Huckins seized him by the arm with a low chuckle and slyly whispered:

"You've been visiting the two pretty hermitesses, eh? Are they nice girls? Do they know anything about my sister? You look as if you had heard good news somewhere. Was it in there?"

He was eager; he was insinuating; he seemed to hang upon Frank's reply. But the lawyer, struck and troubled by this allusion to the women he so cherished, on lips he detested beyond any in the world, stood still for a moment, looking the indignation he dared not speak.

Huckins took advantage of this silence to speak again, this time with an off-hand assurance only less offensive than his significant remarks.

"I know they keep at home and do not go out in the world to hear the gossip. But women who keep themselves shut up often know a lot about what is going on around them, Mr. Etheridge, and as you have been there I thought—"

"Never mind what you thought," burst out Frank, unable to bear his insinuations any longer. "Enough that I do not go there to hear anything about Harriet Smith. There are other law cases in the world besides yours, and other clients besides your sister and her heirs. These young ladies, for instance, whom you speak of so freely."

"I am sure," stammered Huckins, with great volubility, and an air of joviality which became him as little as the suspicious attitude he had hitherto taken, "I never meant to speak with the least disrespect of ladies I have never met. Only I was interested you know, naturally interested, in anything which might seem to bear upon my own affairs. They drag so, don't they, Mr. Etheridge, and I am kept so long out of my rights."

"No longer than justice seems to demand, Mr. Huckins; your sister, and her heirs, if they exist, have rights also."

"So you say," quoth Huckins, "and I have learned not to quarrel with a lawyer. Good-day, Mr. Etheridge, good-day. Hope to hear that some decision has been arrived at soon."

"Good-day," growled Frank, and strode rapidly off, determined to return to Marston that very night if only to learn what Huckins was up to. But before he had gone a dozen steps he came quickly back and seized that person by the arm. "Where are you going?" he asked; for Huckins had laid his hand on Miss Cavanagh's gate and was about to enter.

"I am going to pay a visit," was the smiling reply. "Is there anything wrong in that?"

"I thought you did not know these young ladies—that they were strangers to you?"

"So they are, so they are, but I am a man who takes a great interest in eccentric persons. I am eccentric myself; so was my sister Cynthia; so I may say was Harriet, though how eccentric we have still to find out. If the young ladies do not want to see an old man from New York they can say so, but I mean to give them the chance. Have you anything to say against it?"

"No, except that I think it an unwarrantable intrusion about which you had better think twice."

"I have thought," retorted Huckins, with a mild obstinacy that had a sinister element in it, "and I can't deny myself the pleasure. Think of it! two healthy and beautiful girls under twenty-four who never leave the house they live in! That is being more unlike folks than Cynthia and myself, who were old and who had a fortune to guard. Besides we did leave the house, or rather I did, when there was business to look after or food to buy. But they don't go out for anything, I hear, anything . Mr. Ruthven—he is the minister you know—has given me his card by way of introduction; so you see they will have to treat me politely, and that means I shall at least see their faces."

His cunning, his satisfaction, and a certain triumph underlying all, affected Frank like the hiss of a serpent. But the business awaiting him in New York was imperative, and the time remaining to him before the train left was barely enough to enable him to reach the station. So curbing his disgust and the dread he had of seeing this knave enter Hermione's door, he tore himself away and made what haste he could to the station. He arrived just as the first whistle of the coming train was heard, and owing to a short delay occasioned by the arrival of a telegram at the station, he was enabled to write two notes, one to Miss Cavanagh and one to Dr. Sellick. These he delivered to Jerry, with strict injunctions to deliver them immediately, and as the train moved off carrying him back to his duties, he had the satisfaction of seeing the lumbering figure of that slow but reliable messenger disappear around the curve in the highway which led directly to Miss Cavanagh's house. glijCr+jEzowX+C+DHj6K5po4El7PwqGMWgHCMZ31ncCBSYS+beIlhXKtFtLrTmk

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