When, however, the first consternation of the sudden blow was over, and he grew calm enough to be capable of anything like temperate thought, he tried to imagine how this strange state of things had come about.

Obviously Bettina must have sought Lord Hurdly out, and it was almost certain that she had done this with a view to mediating between him and his offending heir. He recalled her having said, more than once, that she intended to win him over, and he pictured to himself what had probably transpired in the fulfilment of her plan. Lord Hurdly, who was notoriously indifferent to women, saw in Bettina a new type, and, as consequent events proved, became possessed of the wish to have her for his wife. This being so, he had probably not scrupled as to the means to this end. Gradually, from having held Bettina chiefly guilty, Horace began to feel that it was quite possible that she had been less so than the artful and determined man, who had undoubtedly brought to bear on her all the wiles of which he was master.

What the wiles were, how unscrupulously they were employed to effect any end that he had in view, Horace was now more than ever aware.

And every fresh revelation of them tended to soften him toward Bettina. He was in the habit of trusting his instincts, and these had as determinedly declared to him that his cousin was false. On his return to England, after Lord Hurdly's death, both of these instincts had found ample confirmation. The more he looked into the affairs of his predecessor, in his relations to his tenants, his family, his lawyers, and the world at large, the more did his mistrust and condemnation of him deepen, while, as for Bettina, it took little more than the impression of his first interview with her to restore almost wholly his old belief in her truth and n.o.bleness.

On the basis of her having been deceived by Lord Hurdly about him, he could forgive her her marriage. Where would her desolate heart have turned for comfort? And he knew her nature well enough to realize that what Lord Hurdly had to offer might have seemed likely to serve her as a subst.i.tute for happiness. He knew, moreover, that Bettina had never loved him in the sense in which he had loved her, and this fact made his judgment gentler.

As he stood there alone, in the great house, strangely empty now that her rich presence was removed from it, he wished with all his heart that he had gone to her, and forcing her to look at him with those candid eyes of hers, had said: "Bettina, tell me the truth. Why did you do it?" Oh, if he only had!

Then reflection forced upon him the possible answer that he might have received. She might have coldly resented the impertinence of such a speech, or she might have given him to understand that what appeared true was really true--namely, that his cousin's splendid offer was preferred to his poor one. Yes, he was no doubt a fool to hold on to his belief in Bettina in face of the obvious facts. The thing he had to do was to overcome it, and go on with his life and career quite apart from her.

This would have been the easier to do but for one thing. He had satisfied himself that Bettina had been unhappy in her marriage to Lord Hurdly. It was evident that the worldly importance which it had given her had not sufficed her needs. He knew--her own mother had avowed it to him--that Bettina was ambitious; but he knew, what the same source had also revealed, that she had a good and loving heart.

What he felt was that she had been taught by bitter experience the emptiness of mere worldly gratification, and that poor heart of hers was breaking in its loneliness.

But then came reason again, and pointed to the hard facts before his eyes. What a fool he was to go on constructing a romantic theory out of his own consciousness when Bettina, by definite choice and decision, had proved herself to be, what he must compel himself to consider her, both heartless and false!

Fortified by the bitter support of this conception of her, he left the library, and, for the first time since his return, made the complete tour of the house. Through most of the apartments he pa.s.sed swiftly enough, but in two of them he paused. The first was the long picture-gallery, where he looked critically at his own boyish portrait, wondering if Bettina had ever looked at it, and what feelings it might have aroused, and then pa.s.sed on and stood before that most beautiful of all the Lady Hurdlys who had been or who might ever be. But this was too demoralizing to that mood of hardness that he had but recently a.s.sumed, and so he turned his back on the gracious image and walked away.

It was not long, however, before he found himself in Bettina's own apartments. These he remembered well, and in the main they were unchanged. Yet what a subtle difference he felt in them! Here on this great gloomy bed had that poor orphan girl slept, or else lain wakeful in the dread consciousness which must have come to her when once she realized the nature and character of the man to whom she had given herself in marriage. Here in this stately mirror had she seen herself arrayed in the splendid clothes which were the poor price for which she had sold her birthright. He stood and looked at himself in the mirror, with an uncanny feeling that behind his own image there was that of the beautiful Bettina, whom once he had thought to protect forever by his love and strength and tenderness, and who now, with only a hired servant, was alone in the great shipful of strangers, on her way to the loneliness of that empty little village which her mother's presence had once so adequately filled for her.

He went to the wardrobe and opened the door, hoping to find some trace of Bettina. But no; all was orderly and void. Then he pa.s.sed on to the dressing-table and opened the drawers, one by one. In the last there lay a small hair-pin of fine bent wire. He had an impulse to take it, but, with a muttered imprecation on his folly, he called to aid his recent resolution, and hastily left the room.

CHAPTER XVI

Bettina had been in her old home a week--long enough to recuperate from her journey and begin to take up her life, such as it was to be.

She would gladly have relaxed entirely and lain in bed to be waited on and tended by Nora, had this been possible. But she had wearied of the physical rest, which only made her mental restlessness the greater, and she had an impulse to reach out her empty hands so that somehow, somewhence they might be filled.

The neighbors had called on her promptly, but she could not see them.

They reminded her too much of the mother she had lost. Mr. Spotswood had also called, but he was a reminder of the other loss, now the more poignant of the two. When she excused herself to him also he wrote her a note--the conventional thing, and that merely. It seemed strangely lacking in the solicitude and affection which she had a right to expect from her old friend and rector. Bettina was struck with this, and instantly there flashed over her a reason for it. It was only natural that he should feel a certain resentment of her jilting of one of his cousins, even though she had done it in favor of another and more important one. She remembered that the rector had been extremely fond of Horace, and at this thought she had a sudden desire to see him. So she wrote him a note and asked him to come.

It was so long since she had talked with any one, and she was so nervous after all her morbid imagining, that she was feeling utterly unlike the old self-reliant, active-minded girl he remembered when the rector entered the room. She also, on her part, was unprepared for the feelings aroused by the sight of him; and when he came in, his grave face and gentle manner so entirely unchanged, in contrast to all the changes she had undergone, Bettina felt a sudden tendency to tears. The thought of her mother also helped to weaken her, and the thought of Horace was a still harder strain on her endurance.

She saw a certain constraint in his manner first, as she had perceived it in his note. She felt unaccountably hurt by it, and when he took her hand a little coldly and inquired for her health, a rush of feelings overwhelmed her and she burst into tears.

In evident surprise, the visitor tried to soothe her as best he could. Naturally supposing that this grief was in consequence of her recent widowhood, he pressed her hand, and said, gently:

"I trust you are not overtaxing yourself by seeing me, my child. If you had preferred not to do so I should not have misunderstood. Your bereavement is so recent that--"

But Bettina, trying to silence her sobs, interrupted him.

"Oh, forgive me, Mr. Spotswood," she said. "I had not thought I should break down like this. I have been perfectly calm. It is not what you suppose. Oh, I feel so wretched, so lonely, so bewildered! I would give the world if I could speak out my heart to one human being."

The rector looked surprised, but visibly softened.

"To whom may you speak if not to me, Bettina?" he said. "Surely, whatever trouble is on your heart, you may count upon my sympathy."

Bettina did not speak. With her face hid in her pocket-handkerchief she shook her head, as if in dissent from the idea of his sympathy.

Feeling rather helpless, he changed his tactics, in an honest endeavor to get at the real cause of her trouble.

"Naturally, my child," he said, "the sight of me brings back the thought of your beloved mother. Such a sorrow--"

But again she interrupted him, this time by a silent gesture of the hand. Then she said:

"It is not that. I've got used to that ache, and although my heart would not be my heart without it, that is a silent and accepted sorrow now. Oh, Mr. Spotswood," she said, impetuously, uncovering her tear-stained face and looking at him with the helplessness of a child, "you are a clergyman; you teach that G.o.d is love and compa.s.sion and forgiveness; you have a kind heart! I know you have.

Perhaps if I could tell you all I have suffered, and how deeply I have repented, you would be sorry for me, and not blame me as much as I deserve to be blamed."

She was looking at him tentatively, as if to see how far she could trust to the forbearance of which she felt she had now such need.

The rector's heart was deeply touched. This show of humility in the high-spirited, self-willed girl that he remembered took him by surprise.

"It could never be my impulse to blame you, my dear child, and the less so when I see how bitterly you are blaming yourself for this unknown thing. If you will tell me about it, I will do all that may be in my power to help you. At all events, you may count upon my loving sympathy."

"Ah, if I only could! It would be much to me now. But you are ignorant of what you are promising. In a certain way it concerns yourself, or at least a member of your family."

She saw a slightly hardened look come into his face, but it quickly gave way to a gentler one.

"No matter what it is, if you have suffered and repented, the best sympathy of my heart is yours."

"You will regard it as a confidence--a sacred confidence?" said Bettina. "I could only tell you with that understanding. I know that a clergyman is accustomed to keeping the secrets of his people, and I could not say a word unless I were sure that this thing would rest forever between you and me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'TRULY, MY CHILD, IT IS A WRETCHED STORY'"]

Wishing to soothe her in every possible way, the rector gave her his promise to keep sacred what she might tell him; and thus rea.s.sured, poor Bettina opened her heart. The relief of it was so exquisite and the experience was so rare, that she told it all with the abandonment of a child at its mother's knee, and with a degree of self-accusation that might well have disarmed condemnation, as indeed it did.

Up to the time of her meeting with Horace in England, she kept back nothing, describing with absolute truth her feelings as well as her conduct. When she had reached that point, however, a sense of instinctive reserve came to her, and a few brief sentences described what had happened since.

At the end of her recital she paused, looking eagerly into the rector's face, as if she both hoped and feared what he might say.

"Truly, my child, it is a wretched story," he began, as if a little careful in the choosing of his words, "but the knowledge of it has deepened instead of lessened my sympathy for you. Your fault has been very great, but so is your sense of compunction; and as far as suffering can expiate, surely you have done much to atone. My own knowledge of the character of the late Lord Hurdly was such that I cannot pretend to be greatly surprised at what you have told me concerning him. I regret to say it, but justice must be done to the living as well as to the dead. The present Lord Hurdly will prove, I trust and believe, an honor to the name. My intercourse with him has been comparatively limited, but no young man has ever inspired me with a stronger sense of confidence. So much do I feel this that I will confess to a strong desire that he should know upon what ground you acted toward him as you did. I have given my word to you, however, and perhaps it is as well. That poor man so lately gone to his account has stains enough upon his memory without this added one.

And when I think of Horace--what he has suffered through the treachery of his kinsman--I feel that it is perhaps kindest to him also to leave this dark secret in the oblivion which buries it in our two hearts."

Bettina seemed not to hear his last words.

"He has suffered? You think he has suffered, and through me?"

"Is it possible that you can doubt it?"

"He gave no sign," began Bettina, hesitatingly.

"To you--certainly not. How could he?"

"Did he to you?" she said, breathlessly.