The rector looked at her with a sort of sad scrutiny, and was silent a moment. Then he said:

"He wrote me one letter--the most brokenhearted expression of suffering I have ever read. It was before your marriage, when he still had some slight hope that you had mistaken your own feelings, in the statement of them which you had made in your letter to him.

But then came the announcement of your marriage, since which time your name has not been mentioned between us."

"Did you keep that letter?" she said.

"I did."

"Will you let me see it?"

"I am afraid I cannot properly do that."

"I beg that you will, Mr. Spotswood. You would be doing me a very great favor, and for your cousin's sake also I think I may venture to ask it. I was told that he was 'fickle and capricious, incapable of a sustained affection,' and much more in the same line. I should be truly glad to know that this was false."

"I can give you my word for that."

"But you can give me also his word, if you will," she said, beseechingly. "Oh, my dear, dear friend, I too have suffered, and I believe that what I have endured is the worst of pain, for it comes from the knowledge of wrong to another. You cannot take away that pain, but perhaps you can restore to me a lost ideal. I had come to think that there was no such thing as love--real love--in the world; to believe not only that the man who had professed it for me was false in that profession, but that it really did not exist. Let me see that letter. It is an impersonal thing to me now, but I feel that it would strengthen me for all my future life. I am going to try to be good; indeed I am," she said, her lips trembling like a child's.

"If I feel that that letter would help me, why may I not see it?"

The rector hesitated visibly; then he said:

"You shall see it, Bettina. I cannot feel that it will do any harm, and it will be an act of justice, perhaps, to him as well as to you.

Whoever represented him to be lacking in depth of feeling has done him a wrong indeed. I had no need to have this proved to me, but if there be such a need in any breast, the reading of this letter must do away with it."

In a few moments he rose to take leave, having promised to send the letter to her.

"Will you send it at once?" she asked. "May Nora go with you and bring it back?"

In the stress of her feeling she forgot the impression that her eagerness might make; but it had not been lost upon the rector, who pondered all these things in his heart as he went homeward.

When he had given the letter to Nora, and she had taken it to her mistress, he wondered if he had done well. Bettina had not pretended that she had really loved the man to whom she had first engaged herself. The preoccupied interest and affection which she had given him then were not misrepresented in her confession to the rector, and she had been absolutely silent as to her subsequent and present feeling toward him. All that she said, the whole burden of her song, was that she had so wronged him in that past time; never once had she hinted at the possibility of any renewal of relations between them.

In spite of all this, the rector knew Bettina well, and he recognized the fact that she was under the dominion of some larger and deeper feeling than he had ever known her to have except her affection for her mother. And had even that, he asked himself, so permeated her whole being--mind, soul, and character--as this feeling in which he now saw her so absorbed? He answered that it had not. It was, therefore, taking a certain responsibility upon himself to show this letter. But he was acting in the interest of truth and justice, and he could not find it in his heart to regret what he had done.

Temperate, judicious, deliberate as the rector was in all his mental processes, he could not imagine that any result could come from the course which he had taken, except some very remote one. Bettina had shown plainly her determination never to divulge to Horace the contents of Mr. Cortlin's letter; he was under promise to keep the secret also, so there was no ground upon which the intercourse between them could be renewed. Besides this, Bettina was but recently become a widow. The proprieties of the situation demanded absolute seclusion for a year at least, and, in Mr. Spotswood's consciousness, propriety was supreme. He never took count of the fact that conventions could be disregarded by any right-minded person, and to this extent at least he conceived Bettina to be right-minded.

CHAPTER XVII

The reading of that letter from Horace to the rector was a crisis in Bettina's life. Its effect upon her was singular. When she eagerly took in those pages filled with such anguish as possesses the heart but once or twice in a lifetime, the consciousness that it was she, Bettina, who had created such a love in the heart of the man that Horace Spotswood was to her now, so exhilarated her that she was capable of but one feeling--exultation. To have had this love, though now she had it not, seemed to glorify her life. To have caused him such sorrow--how greatly he had cared! In spite of all there was rapture in it!

That mood was followed by one of intense regret--an excoriating self-accusation that made her spirit writhe before her own bar of justice. Then, by degrees, when there came a moment of comparative calm, she forced herself to recognize the fact that it was the Bettina of the past who had been so loved, and that the man who had so loved her was that youthful and impulsive Horace. Was not the present Bettina, the slightingly treated widow of his cousin, a very different being--as different as was the present Lord Hurdly from that old and outgrown other self? Surely the change in both was great--a change which she construed as absolutely to her own disadvantage as it was to his advantage.

Yet, in spite of this, that letter brought a strange strength to her heart. Since it was now so plain that he had so truly, so worshippingly loved her, she felt a summons to her soul to be her highest possible, to overcome the slothful and the evil in her, and live as it became the woman who had been so loved by such a man.

Above all, she longed to make her life avail for the good of others, that she might make it a thank-offering for what she had received in the knowledge that had come to her through that letter.

For, after its perusal, she knew that never again could she entertain the doubts which had so often filled her mind at the thought of the complete silence in which Horace had accepted her rejection of him.

Sometimes she had fancied that it might have been a relief to him--a way out of a difficult situation; but now forever in her heart she could carry the proud consciousness that she had been as pa.s.sionately loved as she had been desperately regretted.

It was a strange source, perhaps, from which to draw strength, but it availed her now. With a sudden renewal of the energy of her youth she began to look about her for work which she might do. Fortunately the rector was ready with practical, immediate employment for heart and hand, and pocket, too, alas! for now the fact was forced upon her consciousness that she was poor. It would be as one of themselves, only somewhat different in degree, that she must help these suffering ones, and, in spite of being hampered by this limitation, there was a certain sweetness in it. Her work among the poor had begun at Kingdon Hall, and there she had been often baffled by the sense of the difference between herself and those whom she wished to help. She knew that this consciousness was in their hearts as well as in hers, and that it made an impalpable but positive barrier. But now and here all was different. She longed for the money that would have enabled her to do so much more, and yet she felt it, somehow, sweet to be as they. Her consciousness of her own past wrong-doing had so penetrated her soul with humility that she was like a totally different being.

She had said nothing to the rector of her determination not to touch the money that her late husband had left her, but she strictly adhered to this resolve. It was impossible. She simply felt she could not. She found no difficulty in forgiving him for all that he had done. She was too tender-hearted to bear malice toward the dead, but she could not touch his money. Since she had once thought about it--receiving food and clothes and comforts from his hands--she had realized that it was an impossibility. She knew that the money was deposited in bank for her, but there it might remain. She had told Horace that she would not touch it, and he should see that she would keep her word.

Then came a thought that made her smile. He had wished to force upon her the acceptance of a larger sum, because it was not proper that Lord Hurdly's widow should live otherwise than in pomp and circ.u.mstance. If he could see her now! This it was that made her smile.

She had shut up all the house except the rooms on the first floor, in which she and Nora lived alone. She kept no other servant, and this economy it was that enabled her to give to others. She had almost no personal wants, and the income which had sufficed for her mother and herself was more than enough for her alone. A little sting of injured pride there had been at first, when her poverty became apparent to the neighbors, who naturally expected her to enlarge rather than curtail her expenses; but she soon got the better of this. The issues of her life were in a wider field than mere neighborhood comment, and, besides this, her friends and a.s.sociates were now chosen chiefly from the cla.s.s who were too ignorant for such comment and speculation.

For Bettina had thrown herself with a pa.s.sionate fervor into the work which her hands had found to do. The one a.s.suagement for the pain in her own heart seemed to be the alleviation of the pain in other hearts. She felt, also, a sense of thankfulness for the knowledge which had come to her through the rector, which made the whole work and service of her life seem all too little for her to give in return for this boon. As for Horace, her feeling for him was akin to worship. It was he who represented to her henceforth the ideal which, like a fixed star, should give light to her path, though so immeasurably far above her.

What a strange life was this into which she had now entered! She felt the certainty that her courage would be sufficient for it, but with all her resolution she could not always keep back the bitter tears of her wordless, hopeless, uncontrollable longing. At times this was a thing so mighty that she had the feeling that, if her body were only as strong as her spirit, she would be able to swim through those thousands of watery miles that separated them, only to tell him the truth, and then lay down her life at his feet.

CHAPTER XVIII

It was one of Bettina's weary days. Its hours had lagged and dragged until the evening had come, and she had sunk down, exhausted and depressed, in a big old-fashioned chair in front of her wood fire, which seemed the only ray of cheerfulness within or without. She had had these feelings before, and she knew that they would probably pa.s.s, but never before had it been so borne in upon her that life was sad and wretched alike for those whom she was trying to help and for her who was so in need of help herself--little as they dreamed it.

Were they worth helping, those poor evil-environed creatures who so continually disappointed her hopes and efforts? Was she worth helping, either--weak, aimless creature that she was--who had vowed to be content in the mere consciousness that Horace lived, and that he had once supremely loved her, and then again and again had fallen into this hopeless discontent which thirsted so for what she had pledged herself to give up--the possession of that love to satisfy the present hour's need?

She lay back in the big deep chair, her white hands loosely grasping its arms, and her white lids lowered. Now and then a tear would trickle from beneath those lids and a slight contraction of pain would move her lips. Any one looking in upon her so might well have wondered where were the friends and companions of this beautiful, lonely woman, shut into this small room, in the silence of a twilight that hung damp and gray outside, and that the smouldering fire lighted but fitfully within, while the low murmur of flames fitfully broke the silence.

Not a sound escaped her lips. She gazed longingly, sadly into the glowing heart of the fire, and saw visions and dreamed dreams, but not pleasing ones; they only served to make her sadness deeper.

Presently the door opened, and Nora came in with the lamp. Glancing at her mistress, who did not move, the woman then went out and brought a small tea-service on a tray.

"Don't light the kettle yet, Nora," said a low voice from the depths of the chair. The speaker did not move; her manner was that of a person who deprecated the least noise or intrusion, and Nora took the hint and silently put down the tray. Then, in the same dull tone, her mistress said:

"I know you want to go to church. Go. I can make tea for myself when I want it."

Nora, in comprehending silence, left the room.

Still the relaxed figure in the chair moved not. The fire whiffed and crackled now and then, but beyond this there was no sound. The lamplight showed more plainly the fair youth and loveliness of that black-clad form, which never, in its most brilliant days, had looked so exquisite as now, when there was none to gaze upon its beauty or to share its solitude. The hands were ringless, for Bettina had taken off her wedding-ring after the reading of the letter which the lawyer had brought her, and with it she had renounced the last vestige of allegiance to her late husband's memory. There was no bitterness in her heart toward him. Simply he existed not, as though he had never been.

Vaguely she heard the sound of Nora's departure, as the door was closed behind her, and still she sat there wordless, motionless, almost breathless as it appeared, for her bosom scarcely seemed to move.

Presently there came two tears from under the closed lids; then quickly others followed them. The sense that she was freed even from the danger of Nora's observation weakened her more and more. Then with the helpless, whispering tones of an unhappy child, she said:

"My G.o.d, how desolate I am! How can I bear it? How long must it endure?"

Still she did not move except to raise her lids and cast upward her tear-drenched eyes, while she caught her lower lip between her teeth.

Suddenly there was a step upon the piazza--a man's step, as if in haste. She started and sat upright. Who could it be? No man except the rector ever visited her, and this was not the rector's step. She hastily brushed away the traces of her tears and sat listening.

Then came a tap at the door--not loud, but firm, distinct, decided.