"It is possible that Lanse has written to me even more plainly than he has to you," he went on. "At any rate, he tells me that he is going to Italy--it is the old affair revived--and that he has no present intention of returning. What he has said in his letter to you, of course I don't know; but it can hardly be the whole, because he asks me to 'break' it to you. 'Break' it,--he has chosen his messenger well!"

"O my G.o.d," said Margaret Harold.

Her words were a prayer. She sank down on her knees beside the sofa, and buried her face in her clasped arms.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Evert Winthrop had felt that her words were a prayer, that she was praying still.

Against what especial danger she was thus invoking aid, he did not know; before he could speak, old Rose had opened the door, and Margaret, springing up, was going forward to meet the Rev. Mr. Moore, who with his usual equable expression entered, hat in hand, to pay Mrs. Harold a short visit; he had been obliged to come over to the river that morning on business, and had thought that he would take the occasion for a little social pleasure as well.

Margaret put out her hands eagerly; "It's wonderful--your coming now!

You will stay with me, won't you?--I am in great trouble."

Mr. Moore took her hand; all the goodness of his nature came into his long narrow face, making it lovely in its sympathy as he heard her appeal. She was clinging to him--she had put her other hand on his arm.

"You will stay?" she repeated urgently.

"If I can be of any use to you, most certainly I will stay."

Upon hearing this, she made an effort to recover herself, to speak more coherently. "I shall need your advice--there are so many things I must decide about. Mr. Winthrop will tell you--but why should I leave it to him? I will tell you myself. My husband has gone north, he is going abroad again. You will understand--it was so sudden. I did not know--"

She made another effort to steady her voice. "If you will stay with me for a day or two, I will send over to Gracias for anything you may need."

"I will stay gladly, Mrs. Harold."

"Oh, you are good! But I always knew you were. And now for a few minutes--if you will excuse me--I have only just heard it--I will come back soon." And with swift step she hastened from the room.

Mr. Moore, his face full of sympathy, turned to Winthrop.

But Evert Winthrop's expression showed only anger; he walked off, with his back turned, and made no reply.

"Is it true, then?" said Mr. Moore, infinite regret in his mild tones.

Winthrop was standing at the window, he bit his lips with impatience; he was in no mood for what he would have called "the usual plat.i.tudes," and especially plat.i.tudes about Lansing Harold.

It could not be denied that Mr. Moore's conversation often contained sentences that were very usual.

"Perhaps he will return," pursued the clergyman, hopefully. "Influences might be brought to bear. We may be able to reach him?" And again he looked at Winthrop inquiringly.

But Winthrop had now forgotten his presence, at this very moment he was leaving the room; he was determined to see Margaret and speak to her, if but for a second. He found Rose, and sent her with a message; he himself followed the old woman up the stairs, and stood waiting in the upper hall as she knocked at Margaret's closed door.

But the door did not open; in answer to Rose's message delivered shrilly outside the door, Margaret replied from within, "I can see no one at present."

Rose came back. "She can't see n.o.body nohow jess _dis_ minute, ma.r.s.e,"

she answered, in an apologetic tone. Then, imaginatively, "Spec she's tired."

"Go back and tell her that I'm waiting here--in the hall, and that I will keep her but a moment. There is something important I must say."

Rose returned to the door. But the answer was the same. "She done got _mighty_ tired, ma.r.s.e, sho," said the old servant, again trying to clothe the refusal in polite terms, though unable to think of a new apology.

"Her door is locked, I suppose?" Winthrop asked. Then he felt that this was going too far; he turned and went down the stairs, but with a momentary revival in his breast all the same of the old despotic feeling, the masculine feeling, that a woman should not be allowed to dictate to a man what he should say or not say, do or not do; in refusing to see him even for one moment, Margaret was dictating.

He walked down the lower hall, and then back again. Happening to glance up, he saw that old Rose was still standing at the top of the stairs; she dropped one of her straight courtesies as he looked up--a quick ducking down of her narrow skirt; she was much disturbed by the direct refusal which she had had to give him.

"I can't stay here, if they are going to watch me," he thought, impatiently. He turned and re-entered the sitting-room.

Mr. Moore was putting more wood on the fire. His mind was full of Margaret and her troubles; but the fire certainly needed replenishing, it would do no one any good to come back to a cold room, Mrs. Harold least of all; Winthrop therefore found him engaged with the coals.

Mr. Moore went on with his engineering feats. He cherished no resentment because Winthrop had left him so suddenly. Still, he had observed that such sudden exits were sometimes an indication of temper; in such cases there was nothing better than an unnoticing, and if possible an occupied, silence; so he went on with his fire.

"It's most unfortunate that there's no one who has any real authority over her," Winthrop began, still smarting under the refusal. Margaret had chosen the clergyman as her counsellor; it would be as well, then, to indicate to that gentleman what course should be pursued.

"You have some plan to recommend to her?" said Mr. Moore, putting the tongs away and seating himself. He held out his long hands as if to warm them a little by the flame, and looked at Winthrop inquiringly.

"No, I don't know that I have. But she is sure to be obstinate in any case." He too sat down, and stared moodily at the flame.

"You think it will be a great grief to her," observed the clergyman, after a while. "No doubt--no doubt."

"No grief at all, as far as that goes. Lanse has always treated her abominably." He paused. Then continued, as if there were now good reasons for telling the whole tale. "Before he had been married a year, he left her, she did not leave him, as my aunt supposes; he went abroad, and would not allow her to come to him. There had never been the least fault on her side; there hasn't been up to this day."

"I cannot understand such fickleness, such dark tendencies towards change," said Mr. Moore, in rebuking wonder.

"As far as regards change, I ought to say, perhaps, that there hasn't been much of that," Winthrop answered. "What took him abroad was an old interest--something he had felt long before his marriage, and felt strongly; he has never changed in that respect."

"Do you allude--is it possible that you are alluding to an interest in a _person_?" asked Mr. Moore, in a lowered tone.

"It certainly wasn't a thing; I hardly think you would call a beautiful French woman of rank that, would you?"

Mr. Moore looked at him with a stricken face. "A beautiful French woman of rank!" he murmured.

"That's what is taking him abroad now, this second time. She threw him over once, but she has evidently called him back; in fact, he admits it in his letter to me."

"Oh, sin! sin!" said Middleton Moore, with the deepest sadness in his voice. He leaned his head upon his hand and covered his eyes.

"I suppose so," answered Winthrop. "All the same, she is the only person Lanse has ever cared for; for her and her alone he could be, and would be if he had the chance, perhaps, unselfish; I almost think he could be heroic. But, you see, he won't have the chance, because there's the husband in the bush."

"Do you mean to say that this wretched creature is a _married_ woman?"

demanded the clergyman, aghast.

"Oh yes; it was her marriage, her leaving him in the lurch, that made Lanse himself marry in the first place--marry Margaret Cruger."

"This is most horrible. This man, then, this Lansing Harold, is an incarnation of evil?"

"I don't know whether he is or not," Winthrop answered, irritably. "Yes, he is, I suppose; we all are. Not you, of course," he added, glancing at his companion, and realizing as he did so that here was a man who was an incarnation of good. Then the opposing feeling swept over him again, namely, that this man was good simply because he could not be evil; it was not that he had resisted temptation so much as that he had no capacity for being tempted. "An old woman," he thought.