"Thank G.o.d!" said Brooke Dalton, as a look of infinite relief came into his face. "Then a month to-day I will return to you, wherever you may be, and ask for my answer again."

Mrs. Hartley and Edith came back from the garden terraces. With kindly mischief in their hearts, they had left these two together, watching them with half an eye, until they saw that the matter had come to a climax. When Lettice stood up, they divined that the moment had come for their reappearance.

Lettice advanced to meet them, and when they were near enough Edith pa.s.sed her hand through her friend's still trembling arm.

"Those dear little Italian children!" said Mrs. Hartley. "They are so beautiful--so full of life and spirits, I could have looked at them for another hour. Now, good people, what is going to be done? We must be getting home. Brooke, can you see the carriage? You might find it, and tell the driver to come back for us."

Brooke started off with alacrity, and the women were left alone. Then Edith began to chatter about nothing, in the most resolute fashion, in order that Lettice might have time to pull herself together.

She was glad of their consideration, for indeed she needed all her fort.i.tude. What meant this suffocation of the heart, which almost prevented her from breathing? It ached in her bosom as though someone had grasped it with a hand of ice; she shuddered as though a ghost had been sitting by her and pleading with her, instead of a lover. Her own name echoed in her ears, and she remembered that Brooke Dalton had called her "Lettice." But it was not his voice which was calling to her now.

Dalton presently reappeared with the news that the carriage was waiting for them in the road below.

So in an hour from that time they were at home again, and Lettice was able to get to her own room, and to think of what had happened.

If amongst those who read the story of her life Lettice Campion has made for herself a few discriminating friends, they will not need to be reminded that she was not by any means a perfect character. She was, in her way, quite as ambitious as her brother Sydney, although not quite so eager in pursuit of her own ends, her own pleasure and satisfaction. She was also more scrupulous than Sydney to the means which she would adopt for the attainment of her objects, and she desired that others should share with her the good things which fell to her lot; but she had never been taught, or had never adopted the rule, that mere self-denial, for self-denial's sake, was the soundest basis of morality and conduct. She was thoroughly and keenly human, and she did but follow her natural bent, without distortion and without selfishness, in seeking to give happiness to herself as well as to others.

Brooke Dalton's offer of marriage placed a great temptation before her.

All the happiness that money, and position, and affection, and a luxurious home could afford was hers if she would have it; and these were things which she valued very highly. Edith Dalton had done her best to make her friend realize what it would mean to be the mistress of Brooke's house; and poor Lettice, with all her magnanimity, was dazzled in spite of herself, and did not quite see why she should say No, when Brooke made her his offer. And yet her heart cried out against accepting it.

She had needed time to think, and now the process was already beginning.

He had given her a month to decide whether she could love him--or even like him well enough to become his wife. Nothing could be more generous, and indeed she knew that he was the soul of generosity and consideration. A month to make up her mind whether she would accept from him all that makes life pleasant, and joyful, and easy, and comfortable; or whether she would turn her back upon the temptation, and shun delights, and live laborious days.

Could she hesitate? What woman with nothing to depend upon except her own exertions, and urged to a.s.sent (as she would be) by her only intimate friends, would have hesitated in her place? Yet she did hesitate, and it was necessary to weigh the reasons against accepting, as she had dwelt upon the reasons in favor of it.

If it was easy to imagine that life at Angleford Manor might be very peaceful and luxurious, there could be no doubt that she would have to purchase her pleasure at the cost of a great deal of her independence.

She might be able to write, in casual and ornamental fashion; but she felt that there would be little real sympathy with her literary occupations, and the zest of effort and ambition which she now felt would be gone. Moreover, independence of action counted for very little in comparison with independence of thought--and how could she nurse her somewhat heretical ideas in the drawing-room of a Tory High Church squire, a member of the Oligarchy, whose friends would nearly all be like-minded with himself? She had no right to introduce so great a discord into his life. If she married him, she would at any rate try (consciously, or unconsciously) to adopt his views, as the proper basis of the partnership; and therefore to marry him unquestionably meant the sacrifice of her independent judgment.

So much for the intellectual and material sides of the question. But, Lettice asked herself, was that all?

No, there was something else. She had been steadily and obstinately, yet almost unconsciously, trying to push it away from her all the time--ever since Brooke Dalton began to betray his affection, and even before that when Mrs. Hartley, unknown to her, kept her in ignorance of things which she ought to have known. She had refused to face it, pressed it out of her heart, made believe to herself that the chapter of her life which had been written in London was closed and forgotten--and how nearly she had succeeded! But she had not quite succeeded. It was there still--the memory, the hope, the pity, the sacrifice.

She must not cheat herself any longer, if she would be an honest and honorable woman. She would face the truth and not palter with it, now that the crisis had really come. What was Alan Walcott to her? Could she forget him, and dismiss him from her thoughts, and go to the altar with another man? She went over the scenes which they had enacted together, she recalled his words and his letters, she thought of his sorrows and trials, and remembered how he had appealed to her for sympathy. There was good reason, she thought, why he had not written to her, for he was barred by something more than worldly conventionality. When she, strong-minded as she thought herself, had shrunk from the display of his love because he still had duties to his lawful wife, she had imposed upon him her demand for conventional and punctilious respect, and had rather despised herself, she now remembered, for doing it. He had obeyed her, he had observed her slightest wishes--it was for her, not for him, to break through the silence. How had she been able to remain so long in ignorance of his condition, to live contentedly so many miles away from him?

As she thought of all these things in the light of her new experience, her heart was touched again by the old sympathy, and throbbed once more with the music which it had not known since her illness began. It was a harp which had been laid aside and forgotten, till the owner, coming by chance into the disused room, strung it anew, and bade it discourse the symphonies of the olden time.

Not until Lettice had reached this point in her retrospect did she perceive how near she had gone to the dividing line which separates honor from faithlessness and truth from falsehood. She had said, "There is no one to whom my love is pledged." Was that true? Which is stronger or more sacred--the pledge of words or the pledge of feeling? She had tried to drown the feeling, but it would not die. It was there, it had never been absent; and she had profaned it by listening to the temptations of Brooke Dalton, and by telling him that her heart was free.

"It was a lie!"

She sank on the sofa as she made the confession to herself. Alan's letters were in her hand; she clasped them to her breast, and murmured,

"It was a lie--for I love you!"

If the poor wretch in his prison cell, who, worn out at last by daily self-consuming doubts, lay tossing with fever on a restless bed, could have heard her words and seen her action, he might have been called back to life from the borderland of the grave.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

AWAKENED.

"What is it, darling?" Mrs. Hartley said to her friend when they met the next morning at the late breakfast which, out of deference to foreign customs, they had adopted. She looked observantly at the restless movements of the girl, and the changing color in her cheeks. "You have not eaten anything, and you do nothing but shiver and sigh."

Mrs. Hartley was quite convinced in her own mind that Lettice had received an offer of marriage from her cousin Brooke Dalton. Possibly she had already accepted it. She should hear all about it that morning.

The symptoms overnight had not been too favorable but she put down the disturbance which Lettice had shown to an excess of nervous excitement.

Women do not all receive a sentence of happiness for life in precisely the same manner, she reflected: some cry and some laugh, some dance and sing, others collapse and are miserable. Lettice was one of the latter kind, and it was for Mrs. Hartley to give her a mother's sympathy and comfort. So she awaited the word which should enable her to cut the d.y.k.es of her affection.

Lettice turned white and cold, and her grey eyes were fixed with a stony look on the basket of flowers which decorated the breakfast table.

"I am not well," she said, "but it is worse with the mind than the body.

I have done a wicked thing, and to atone for it I am going to do a cruel thing; so how could you expect me to have an appet.i.te?"

"My dear pet!" said Mrs. Hartley, putting out her hand to touch the fingers of her friend, which she found as cold as ice, "you need not tell me that you have done anything wicked, for I don't believe it. And I am sure you would not do anything cruel, knowing beforehand that it was cruel."

"Is it not wicked to tell a lie?--for I have done that."

"No, no!"

"And will it not be cruel to you and to Edith that I should cause pain to your cousin, and make him think me insincere and mercenary?"

"He could not possibly think so," said Mrs. Hartley with decision.

"He must."

"What are you going to do, Lettice?"

"I am going to tell him that I was not honest when I allowed him to say that he would come for my answer in a month, and to think it possible that the answer might be favorable--when G.o.d knows that it cannot."

"Brooke has asked you to be his wife?"

"Yes."

"And you told him to come for his answer in a month?"

"I agreed to it."

"Well, darling, I think that was very natural--if you could not say 'yes' at once to my cousin."

There was a touch of resentment in the words "my cousin," which Lettice felt. Mrs. Hartley could not understand that Brooke Dalton should have to offer himself twice over--even to her Lettice.

"Wait this month," she went on, "and we shall see what you think at the end of it. You are evidently upset now--taken by surprise, little innocent as you are. The fact is, you have never really recovered from your illness, and I believe you set to work again too soon. A hard-working life would not have suited you; but, thank Heaven, there is an end of that. You will never have to make yourself a slave again!"

"Dear, you do not understand. I did a wicked thing yesterday, and now I must tell Mr. Dalton, and ask him to forgive me."

"Nonsense, child!"