"n.o.body!" cried Naomi, lifting her face and speaking pa.s.sionately, and with all the child-like anger of a susceptible girl with no very great depth of feeling. "I hate him--I detest him--I'll never speak to him again. He's a wicked, base, bad man, and--and--I wish he was dead."

"Softly, softly. Why, what a baby love is this! Come, come, Naomi; we can't all pick the bright fruit we see upon the tree; and, my child, those who do, often wish, as I daresay Eve did, that they had left it untouched."

"I--I don't know what you mean, aunt dear, but it's very, very cruel. I did think him so nice and good and handsome."

"Poor child!" said Aunt Sophia, smiling as the girl rested her head upon her arm, which was upon the old lady's knee. "And who is this wicked man? Is it Doctor Scales?"

"Oh, what nonsense, aunt! He has always treated me as if I were a child, and--and that's what I am. To think that I should have made myself so miserable about such a wretch!"

It was a curious mingling of the very young girl and the pa.s.sionate budding woman, and Aunt Sophia read her very truly as she said softly: "Ah, well, child, time will cure all this. But who has troubled the poor little baby heart?"

"Yes, aunt, that's right; that's what it is; but it will never be a baby heart again for such a man as Mr Prayle."

"And so Mr Prayle has been playing fast and loose with you, has he, dear?"

"No, aunt," said the girl sadly. "It was all my silliness. He never said a word to me; and I am glad now," she cried, firing up. "He's a bad, wicked man."

"Indeed, my dear," thought Aunt Sophia, as she recalled Saxby's words.

"I--I--I went into the study this morning, for I did not like it. I was hurt and annoyed, aunt, dear. Ought I to tell you all this?"

"Think for yourself, my dear. You have been with me these fifteen years, ever since your poor mother died. I am a cross old woman, I know, full of whims and caprices; but I thought I had tried to fill a mother's place to you."

"Oh, auntie, auntie!" sobbed the girl, clinging lightly to her, and drawing herself more and more up, till she could rest her head upon the old lady's shoulder, "don't think me ungrateful. I do--I do love you very dearly."

"Enough to make you feel that there should be no want of confidence between us?"

"O yes, aunt, dear; and I'll never think of keeping anything back from you again. I'll tell you everything now, and then I'm sure you'll say we ought to go away from here."

"Well, well--we'll see."

"I thought I was very fond of Mr Prayle, aunt dear; and then I grew sure that I was, when I saw how he was always being shut up in the study with Kate, and it--it--"

"Speak out, my dear," said Aunt Sophia gravely.

"It made me feel so miserable."

Aunt Sophia's face puckered, and she bowed her head.

"Then I said that it was wicked and degrading to think what I did, and I drove such thoughts away, and tried to believe that it was all Cousin James's affairs; and then I saw something else; but I would not believe it was true till this morning."

"Well, Naomi, my child, and what was it?"

"Why, aunt--Oh, I don't like to confess--it was so shameless and unmaidenly; but I thought I loved him so very much. I--I--don't like to confess."

"Not to me, my dear?"

"Yes, yes; I will, aunt dear--I will," cried the girl, whose cheeks were now aflame. "It's about a fortnight ago that one evening, when we were all sitting in the drawing-room with the windows open, and it was so beautiful and soft and warm, Mr Prayle got up and came across and talked to me for a few minutes. It was only about that sketch I was making, and he did not say much, but he said it in such a way that it set my heart beating; and when he left the room, I fancied it meant something. So I got up, feeling terribly guilty, and went out of the window on to the lawn and then down to the rose garden, and picked two or three buds. Then I went round to the gra.s.s path where Mr Prayle walks up and down so much with his book."

"Because you thought he would be there, my dear?"

"Yes, aunt! It was very wrong--but I did."

"And you thought he had gone out there to read his book in the dark, eh?"

"No, aunt dear; I thought he would be there waiting to see if I would go to him."

"And you were going?"

"Yes, aunt dear."

"Was he there?"

"Yes, aunt."

"Waiting for you?"

"O no, aunt dear; for as I went softly over the gra.s.s, I stopped short all at once, and turned giddy, and felt as if everything was at an end."

"Why, Naomi?"

"He was going by me in the darkness with his arm round some one else's waist!"

Aunt Sophia's face had never looked so old before, for every wrinkle was deeply marked, and her eyes seemed sunk and strange in their fixed intensity as she waited to hear more; but Naomi remained silent, as if afraid to speak.

"Well, child, and who was it with Mr Prayle?"

Naomi hesitated for a few moments, and then said in a pa.s.sionate burst: "I did not believe it till this morning, aunt. I thought then that it was Kate; but it seemed so impossible--so terrible--that I dare not think it was she. But when I went quickly into the study this morning, Mr Prayle was just raising her hand to his lips. O aunt, how can people be so wicked! I shall go and be a nun!" Aunt Sophia looked still older, for a time, as she tenderly caressed and fondled the sobbing girl. Then a more serene aspect came over her face, and she said softly: "There, there; you have learned a severe lesson--that Mr Prayle does not care for you; and as to being a nun--no, no, my darling: there is plenty of good work to be done in the world. Don't shirk it by shutting yourself up. Come, you have been almost a child so far; now, be a woman. Show your pride. There are other and better men than Arthur Prayle; and as to what you saw--it may have been a mistake.

Let's wait and see."

"Yes, aunt."

"And you'll be brave, and think no more of him?"

"Never again, aunt dear. There!"

"That's my brave little woman.--Now, bathe your eyes, and stop here till the redness has gone off. I'm going down to write." She kissed Naomi tenderly, and left her, making her way to the drawing-room, where she wrote several letters, one being to Mr Saxby to ask him to come down again for a day or two, as she wanted to ask his advice about an investment.

Volume 2, Chapter XI.

JOHN MONNICK LOOKS AT HIS TRAPS.

It was one of those dark, soft, autumn evenings when the country seems dream-like and delicious. Summer is past, but winter is yet far away; and the year having gone through the light fickleness of spring and the heats of summer, with its changes of cold and pa.s.sions of storm, has settled down into the mellow maturity, the softened glow, the ripeness of life which indicate its prime.

Doctor Scales was not happy in his mind, he was--and he owned it--in love with the imperious beauty Lady Martlett, but he was at odds with himself for loving her.

"The absurd part of it is," he said to himself as he lit a cigar and went out into the garden, "that there seems to be no medicine by which a fellow could put himself right.--There," he said after a pause, "I will not think about her, but about Scarlett."

He strolled slowly along, finding it intensely dark; but he knew the position of every flower-bed now too well to let his feet stray off the velvet gra.s.s, and as he went on, he came round by the open window of the drawing-room, and, looking through the conservatory, stood thinking what a pleasant picture the prettily lighted room formed, with severe Aunt Sophia spectacled and reading, while Naomi was busy over some sketch that she had made during the day.