make any answer to this, nor did her face regain its natural hue during the whole of the homeward walk. She was very silent, only replying in the briefest manner to Talbot’s inquiries.
“I am sure that you are ill, Aurora,” he said, as they ascended the terrace-steps.
“I am ill.”
“But, dearest, what is it? Let me tell Mrs. Alexander, or Mrs. Powell. Let me go back to Beckenham for the doctor.”
She looked at him with a mournful earnestness in her eyes.
“My foolish Talbot,” she said, “do you remember what Macbeth said to his doctor? There are diseases that can not be ministered to. Let me alone; you will know soon enough — you will know very soon, I dare say.”
“But, Aurora, what do you mean by this? What can there be upon your mind?”
“Ah! what indeed! Let me alone, let me alone, Captain Bulstrode.”
He had caught her hand, but she broke from him, and ran up the staircase in the direction of her own apartments.
Talbot hurried to Lucy with a pale, frightened face.
“Your cousin is ill, Lucy,” he said; “go to her, for Heaven’s sake, and see what is wrong.”
Lucy obeyed immediately; but she found the door of Miss Floyd’s room locked against her; and when she called to Aurora and implored to be admitted, that young lady cried out,
“Go away, Lucy Floyd; go away, and leave me to myself, unless you want to drive me mad!”
Chapter 9
How Talbot Bulstrode Spent His Christmas.
There was no more happiness for Talbot Bulstrode that day. He wandered from room to room till he was as weary of that exercise as the young lady in Monk Lewis’s Castle Spectre; he roamed forlornly hither and thither, hoping to find Aurora, now in the billiard-room, now in the drawing-room. He loitered in the hall upon the shallow pretence of looking at barometers and thermometers, in order to listen for the opening and shutting of Aurora’s door. All the doors at Felden Woods were perpetually opening and shutting that afternoon, as it seemed to Talbot Bulstrode. He had no excuse for passing the doors of Miss Floyd’s apartments, for his own rooms lay at the opposite angle of the house; but he lingered on the broad staircase, looking at the furniture-pictures upon the walls, and not seeing one line in these Wardour-street productions. He had hoped that Aurora would appear at luncheon; but that dismal meal had been eaten without her; and the merry laughter and pleasant talk of the family assembly had sounded far away to Talbot’s ears — far away across some wide ocean of doubt and confusion.
He passed the afternoon in this wretched manner, unobserved by any one but Lucy, who watched him furtively from her distant seat, as he roamed in and out of the drawing-room. Ah! how many a man is watched by loving eyes whose light he never sees! how many a man is cared for by a tender heart whose secret he never learns! A little after dusk, Talbot Bulstrode went to his room to dress. It was some time before the bell would ring; but he would dress early, he thought, so as to make sure of being in the drawing-room when Aurora came down.
He took no light with him, for there were always wax candles upon the chimney-piece in his room.
It was almost dark in that pleasant chintz chamber, for the fire had been lately replenished, and there was no blaze; but he could just distinguish a white patch upon the green cloth cover of the writing-table. The white patch was a letter. He stirred the black mass of coal in the grate, and a bright flame went dancing up the chimney, making the room as light as day. He took the letter in one hand, while he lighted one of the candles on the chimney-piece with the other. The letter was from his mother. Aurora Floyd had told him that he would receive such a letter. What did it all mean? The gay flowers and birds upon the papered walls spun round him as he tore open the envelope. I firmly believe that we have a semi-supernatural prescience of the coming of all misfortune; a prophetic instinct, which tells us that such a letter, or such a messenger, carries evil tidings. Talbot Bulstrode had that prescience as he unfolded the paper in his hands. The horrible trouble was before him — a brooding shadow, with a veiled face, ghastly and undefined; but it was there.
“MY DEAR TALBOT— I know the letter I am about to write will distress and perplex you; but my duty lies not the less plainly before me. I fear that your heart is much involved in your engagement to Miss Floyd.” The evil tidings concerned Aurora, then; the brooding shadow was slowly lifting its dark veil, and the face of her he loved best on earth appeared behind it. “But I know,” continued that pitiless letter, “that the sense of honor is the strongest part of your nature, and that, however you may have loved this girl” (O God, she spoke of his love in the past!) “you will not suffer yourself to be entrapped into a false position through any weakness of affection. There is some mystery about the life of Aurora Floyd.”
This sentence was at the bottom of the first page; and, before Talbot Bulstrode’s shaking hand could turn the leaf, every doubt, every fear, every presentiment he had ever felt flashed back upon him with preternatural distinctness.
“Constance Trevyllian came here yesterday; and you may imagine that in the course of the evening you were spoken of, and your engagement discussed.”
A curse upon their frivolous women’s gossip! Talbot crushed the letter in his hand, and was about to fling it from him; but, no, it must be read. The shadow of doubt must be faced, and wrestled with, and vanquished, or there was no more peace upon this earth for him. He went on reading the letter.
“I told Constance that Miss Floyd had been educated in the Rue St. Dominique, and asked if she remembered her. ‘What!’ she said, ‘is it the Miss Floyd whom there was such a fuss about? the Miss Floyd who ran away from school?’ And then she told me, Talbot, that a Miss Floyd was brought to the Demoiselles Lespard by her father last June twelvemonth, and that less than a fortnight after arriving at the school she disappeared; her disappearance, of course, causing a great sensation and an immense deal of talk among the other pupils, as it was said she had run away. The matter was hushed up as much as possible; but you know that girls will talk, and from what Constance tells me, I imagine that very unpleasant things were said about Miss Floyd. Now you say that the banker’s daughter only returned to Felden Woods in September last. Where was she in the interval?“
He read no more. One glance told him that the rest of the letter consisted of motherly cautions and admonitions as to how he was to act in this perplexing business.
He thrust the crumpled paper into his bosom, and dropped into a chair by the hearth.
It was so, then! There was a mystery in the life of this woman. The doubts and suspicious, the undefined fears and perplexities, which had held him back at the first, and caused him to wrestle against his love, had not been unfounded. There was good reason for them all, ample reason for them, as there is for every instinct which Providence puts into our hearts. A black wall rose up round about him, and shut him for ever from the woman he loved; this woman whom he loved so far from wisely, so fearfully well; this woman, for whom he had thanked God in the church only a few hours before. And she was to have been his wife — the mother of his children perhaps. He clasped his cold hands over his face, and sobbed aloud. Do not despise him for those drops of anguish: they were the virgin tears of his manhood. Never since infancy had his eyes been wet before. God forbid that such tears as those
