his flesh had been hacked by a rusty sword; and, when he took his wet hands from his face, he wondered that they were not red, for it seemed to him as if he had been weeping blood. What should he do?
Go to Aurora, and ask her the meaning of that letter? Yes; the course was plain enough. A tumult of hope rushed back upon him, and swept away his terror. Why was he so ready to doubt her? What a pitiful coward he was to suspect her — to suspect this girl, whose transparent soul had been so freely unveiled to him; whose every accent was truth! For, in his intercourse with Aurora, the quality which he had learned most to reverence in her nature was its sublime candor. He almost laughed at the recollection of his mother’s solemn letter. It was so like these simple country people, whose lives had been bounded by the narrow limits of a Cornish village — it was so like them to make mountains out of the veriest mole-hills. What was there so wonderful in that which had occurred? The spoiled child, the wilful heiress, had grown tired of a foreign school, and had run away. Her father, not wishing the girlish escapade to be known, had placed her somewhere else, and had kept her folly a secret. What was there from first to last in the whole affair that was not perfectly natural and probable, the exceptional circumstances of the case duly considered?
He could fancy Aurora, with her cheeks in a flame, and her eyes flashing lightning, flinging a page of blotted exercises into the face of her French master, and running out of the school-room amid a tumult of ejaculatory babble. The beautiful, impetuous creature! There is nothing a man can not admire in the woman he loves, and Talbot was half inclined to admire Aurora for having run away from school.
The first dinner-bell had rung during Captain Bulstrode’s agony; so the corridors and rooms were deserted when he went to look for Aurora, with his mother’s letter in his breast.
She was not in the billiard-room nor the drawing-room, but he found her at last in a little inner chamber at the end of the house, with a bay-window looking out over the park. The room was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp, and Miss Floyd was seated in the uncurtained window, with her elbow resting on a cushioned ledge, looking out at the steel-cold wintry sky and the whitened landscape. She was dressed in black, her face, neck, and arms gleaming marble-white against the sombre hue of her dress, and her attitude was as still as that of a statue.
She neither stirred nor looked round when Talbot entered the room.
“My dear Aurora,” he said, “I have been looking for you everywhere.”
She shivered at the sound of his voice.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, dearest. I want you to explain something to me. A foolish business enough, no doubt, my darling, and, of course, very easily explained; but, as your future husband, I have a right to ask for an explanation; and I know, I know, Aurora, that you will give it in all candor.”
She did not speak, although Talbot paused for some moments, awaiting her answer. He could only see her profile, dimly lighted by the wintry sky. He could not see the mute pain, the white anguish in that youthful face.
“I have had a letter from my mother, and there is something in that letter which I wish you to explain. Shall I read it to you, dearest?”
His voice faltered upon the endearing expression, and he remembered afterward that it was the last time he had ever addressed her with a lover’s tenderness. The day came when she had need of his compassion, and when he gave it freely; but that moment sounded the death-knell of Love. In that moment the gulf yawned, and the cliffs were rent asunder.
“Shall I read you the letter, Aurora?”
“If you please.”
He took the crumpled epistle from his bosom, and, bending over the lamp, read it aloud to Aurora. He fully expected at every sentence that she would interrupt him with some eager explanation; but she was silent until he had finished, and even then she did not speak.
“Aurora, Aurora, is this true?”
“Perfectly true.”
“But why did you run away from the Rue St. Dominique?”
“I can not tell you.”
“And where were you between the month of June in the year fifty-six and last September?”
“I can not tell you, Talbot Bulstrode. This is my secret, which I can not tell you.”
“You can not tell me! There is upward of a year missing from your life, and you can not tell me, your betrothed husband, what you did with that year?”
“I can not.”
“Then, Aurora Floyd, you can never be my wife.”
He thought that she would turn upon him, sublime in her indignation and fury, and that the explanation he longed for would burst from her lips in a passionate torrent of angry words; but she rose from her chair, and, tottering toward him, fell upon her knees at his feet. No other action could have struck such terror to his heart. It seemed to him a confession of guilt. But what guilt? what guilt? What was the dark secret of this young creature’s brief life?
“Talbot Bulstrode,” she said in a tremulous voice, which cut him to the soul, “Talbot Bulstrode, Heaven knows how often I have foreseen and dreaded this hour. Had I not been a coward, I should have anticipated this explanation. But I thought — I thought the occasion might never come, or that, when it did come, you would be generous — and — trust me. If you can trust me, Talbot — if you can believe that this secret is not utterly shameful —”
“Not utterly shameful!” he cried. “O God, Aurora, that I should ever hear you talk like this! Do you think there are any degrees in these things? There must be no secret between my wife and me; and the day that a secret, or the shadow of one, arises between us, must see us part for ever. Rise from your knees, Aurora; you are killing me with this shame and humiliation. Rise from your knees; and if we are to part this moment, tell me, tell me, for pity’s sake, that I have no need to despise myself for having loved you with an intensity which has scarcely been manly.”
She did not obey him, but sank lower in her half kneeling, half crouching attitude, her face buried in her hands, and only the coils of her black hair visible to Captain Bulstrode.
“I was motherless from my cradle, Talbot,” she said, in a half stifled voice. “Have pity upon me.”
“Pity!” echoed the captain; ”pity! Why do you not ask me for justice? One question, Aurora Floyd, one more question, perhaps the last I ever may ask of you — Does your father know why you left that school, and where you were during that twelvemonth?”
“He does.”
“Thank God, at least, for that! Tell me, Aurora, then, only tell me this, and I will believe your simple word as I would the oath of another woman — tell me if he approved of your motive in leaving that school — if he approved of the manner in which your life was spent during that twelvemonth. If you can say yes, Aurora, there shall be no more questions between us, and I can make you, without fear, my loved and honored wife.”
“I can not,” she answered. “I am only nineteen, but within the two last years of my life I have done enough to break my father’s heart — to break the heart of the dearest father that ever breathed the breath of life.”
“Then all is over between us. God forgive you, Aurora Floyd; but, by your own confession,
