Part 56 (2/2)

”But how did he seem? what did he say about my being away?”

”Oh!” returned Kitty, rather uneasily, ”he asked why the house was so quiet, and whether you'd got back yet: he looks a little pale and badly, but I'm sure that's natural enough. Anybody would get pale and gloomy shut up day after day in that awful room, among all poor Miss Alice's books and pictures and things, all looking so dusty and dismal; it gives me a shudder only to go inside the door.”

”But he doesn't know anything about her; you've never told him anything about the room?”

”I didn't mean to, Miss; I had no thought of opening my lips about it; but he made me tell him--he wouldn't be satisfied till I had told him every word I knew about the family troubles. What put it into his head to ask, I think was something he had come across in a French book he had been reading; it was a little note that had marked the place. He held it in his hand as I came in, and he looked so white and strange, I was almost frightened. Oh, so many questions as he put me! so eager as he was! He seemed to look so through and through me with those black eyes of his, I didn't dare to keep back anything I knew. And then he asked me about master; if he had really loved his sister--if he had grieved for her, and tried to find her out, or if he held her memory in contempt--if he tried to forget that she had ever lived, and hated to hear her name.”

”You didn't tell him that he did, Kitty?”

”How could I help it, Miss? You would not have had me tell him _a lie_.

I had to tell him how it was. I had to tell him that her name was forbidden here--that no one dared for their lives to breathe a word about those times to the master--that her picture, and all that belonged to her, was put out of sight forever--that her room was shut up and hid as much from the living, as the poor lady was herself in her lonesome grave beyond seas. And he clenched his hand till the blood sprung under his nails, and his very lips were white like the wall; he said so low I could just hear him, 'but he shall not forget!' I am no coward, Miss, but I confess I was right glad when I got outside again.”

All that wretched day I watched for a chance to see him. Kitty, nearly as anxious as I was myself, hovered around to try to clear the way for me, but in vain. No other day had the upper hall been so favorite a resort. Josephine had ordered her trunks to be put out there, and Ella's also, and Frances was packing them. Ellerton and Grace, lounging on the stairs, watched the operation, Mrs. Churchill sat with her door open. I cannot possibly describe the misery it gave me to know what danger might arise from this delay. I knew too much already of Victor's morbid jealousy, to imagine it was not brooding now over this long neglect. The hours were leaden-winged and fiery-footed; each slow pa.s.sing one seemed to burn into my very soul.

Kitty wiped away frequent tears as she busied herself about my packing; there were no tears in my eyes as I walked quickly up and down the room, or lay, face downward on the bed, trying to stifle thoughts that I could not endure.

”There's dinner!” said Kitty, ruefully. ”And there's no hope of any more chance after it. Mrs. Roberts is at her eternal knitting in the hall window, and Frances won't stop packing these four hours yet. But don't you worry, Miss; I'll manage it, somehow. Go down to dinner, and _don't_ fret!”

Of course not, why should I? What was there in my circ.u.mstances to occasion it? Nothing, of course; and nothing, either, to fret about in Josephine's taunts and Grace's sauciness, in the cold eyes of my aunt, in Ella's supercilious scorn; nothing to fret about when the captain talked of the murder and the evidence, the state of the public mind, and the state of his own private mind, in regard to it; when Ellerton talked about the news from town, and the letters he had just received from some of his inestimable chums there resident, and of the inexplicable nature of the fact that none of them had spoken of meeting or seeing Victor before he sailed, and of his own conviction that it was very strange we had heard nothing from him since he left, _very_ strange.

”Oh!” cried Grace, ”that's the way, they say, with these foreigners, adventurers, may be. You mustn't be astonished, my dear (turning pleasantly to me), you mustn't be astonished if you shouldn't hear from him 'never no more.' These French meteors, they say, sometimes flash through society in that way, and dazzle everybody, then sink into their native night again. And you know it is just possible our Victor may be of that order; but, of course, I don't want to distress you, only it's as well you should be prepared.”

”Grace, hus.h.!.+ you are a saucy child; but really it _is_ odd that we have never heard a word from him since he left.”

”Did you expect to, Josephine? I didn't suppose you had made any arrangements to correspond. I am sorry I didn't know how deep your interest was, I might have relieved your mind before. Mr. Viennet is very well. I have heard from him more than once since we parted.”

An exclamation of surprise went round the table; I was overwhelmed with questions and reproaches.

”You might have told us, really, now I think,” said Ellerton.

”Why did you not ask me, then?”

”Why, we thought you'd tell, to be sure. We didn't know how sacred you considered his epistles.”

”What sort of a journey did he have? What day did he get in town?”

”He didn't say much about his journey. I fancy from something he said that he met with some detentions.”

”Didn't he send any messages to anybody?”

”None that I remember.”

”Ungrateful rascal!”

”He succeeded, I suppose, in getting a state-room? He had some fears that he would be too late.”

”He didn't say a word about it.”

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