Part 72 (2/2)
”Hist!” exclaimed Eleanor, ”there 'tis again.”
”'Tis nothing,” replied Handa.s.sah. But her looks belied her words.
”Well, I will command myself,” said Eleanor, endeavoring to regain her calmness; ”but the thoughts of the Lady Eleanor--for _she_ was an Eleanor like to me, Handa.s.sah--and ah! even more ill-fated and unhappy--have brought a whole train of melancholy fancies into my mind.
I cannot banish them: nay, though painful to me, I recur to these images of dread with a species of fascination, as if in their fate I contemplated mine own. Not one, who hath wedded a Rookwood, but hath rued it.”
”Yet you will wed one,” said Handa.s.sah.
”He is not like the rest,” said Eleanor.
”How know you that, lady?” asked Handa.s.sah. ”His time may not yet be come. See what to-morrow will bring forth.”
”You are averse to my marriage with Ranulph, Handa.s.sah.”
”I was Sybil's handmaid ere I was yours, lady. I bear in mind a solemn compact with the dead, which this marriage will violate. You are plighted by oath to another, if he should demand your hand.”
”But he has not demanded it.”
”Would you accept him were he to do so?” asked Handa.s.sah, suddenly.
”I meant not that,” replied Eleanor. ”My oath is annulled.”
”Say not so, lady,” cried Handa.s.sah--”'twas not for this that Sybil spared your life. I love you, but I loved Sybil, and I would see her dying behests complied with.”
”It may not be, Handa.s.sah,” replied Eleanor. ”Why, from a phantom sense of honor, am I to sacrifice my whole existence to one who neither can love me, nor whom I myself could love? Am I to wed this man because, in her blind idolatry of him, Sybil enforced an oath upon me which I had no power to resist, and which was mentally cancelled while taken? Recall not the horrors of that dreadful cell--urge not the subject more. 'Tis in the hope that I may be freed for ever from this persecution that I have consented thus early to wed with Ranulph. This will set Luke's fancied claims at rest for ever.”
Handa.s.sah answered not, but bent her head, as if in acquiescence.
Steps were now heard near the door, and a servant ushered in Dr. Small and Mrs. Mowbray.
”I am come to take leave of you for the night, my dear young lady,” said the doctor; ”but before I start for the Vicarage, I have a word or two to say, in addition to the advice you were so obliging as to receive from me this morning. Suppose you allow your attendant to retire for a few minutes. What I have got to say concerns yourself solely. Your mother will bear us company. There,” continued the doctor, as Handa.s.sah was dismissed--”I am glad that dark-faced gipsy has taken her departure.
I can't say I like her sharp suspicious manner, and the first exercise I should make at my powers, were I to be your husband, should be to discharge the handmaiden. To the point of my visit. We are alone, I think. This is a queer old house, Miss Mowbray; and this is the queerest part of it. Walls have ears, they say; and there are so many holes and corners in this mansion, that one ought never to talk secrets above one's breath.”
”I am yet to learn, sir,” said Eleanor, ”that there is any secret to be communicated.”
”Why, not much, I own,” replied the doctor; ”at least what has occurred is no secret in the house by this time. What do you think _has_ happened?”
”It is impossible for me to conjecture. Nothing to Ranulph, I hope.”
”Nothing of consequence, I trust,--though he is part concerned with it.”
”What is it?” asked Eleanor.
”Pray satisfy her curiosity, doctor,” interposed Mrs. Mowbray.
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