Part 9 (1/2)

As she spoke, with her face upturned to him, and the hot tears rolling down her cheeks, her fingers convulsively clasped about his hand, and her form bending closer and closer toward him, till her cheek was resting on his bosom, Arthur shuddered with intensity of feeling, and from his averted eyes the scalding drops, that had never once before moistened their surface, betrayed how terribly he was shaken with emotion.

But while she spoke, rapt as they were within themselves, they saw not one who stood with folded arms beside the rustic bench, and gazed upon them.

”As G.o.d is my hope,” said Arthur, ”I will disarm temptation. Fear not.

From this hour we part. Henceforth the living and the dead shall not be more estranged than we.”

He arose, but started as if an apparition met his gaze. Oriana knelt beside him, and touched her lips to his hand in grat.i.tude. An arm raised her tenderly, and a gentle voice murmured her name.

It was not Arthur's.

Oriana raised her head, with a faint cry of terror. She gasped and swooned upon the intruder's breast.

It was Harold Hare who held her in his arms.

Arthur, with folded arms, stood erect, but pale, in the presence of his friend. His eye, sorrowful, yet calm, was fixed upon Harold, as if awaiting his angry glance. But Harold looked only on the lifeless form he held, and parting the tresses from her cold brow, his lips rested there a moment with such a fond caress as sometimes a father gives his child.

”Poor girl!” he murmured, ”would that my sorrow could avail for both.

Arthur, I have heard enough to know you would not do me wrong. Grief is in store for us, but let us not be enemies.”

Mournfully, he gave his hand to Arthur, and Oriana, as she wakened from her trance, beheld them locked in that sad grasp, like two twin statues of despair.

They led her to the house, and then the two young men walked out alone, and talked frankly and tranquilly upon the subject. It was determined that both should leave Riverside manor on the morrow, and that Oriana should be left to commune with her own heart, and take counsel of time and meditation. They would not grieve Beverly with their secret, at least not for the present, when his sister was so ill prepared to bear remonstrance or reproof. Harold wrote a kind letter for Oriana, in which he released her from her pledged faith, asking only that she should take time to study her heart, but in no wise let a sense of duty stand in the way of her happiness. He took pains to conceal the depth of his own affliction, and to avoid whatever she might construe as reproach.

They would have gone without an interview with Oriana, but that would have seemed strange to Beverly. However, Oriana, although pale and nervous, met them in the morning with more composure than they had antic.i.p.ated. Harold, just before starting, drew her aside, and placed the letter in her hand.

”That will tell you all I would say, and you must read it when your heart is strong and firm. Do not look so wretched. All may yet be well.

I would fain see you smile before I go.”

But though she had evidently nerved herself to be composed, the tears would come, and her heart seemed rising to her throat and about to burst in sobs.

”I will be your true wife, Harold, and I will love you. Do not desert me, do not cast me from you. I cannot bear to be so guilty. Indeed, Harold, I will be true and faithful to you.”

”There is no guilt in that young heart,” he answered, as he kissed her forehead. ”But now, we must not talk of love; hereafter, perhaps, when time and absence shall teach us where to choose for happiness. Part from me now as if I were your brother, and give me a sister's kiss. Would you see Arthur?”

She trembled and whispered painfully:

”No, Harold, no--I dare not. Oh, Harold, bid him forget me.”

”It is better that you should not see him. Farewell! be brave. We are good friends, remember. Farewell, dear girl.”

Beverly had been waiting with the carriage, and as the time was short, he called to Harold. Arthur, who stood at the carriage wheel, simply raised his hat to Oriana, as if in a parting salute. He would have given his right hand to have pressed hers for a moment; but his will was iron, and he did not once look back as the carriage whirled away.

CHAPTER X.

In the drawing-room of an elegant mansion in a fas.h.i.+onable quarter of the city of New York, toward the close of April, a social party were a.s.sembled, distributed mostly in small conversational groups. The head of the establishment, a pompous, well-to-do merchant, stout, short, and baldheaded, and evidently well satisfied with himself and his position in society, was vehemently expressing his opinions upon the affairs of the nation to an attentive audience of two or three elderly business men, with a ponderous earnestness that proved him, in his own estimation, as much _au fait_ in political affairs as in the routine of his counting-room. An individual of middle age, a man of the world, apparently, who was seated at a side-table, carelessly glancing over a book of engravings, was the only one who occasionally exasperated the pompous gentleman with contradictions or ill-timed interruptions.

”The government must be sustained,” said the stout gentleman, ”and we, the merchants of the North, will do it. It is money, sir, money,” he continued, unconsciously rattling the coin in his breeches pocket, ”that settles every question at the present day, and our money will bring these beggarly rebels to their senses. They can't do without us, sir.

They would be ruined in six months, if shut out from commercial intercourse with the North.”