Part 94 (2/2)

Mrs. Little replied to this letter, and the result of the correspondence was this: she said she would marry him if she could recover her health, but THAT she feared she never should until she was reconciled to her brother.

Meantime Grace Carden fell into a strange state: fits of feverish energy; fits of death-like stupor. She could do nothing, yet it maddened her to be idle. With Bolt's permission, she set workmen to remove all the remains of the chimney that could be got at--the water was high just then: she had a barge and workmen, and often watched them, and urged them by her presence. Not that she ever spoke; but she hovered about with her marble face and staring eyes, and the sight of her touched their hearts and spurred them to exertion.

Sometimes she used to stand on a heap of bricks hard by, and peer, with dilated eyes into the dark stream, and watch each bucket, or basket, as it came up with bricks, and rubbish, and mud, from the bottom.

At other times she would stand on the bridge and lean over the battlements so far as if she would fly down and search for her dead lover.

One day as she hung thus, glaring into the water, she heard a deep sigh.

She looked up, and there was a face almost as pale as her own, and even more haggard, looking at her with a strange mixture of pain and pity.

This ghastly spectator of her agony was himself a miserable man, it was Frederick Coventry. His crime had brought him no happiness, no hope of happiness.

At sight of him Grace Carden groaned, and covered her face with her hands.

Coventry drew back dismayed. His guilty conscience misinterpreted this.

”You can forgive us now,” said Grace, with a deep sob: then turned away with sullen listlessness, and continued her sad scrutiny.

Coventry loved her, after his fas.h.i.+on, and her mute but eloquent misery moved him.

He drew nearer to her, and said softly, ”Do not look so; I can't bear it. He is not there.”

”Ah! How do you know?”

Coventry was silent for a moment, and seemed uneasy; but at last he replied thus: ”There were two explosions. The chimney fell into the river a moment before the explosion that blew up the works. So how can he be buried under the ruins of the chimney? I know this from a workman who was standing on the bridge when the explosions took place.”

”Bless the tongue that tells me that! Oh, how much wiser you are than the rest of us! Mr. Coventry, pity and forgive a poor girl who has used you ill. Tell me--tell me--what can have become of him?”

Coventry was much agitated, and could not speak for some time, and when he did, it was in a faint voice as of one exhausted by a mental struggle. ”Would you rather he was--dead--or--false?”

”Oh false--a thousand times! Prove to me he is not dead, but only false to his poor Grace, and I will bless you on my knees.”

Coventry's eye flashed. ”Well, then, he was the lover of Jael Dence, the girl who fought for him, and shed her blood for him, and saved his life.

The connection was open and notorious.”

Grace was silent.

”Many a man has fled from two women, who could have been happy with either of them. I believe that this man found himself unable to play the double game any longer, and that he has fled the country--”

”I pray G.o.d it may be so,” sobbed Grace.

”--Through remorse, or from dread of exposure. Have patience. Do not kill yourself, and break all our hearts. Take my word for it, you will hear from him in a few days, and he will give your reasons for his strange disappearance--excellent, business-like reasons, but not the true ones: there will not be a word about Jael Dence.” This last with a sneer.

Grace turned on him with eyes that literally gleamed: ”You hated him living, you slander him dead. Falsehood was not in him: his affection for Jael Dence was no secret. I knew it, and approved it. It was as pure as heaven. His poor mutilated body will soon contradict these vile calumnies. I hate you! I hate you!”

Coventry drew back at first from this burst of ire, but soon he met her glance with one of fiendish bitterness. ”You hate me for pitying you, and saying that man is not dead. Well, have your own way, then; he is not false, but dead.”

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