Part 14 (1/2)

She could not face the love in those honest eyes and answer as her conscience prompted. She was tired, so tired of the struggle, what would she not have given to rest here in the shelter of this perfect love and trust, but it was not for her.

”Mr. David,” she said, looking straight before her with wide, unseeing eyes; ”I can be no man's wife.”

He knew from the lines of suffering written deep on the pale young face, that maiden coquetry had not inspired her to speak thus; but word for word, it had been wrung from out of the depths of a troubled soul.

”Anna!” cried David, in mingled astonishment and pain. But Anna only turned mutely toward him with an imploring look. She stretched out her hands to him, as if trying to tell him more. But words failed her.

Her tears overcame her and she fled, sobbing, to her room. All the way up the winding night of stairs, David could hear her anguished moans.

He would have followed her, but Hi burst into the room, stamping the snow from his boots. He shoved in the front door as if he had been an invading army. He unwound his m.u.f.fler and cast it from him as if he had a grudge against it, as he proceeded to deliver himself of his wrongs.

”If there's any more visitors coming to the house to-night that wants their horses held, they can do it themselves, for I am going to have my supper.” David made no reply, but went to his own room to brood over the day's events. And so Anna was spared any further talk with David that night; a circ.u.mstance for which she was devoutly thankful.

The next day the snow was deeper by a foot, but this did not deter the Squire from making his proposed trip to Belden. He started immediately after breakfast, prepared to sift matters to the bottom.

An air of tension and anxiety pervaded the household all that long, miserable day. Anna was tortured with doubts. Should she slip away quietly without telling, or should she make her humiliating confession to Kate? Mrs. Bartlett, who knew the object of her husband's errand, could not control her nerves. She knew intuitively ”that something was going to happen,” as the good soul put it to herself.

Altogether it was one of those nerve-wracking days that come from time to time in the best regulated households, apparently for no other purpose but to prove the fact that a solitary existence is not necessarily the most unhappy.

Mrs. Bartlett, for the first time in her life, was worried about Dave.

He was moody and morose, even to her, his sworn friend and ally, with whom he had never had a word's difference. He had gone off that morning shortly after the Squire left the house; and his mother, watching him carefully at breakfast, noticed that he had shoved away his plate with the food untasted.

A fatal symptom to the ever-watchful maternal eye.

Kate felt sulky because her aunt and uncle had been urging her to marry Dave, and apparently Dave had no affection for her beyond that of a cousin, the situation irritating her in the extreme.

”Aunt Louisa, what is the matter with every one?” she said, flouncing into the kitchen. ”Something seems to have jarred the family nerves.

Here is uncle off on some mysterious business, Dave goes off in the snow in a tantrum, and you look as if you had just buried your last friend.” And the young lady left the room as suddenly as she entered it.

”It does feel as if trouble was brewing,” Mrs. Bartlett admitted to Anna, with a gloomy shake of the head. ”I'm getting that worried about Dave, he's been away all day, and it's not usual for him to stay away like this.” Her voice broke a little, and she left the room hurriedly.

He came in almost immediately, stamping the snow from his boots and looking twice as savage as when he went away.

”Mrs. Bartlett had been worrying about you all day, Mr. David,” Anna said as she turned from the dresser with her arms full of plates.

”And did you care, Anna, that I was not here?” He gave her the appealing glance of a great mastiff who hopes for a friendly pat on the head.

”My feelings on the subject can be of no interest to you,” she answered with chilling decision.

”All right,” and he went to the hat-rack to get his m.u.f.fler and cap, preparatory to again facing the storm.

The snow had been falling steadily all day. Drifting almost to the height of the kitchen window, it whirled about the house and beat against the window panes with a m.u.f.fled sound that was inexpressibly dreary to the girl, who felt herself the center of all this pitiful human contention.

”David, David; where have you been all day, and where are you going now?” His mother looked at his gray, haggard face and tried to guess his hidden trouble, the first he had ever kept from her.

”Mother, I am not a child, and you can't expect me to hang about the stove like a cat, all my life.” It was his first harsh word to her and she shrank before it as if it had been a blow. David, her boy, to speak to her like that! She turned quickly away to hide the tears, the first she had ever shed on his account.

”Here, Anna,” she said, struggling to recover her composure, ”take this bucket and get it filled for me, please.”

The girl reached for her cloak that hung on a peg near the door.