Part 71 (1/2)

”To see this Lady of Shalott, this mysterious Mariana in her moated grange?” asks Chesney, lightly.

Odd as it may sound, he has never yet been face to face with Cecilia.

Her determined seclusion and her habit of frequenting the parish church in the next village, which is but a short distance from her, has left her a stranger to almost every one in the neighborhood. Archibald is indeed aware that The Cottage owns a tenant, and that her name is Arlington, but nothing more. The fact of her never being named at Chetwoode has prevented his asking any idle questions and thereby making any discoveries.

When they have come to the rising mound that half overlooks The Cottage garden, Lilian comes to a standstill.

”Now you must leave me,” she says, imperatively.

”Why? We are quite a day's journey from The Cottage yet. Let me see you to the gate.”

”How tiresome you are!” says Miss Chesney; ”just like a big baby, only not half so nice: you always want more than you are promised.”

As Chesney makes no reply to this sally, she glances at him, and, following the direction of his eyes, sees Cecilia, who has come out for a moment or two to breathe the sweet spring air, walking to and fro among the garden paths. It is a very pale and changed Cecilia upon whom they look.

”Why,” exclaims Chesney, in a tone of rapt surprise, ”surely that is Miss Duncan!”

”No,”--amazed,--”it is Mrs. Arlington, Sir Guy's tenant.”

”True,”--slowly,--”I believe she did marry that fellow afterward. But I never knew her except as Miss Duncan.”

”You knew her?”

”Very slightly,”--still with his eyes fixed upon Cecilia, as she paces mournfully up and down in the garden below them, with bent head and slow, languid movements. ”Once I spoke to her, but I knew her well by sight; she was, she _is_, one of the loveliest women I ever saw. But how changed she is! how altered, how white her face appears! or can it be the distance makes me think so? I remember her such a merry girl--almost a child--when she married Arlington.”

”Yes? She does not look merry now,” says Lilian, the warm tears rising in her eyes: ”poor darling, no wonder she looks depressed!”

”Why?”

”Oh,” says Lilian, hesitating, ”something about her husband, you know.”

”You don't mean to say she is wearing sackcloth and the willow, and all that sort of thing, for Arlington all this time?” in a tone of astonishment largely flavored with contempt. ”I knew him uncommonly well before he married, and I should think his death would have been a cause for rejoicing to his wife, above all others.”

”Ah! that is just it,” says Lilian, consumed with a desire to tell: she sinks her voice mysteriously, and sighs a heavy sigh tinctured with melancholy.

”Just so,” unsympathetically. ”Some women, I believe, are hopeless idiots.”

”They are not,” indignantly; ”Cecilia is not an idiot; she is miserable because he is--alive! _Now_ what do you think?”

”Alive!” incredulously.

”Exactly so,” with all the air of a triumphant _raconteur_. ”And when she had believed him dead, too, for so long! is it not hard upon her, poor thing! to have him come to life again so disagreeably without a word of warning? I really think it is quite enough to kill her.”

”Well, I never!” says Mr. Chesney, staring at her. It isn't an elegant remark, but it is full of animated surprise, and satisfies Lilian.

”Is it not a tragedy?” she says, growing more and more pitiful every moment. ”All was going on well (it doesn't matter what), when suddenly some one wrote to Colonel Trant to say he had seen this odious Mr.

Arlington alive and well in Russia, and that he was on his way home. I shall always”--viciously--”hate the man who wrote it: one would think he had nothing else to write about, stupid creature! but is it not shocking for her, poor thing?”

At this, seemingly without rhyme or reason (except a depraved delight in other people's sufferings), Mr. Chesney bursts into a loud enjoyable laugh, and continues it for some seconds. He might perhaps have continued it until now, did not Lilian see fit to wither his mirth in the bud.

”Is it a cause for laughter?” she asks, wrathfully; ”but it is _just like you_! I don't believe you have an atom of feeling. Positively I think you would laugh if _auntie_, who is almost a mother to you, was _dead_!”