Blind Love

The maid noticed a change in the mistress which surprised her, when she

had reached the end of the newspaper story. Of Miss Henley's customary

good spirits not a trace remained. "Few people, Rhoda, remember what

they read as well as you do." She said it kindly and sadly--and she

said no more.

There was a reason for this.

Now at one time, and now at another, Iris had heard of Lord Harry's

faults and failings in fragments of family history. The complete record

of his degraded life, presented in an uninterrupted succession of

events, had now forced itself on her attention for the first time. It

naturally shocked her. She felt, as she had never felt before, how

entirely right her father had been in insisting on her resistance to an

attachment which was unworthy of her. So far, but no farther, her

conscience yielded to its own conviction of what was just. But the one

unassailable vital force in this world is the force of love. It may

submit to the hard necessities of life; it may acknowledge the

imperative claims of duty; it may be silent under reproach, and

submissive to privation--but, suffer what it may, it is the

master-passion still; subject to no artificial influences, owning no

supremacy but the law of its own being. Iris was above the reach of

self-reproach, when her memory recalled the daring action which had

saved Lord Harry at the milestone. Her better sense acknowledged Hugh

Mountjoy's superiority over the other man--but her heart, her perverse

heart, remained true to its first choice in spite of her. She made an

impatient excuse and went out alone to recover her composure in the

farm-house garden.

The hours of the evening passed slowly.

There was a pack of cards in the house; the women tried to amuse

themselves, and failed. Anxiety about Arthur preyed on the spirits of

Miss Henley and Mrs. Lewson. Even the maid, who had only seen him

during his last visit to London, said she wished to-morrow had come and

gone. His sweet temper, his handsome face, his lively talk had made

Arthur a favourite everywhere. Mrs. Lewson had left her comfortable

English home to be his housekeeper, when he tried his rash experiment

of farming in Ireland. And, more wonderful still, even wearisome Sir

Giles became an agreeable person in his nephew's company.

Iris set the example of retiring at an early hour to her room.

There was something terrible in the pastoral silence of the place. It

associated itself mysteriously with her fears for Arthur; it suggested

armed treachery on tiptoe, taking its murderous stand in hiding; the

whistling passage of bullets through the air; the piercing cry of a man

mortally wounded, and that man, perhaps----? Iris shrank from her own

horrid thought. A momentary faintness overcame her; she opened the

window. As she put her head out to breathe the cool night-air, a man on

horseback rode up to the house. Was it Arthur? No: the light-coloured

groom's livery that he wore was just visible.