"What is the matter, dear husband? And you here, mother? Have I

been sick? Can it be?"

"Hush!" said the mother. "You have been sick ever since the night

of my marriage."

"Ah!" she exclaimed with an air of anxiety and pain, while pressing

her hand upon her eyes, "Ah! that night!"

A shudder shook her frame as she uttered this simple and

short sentence. Simple and short as it was, it seemed to possess

a strange signification. That it was associated in her mind with

some circumstances of peculiar import, was sufficiently obvious.

What were these circumstances? Ah! that question! I ran over in

my thought, in a single instant, all that array of events, on that

fatal night, which could by any possibility distress me, and confirm

my suspicions. That waltz with Edgerton--that long conference between

them--that lonely ride together from the home of Mrs. Delaney,

in a close carriage--and the subsequent disaster--her unconscious

ravings, and the strong, strange language which she employed,

clearly full of meaning as it was, but in which I could discover

one meaning only! all these topics of doubt and agitation passed

through my brain in consecutive order, and with a compact arrangement

which seemed as conclusive as any final issue. I said nothing; but

what I might have said, was written in my face. Julia regarded me

with a gaze of painful anxiety. What she read in my looks must have

been troublously impressive. Her cheeks grew paler as she looked.

Her eyes wandered from me vacantly, and I could see her thin soft

lips quivering faintly like rose-leaves which an envious breeze

has half separated from the parent-flower. Mrs. Delaney watched

our mutual faces, and I left the room to avoid her scrutiny. I only

re-entered it with the physician. He administered medicine to my

wife.

"She will do very well now, I think," he said to me when leaving

the house; "but she requires to be treated very tenderly. All

causes of excitement must be kept from her. She needs soothing,

great care, watchful anxiety. Clifford, above all, you should leave

her as little as possible. This old woman, her mother, is no fit

companion for her--scarcely a pleasant one. I do not mean to reproach

you; ascribe what I say to a real desire to serve and make you

happy; but let me tell you that Mrs. Delaney has intimated to me

that you neglect your wife, that you leave her very much at night;

and she further intimates, what I feel assured can not well be the

case, that you have fallen into other and much more evil habits."

"The hag!"

"She is all that, and loves you no better now than before. Still,

it is well to deprive such people of their scandal-mongering, of

the meat for it at least. I trust, Clifford, for your own sake,

that you were absent of necessity on Wednesday night."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024