CHAPTER XIV.
TOO LATE!
Without a word Florence held the cardcase toward its owner. As he took it from her hand he raised it reverently to his lips with apparent unconsciousness of the wounded pride that she was silently struggling to subdue.
“You remember this?” he said. “And the night on which it was given to me?”
“Why do you speak of it?” Florence retorted, after a pause. “It is among the things of the past.”
“True!” he answered mournfully. “And she whose gentle hands bestowed the gift little dreamed of the changed times those she left have seen.”
Florence winced. There was something cruel in this remark, coming as it did from one who had been the first to alter.
“Are the times changed more than the faces of those who then called themselves our friends?” she cried, with bitterness.
For a moment Mr. Aylwinne was silent; then, with gentle earnestness, he said:
“Forget those who have been so false to their best feelings, Miss Heriton, and remember only that there are some who would still claim that title if you would permit it.”
For a moment her reproachful eyes were raised to his.
“Where?”
He looked hurt.
“What have I done that you should utter this reproach to me? Why have you so persistently avoided every little kindness I have attempted to show you? Florence—Miss Heriton—for your dear mother’s sake let me redeem the promise I made when I bade her farewell. Let me be the friend, or, if need be, the protector, of her orphan child.”
“The promises made by our guest, Mr. Dormer, are not supposed to be binding on Mr. Aylwinne,” answered Florence haughtily. “Since when has he thought proper to remember them?”
“Always. Never has a word spoken in that last interview with Mrs. Heriton left my memory, although the hopes she permitted me to cherish you have destroyed.”
Astonished and confounded, Florence looked at him inquiringly. What did he—what could he mean? He did not seem in any haste to explain himself, and with increasing stateliness she said:
“Pardon me, sir, if I remind you that such retrospection is as painful as unpleasant. And rest assured I should never have provoked it by coming to Orwell Court had I known whom I should recognize in its owner.”
Bowing slightly, she moved toward the door; but ere she reached it Mr. Aylwinne, in great agitation, placed himself before her.
“Miss Heriton, what am I to understand by this? Is it—can it be possible that you did not know me?”
There was such intense earnestness in his manner that Florence faltered something about the lapse of time and the change in his appearance, and yet more in his name.
“Yes, yes—I am aware of all this. But Mr. Heriton knew that I had assumed my uncle’s name. I wrote to him both before and after leaving India.”
“I did not see those letters,” said Florence, with some reluctance.
“You did not?” he cried excitedly. “But they contained others for you. Surely—surely Mr. Heriton did not withhold those!”
Florence could not speak a word that reproached her father’s memory, but her silence was sufficient reply.
Mr. Aylwinne struck his hands together and paced the room in great disorder.
“It was cruel—it was dishonorable! Yes, it was dishonorable! How dared he use me so?”
“Hush, sir! You are speaking of my father!” said Florence, whose hand was now on the door, though she felt unwilling to leave him without further explanation.
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed, leading her gently back to the fireplace. “Forgive me! I know I am scarcely justified in saying this before you; but now that I know so much I must be fully satisfied. Were you aware that Mr. Heriton answered my last letter?”
Florence murmured a negative, and then looked at him eagerly.
“Answered it in his name and yours—answered it as though it was your wish that guided his pen.”
While her eyes fell consciously beneath the steady gaze of his, he went on:
“You did not know this. I see it all now, now that it is too late—too late! Florence, as soon as a brightening fortune warranted the act, I asked Mr. Heriton for your hand. I received a curt and decided refusal. The words are still engraven on my memory. ‘Miss Heriton regretted that Mr. Dormer should have imagined her so foolishly romantic as to remember anything connected with Mr. Dormer’s visit to Heriton Priory, except that she did her best to amuse her father’s guest.’ And the letter concluded with a definite assurance that Miss Heriton’s hand was already disposed of.”
A sigh of shame and distress burst from Florence’s lips as he ceased. She well remembered that at the time of which Mr. Aylwinne spoke, her father’s expectations had been raised to a pitch of the highest extravagance by the fair-seeming speculation he had embarked in; and a few flattering speeches whispered in her ears by a needy nobleman who had lent his name to the scheme had inspired Mr. Heriton with a belief that he should soon see his daughter a peeress.
For such wild and unfounded hopes as these he had sacrificed her happiness—and not hers only, but another’s. For a moment the conflict in her mind between filial love and her sense of having been cruelly wronged was severe. But the better feeling soon predominated, and she murmured:
“Forgive him—forgive him! He was unhappy in his advisers, and his impatience to retrieve his position led him to do many things his better judgment condemned.”
Mr. Aylwinne made no immediate reply to this appeal. He could not judge Mr. Heriton’s conduct as leniently as his daughter was doing. At last he said hoarsely:
“We are taught to believe that our greatest sorrows and disappointments tend to some good purpose. But knowing what I know, and remembering from what a depth of trouble and humiliation I might have been able to save you, Florence, it is difficult to think so.”
She turned from him with burning cheek.
“Forgive me,” he went on, “if I have pained you. I will never recur to this subject again. Perhaps it would have been better if I had never learned the truth—if I had always believed that it was your own will that separated us. But, Florence, though I may never ask more—though there is a barrier between us I may not attempt to remove—you will give me your friendship, will you not? You will let me have the satisfaction of knowing that you have found a safe shelter beneath my roof? That, as far as Fate has left it in my power, I have fulfilled my pledge to the gentle woman so dear to both of us?”
Before she could reply, Mrs. Wilson, who had been detained by some petitioner from the village, came hurrying in to know Mr. Aylwinne’s wishes about the relief she proposed sending. Florence thankfully availed herself of the opportunity thus afforded her of quitting the room. Her brain was in a whirl that effectually banished sleep from her pillow for the greater part of the night.
Frank Dormer had been true to her! Oh, joyful thought! He had returned to make her his, as her beloved mother had fondly expected that he would. And then her head dropped on her hands, and she wept bitterly, to think that for the mere love of wealth and rank her father had separated them. A yet deeper grief lay at the root of Florence’s tears. She had heard with a thrill of pain Mr. Aylwinne’s voice passionately declare that the discovery had been made too late! He had asked for her friendship—he had hinted at a barrier that totally precluded his asking more; and this it was that made her heart sink more than all she had hitherto undergone. She had learned that his youthful fancy had strengthened and ripened beneath the hot suns of India—that he had hastened home in all the flush of joy to claim her; the letters she had thought it so hard not to be permitted to read had been full of devotion to her whose only earthly hope had been that such an hour would come; and now that at last she knew this, and saw him worthy in all points of her affection, his own lips had declared that it was too late! Their love must be forgotten, and they must be content to be friends.
Florence rebelled against this conclusion. Young, warm-hearted, and free, she felt that she could have loved him devotedly. What, she asked herself, could it be that intervened to keep them apart? Could it be that Frank, in his vexation at Mr. Heriton’s refusal, had betrothed himself to another?
In vague conjectures like this, the hours passed away, until, thoroughly exhausted, she threw herself on the bed in her clothes, and sank into a heavy sleep.
It was Mrs. Wilson who awakened her, and Florence started up in affright to find the sun high in the heavens, and the usual hour for breakfast long over.
“I’ve been in before,” Mrs. Wilson explained, “for it’s such an unusual thing for you to sleep late that I felt sure you were not well. And when I saw how pale you looked, I could not bear to wake you till there was some fresh tea made. Do sit up and drink it, my dear! Not undressed, too! How very ill you must have felt! Why did you not call me?”
In silence, Florence swallowed the contents of the cup so kindly held to her lips, and then got rid of Mrs. Wilson with the assurance that she felt much better, and only wanted a bath to be quite herself again.
When alone, she tried to decide upon the best course of action she could adopt. Not all Mr. Aylwinne’s generosity could reconcile her to remaining beneath his roof while unable to regard him with indifference. At the same time, she felt that she owed it to him to receive his kindness with gratitude, and neither withdraw herself rudely nor hastily, lest he suspect the true reason.
“I will write to my Aunt Margaret,” she decided. “She is the only relative I possess, and I have a just claim upon her protection. With all her faults she is affectionate, and will not refuse me a home.”
She opened her desk directly, and had just commenced her epistle, when Mrs. Wilson tapped at the door.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, my dear, but here is a note Mr. Aylwinne asked me to give you. He has been waiting for more than an hour to see you, but could not stay longer.”
“Has he left Orwell Court again?” asked Florence, with a dismayed conviction that if it were so he went to avoid her.
“Yes, my dear. Business in the north has called him away. Very unfortunate, isn’t it, just as he was so comfortable with us? However, I’ll not keep you from reading your note.”
But it laid before her unopened long after Mrs. Wilson quitted the room. With eyes fixed on the bold superscription, she sat, as if unable to nerve herself to learn what lay beneath. At last she seized and tore it open.
“I cannot leave home,” it ran, “without expressing my fears that, by my selfish recurrence to the past, I have wounded not only your feelings, but your delicacy. I ought to have preserved a rigid silence upon what has happened; but I believed till last night that you knew me, and that, even though shrinking from an open recognition, you felt that beneath my roof there was a refuge from all such earthly troubles as a faithful friend’s care can avert. If it were not so then, let it be so now. Try to forget anything I may have said with reference to my own feelings, and look upon me as what I earnestly wish to be to you—a brother in whose hands you may fearlessly trust your future.
“I may not return to Orwell Court for months—perhaps not for a year or two. But a letter directed to my bankers will always find me, if you should require advice or assistance from
“Yours most faithfully,
“Frank Dormer Aylwinne.”
Florence dashed away a tear as she folded this letter and put it away in her desk, but her cheek was crimson with resentment.
“He is too careful to make me comprehend that the old affection has entirely died out. He means to stay away until I have accustomed myself to this; perhaps till I have reconciled myself to seeing a fairer and wealthier bride brought here to fill the place that should have been mine. But he shall never know how much this costs me. I will go to Aunt Margaret as soon as she consents to receive me, and see him no more.”