Before Mr. Effingham’s arrival, Louisa, exhausted with her own frantic terrors, had fallen into a state of insensibility. Her parched hand yet clasped that of Clemence in a grasp so firm, that the young step-mother stood by the bed-side for hours, afraid to stir or change her position, lest by doing so she should arouse the miserable sufferer to another paroxysm of delirium.
While Clemence remained in her standing posture, till she almost fainted with fatigue and the reaction of her overwrought nerves, Lady Selina, with characteristic tact, availed herself of the vantage-ground left to her by a rival’s absence, to place every occurrence before Mr. Effingham in her own peculiar light. As the anxious father restlessly paced the drawing-room, listening for any sound from the apartment above, Lady Selina described to him his child’s most distressing symptoms, and gave her own version of their cause. She rather pitied than blamed Mrs. Effingham, gave her conduct no harsher name than that of indiscretion, yet contrived to make it appear such as might have beseemed some familiar of the Inquisition, whose ears were deafened by ruthless bigotry to the cries of his tortured victim.
Mr. Effingham was at length, and for the first time in his life, much irritated against his wife; and when, late in the evening, Clemence, with tears of thankfulness glistening in her eyes, came to tell him that the sufferer breathed more calmly, and that the fever seemed to have abated, he received her with a cold sternness which struck like a dagger into her heart.
“I shall watch by Louisa again to-night,” said Clemence, struggling to keep down the emotion which almost choked her utterance.
“You had better leave such watching to the nurse whom Lady Selina has considerately procured,” replied her husband with some asperity; “she has experience and judgment, and the arrangement will be better upon every account.”
Not one word of tenderness after all that she had suffered,—not one look of kindness to repay her for her devoted nursing of his child during that sleepless night, that miserable day! A sensation of dizziness came over Clemence,—a sinking at the heart,—a sense of overpowering weariness both of body and mind. She doubted not that she owed her husband’s displeasure to the offices of Lady Selina, but had neither spirit nor strength to defend herself from charges which she rather guessed at than understood. With a slow, languid step, Clemence returned to the chamber of sickness, to arrange for the night in compliance with the will of her husband; but she found such compliance impracticable. Louisa, whose state varied from fits of wild excitement to nervous depression, could not endure the sight of a stranger, and with such agonized earnestness implored her step-mother not to leave her, that Clemence again spent the night alone with the suffering girl. The sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, the soft notes of a low warbled hymn, seemed to have more power to soothe the invalid than all the medical art. Louisa, who, in the time of health, had despised and disliked her step-mother, appeared now to look upon her as a protecting angel, whose presence could guard her pillow from the frightful phantoms conjured up by imagination. She could scarcely bear that Clemence should quit her side for an instant.
CHAPTER XV
A RAY OF LIGHT.
It was a bright Christmas morn. The sound of the sweet church bells ringing for service reached the dull, darkened chamber in which Clemence sat beside her slumbering charge. She had seen Mr. Effingham and Lady Selina, accompanied by Vincent and his sister, set out in the joyous sunlight on their way to the nearest church. It was sadly that Clemence had watched their departure; she had once looked forward to so happy a Christmas, and now trials seemed to shut her out from enjoyment, even as the half-closed shutter and heavy curtain excluded from the room in which she sat the sparkling rays which shone so brightly on all beside! The tongue that had been wont to give cordial greeting on a day like this lay cold and silent in the coffin below—no other season could remind Clemence so forcibly of her blyth, kindly, warm-hearted guardian, as the joyous season of Christmas. The lively Louisa, once gay as the butterfly sporting its silken wings in the sunshine, was stretched beside her on a bed of sickness; and though the apprehensions entertained on the sufferer’s account were now of a less alarming nature, her recovery was still precarious. Beneath these sources of sorrow lay one deeper—so deep that even to herself Clemence would not acknowledge its existence. Not for a moment would she entertain the thought that it was possible to find disappointment where hope had been sweetest; any doubt of her husband being indeed the noblest, best of men, she would have repudiated as treason. But it was possible that he might be disappointed in her; her weakness, her extravagance, her inferiority in everything to himself—thus pensively mused the young wife—might by this time have become apparent to one whose judgment was quick and discerning. He was amongst those who would cast no veil over her failings—those who would make no allowance for her inexperience—those who might even misrepresent her motives, and place her actions before him in a light not only unfavourable but false. Was not his manner changing towards her—had he not become silent, reserved, even stern?