“You need say nothing, Ellinor, need not condescend to answer.”
Alas, what vindication was this!
“Does Mrs. Marvel deny then,” resumed Lady Lochore, “that she was discovered two nights ago——”
David lifted his hand and his voice in a superb unison of anger:
“Be silent. It is I who deny it! And let that suffice!” Then he went on rapidly, with more self-control yet still vibrating with indignation: “I know this to be a base lie, an iniquitous conspiracy. Your motives, my poor sister, are but too obvious! Your treatment of our kinswoman who has brought comfort and gladness to my house, has been odious from the first moment of your uninvited presence here. This is the climax! Now hear my last word:—not only is Mrs. Marvel, as I know her, incapable of desecrating the hospitality she honours me by accepting, but she is incapable of harbouring an unworthy thought.”
David’s countenance was lit by every generous impulse. Yet each vindicating word fell upon Ellinor’s ear like the sounds of her death sentence—death to both honour and happiness! A chasm was opening before her feet, the depths of which she could not yet fathom. One thing alone was dawning upon her moment by moment, with more inexorable light—David did not know! All this had been but a dream to him. And even as a dream he remembered nothing. He did not remember! Unconsciously she repeated to herself, even as Lady Lochore awhile before: Madness and then sleep! He knew nothing of his own vows of love to her, he knew nothing of his own words of passion! He did not know; and her lips were sealed!
At first Lady Lochore wondered whether David were playing a deep and subtle game; whether the two were in collusion. But a glance from his transfigured countenance to Ellinor’s stricken look, the sight of the rector’s evident perturbation, her own knowledge of the crystal truth of her brother’s character, promptly dispelled the doubt. The game was hers!
“All well and good,” said she. “Your cavalier attitude, most romantic David, is fit to grace the pages of the latest Scotch novel! But allow me to point out that it will not pass current in the every day world. Besides the fact that these eyes of mine and those of my friends beheld a scene in Mrs. Marvel’s room the like of which our honourable house never sheltered before, Margery Nutmeg can tell you how she heard an adventurous climber mount to Mrs. Marvel’s window. How Joyce, your head-keeper, met Colonel Harcourt, skulking through the park at midnight—”
Dr. Tutterville started. David made no movement, but something in his very stillness showed that the words had struck him.
“Mr. Villars, again, could have informed you, how he came upon Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt brawling on the bridge an hour later, both in torn garments and as highly incensed one against the other, as only rivals——”