"But, Ben."
"Hush!" said Ben, pressing her hands hard between his broad palms, and dropping them tenderly downward. "I can't listen to another word of this 'ere. It ain't of no use," and with a gesture of stubborn sorrow, Ben walked deliberately into his domain, and closing the door, bolted it against Lina, leaving her shivering in the cold.
Lina looked ruefully at the closed door, and her heart sunk as she heard the heavy bolt drawn within. The last faint hope died out then; and, without a word, she turned and walked away into the woods, desolate beyond comparison with any former moment of her life. The wind grew sharp, and whistled through the light indoor garments with which she had recklessly come forth; her lips turned purple with cold; her hands were so numb, that they fell apart as she attempted to clasp them; the tears rushed warm from her eyes, and dropped away, frozen, like hail: and yet poor Lina struggled on, thinking the cold only another pang of anguish, which it was her duty to bear.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
GENERAL HARRINGTON READS THE VELLUM BOOK.
General Harrington was alone in his library. His hat and cloak lay in a heap on a sofa near the door, an indication of unwonted perturbation, for with him, a misplaced article was a proof of excitement which he was always ready to condemn. His dress was a good deal disturbed, and his hair disordered, as if he had threaded it more than once with the white fingers that now clasped the open covers of Mabel's Journal which he was eagerly reading.
It was almost painful to see the excitement under which that old man labored. The book trembled in his grasp, his lips clung more and more firmly together, his blue eyes shone vividly from under his bent brows, yet from beneath all, there stole out a gleam of triumph, as if he were weaving some crafty web of underthought out from the angry tumult with which his soul labored. There was no sorrow in his look, no feeling of sadness or regret for the greatest loss man ever experienced, that of a good woman's love. With him vanity was the grand passion. Touch that and he became sensitive as a boy of fifteen. In all things else he was invulnerable.
And yet Mabel's Journal might have touched deeper feelings than her husband was capable of knowing. Another man would have been roused to compassion by the fragments of thought, sometimes artless, sometimes passionate, that seemed to have dropped fresh from her heart upon the pages he was reading.
He opened the vellum book at the beginning, for with all his impatience, the methodical habits of his life prevailed even then, and at first, there was little to excite more than a strong curiosity. But as he read on, the perturbation we have described in his countenance, became evident. He turned over the leaves violently, glancing here and there, as if eager to devour his mortification at a single dash. The cleft heart, whose breaking had given him access to poor Mabel's secrets, struck against his hand as he closed the book, and opened it again at random. He tore the pretty trinket away, and dashed it into the grate, and a curse broke from his shut teeth, as he saw it fall glowing among the hot embers. Then he turned back to the beginning, and began to read more deliberately, allowing his anger to cool and harden, like lava, above his smouldering wrath.
Thus it was that Mabel commenced her journal.