It was more than a minute before the woman lifted her head; then her face was pale, and a deep smouldering purpose burned like fire in the depths of her eyes. She looked around wildly, as if searching for the man who had just left the room; then her recollection seemed to come back, and she went up to the table, examining everything upon it with eager haste. The journal was no longer there, but in its place she found a folded paper placed in a small portfolio, which bore the General's initials.
The paper shook in her hands as she unfolded it, for all her former agitation had come back; and, in her haste to read, the fire seemed to leap from her black eyes over the writing. It was the life-deed which had just passed between General Harrington and his son-in-law.
The woman laughed as she folded up the paper—a laugh of such bitter mockery that it started even herself, as if some other person had been reviling her.
"And has it ended in this, after years of plotting and privations that would have killed a common person? Have I ended in binding them more firmly together. This accounts for his solicitude for her welfare. This is why these visits of mine trouble him. They might break the compact which secures repose and reputation to Mabel Harrington, for so much money—and she is to triumph a second time! I am nothing—a weed, a bit of miserable night-shade that has poison in it, and nothing more."
As she muttered over these thoughts, more and more slowly, the woman folded her arms, and stood immovable for several minutes; her brow grew dark as midnight, and a strange, settled expression came up to her face, as if the poison she had just spoken of were diffusing itself through her entire system. At last she heard steps approaching the library, and hurried away through the disused entrance.
CHAPTER LXVII.
THE EVENING RIDE.
As Ralph Harrington was returning from Benson's cabin one night, he met Agnes Barker. It was yet early in the evening, but the sharp, frosty air rendered it singular that a young girl should have ventured into the cold, without some important object to urge her forth. Ralph had been touched, and a good deal subdued, by his conversation with Ben; and he would gladly have avoided this rencontre with the governess, who invariably left him excited and wretched with fresh doubts whenever he conversed with her. But Agnes came directly towards him, and he remarked that her manner of walking was excited, and like that of a person who had some important object to pursue.
"Mr. Ralph Harrington, you have been unjust to me. When I told you that Lina French was still in the neighborhood quietly domesticated, where your saintly step-brother could visit her at will, you disbelieved me, and cast discredit on my word. Since then, James Harrington has disappeared mysteriously as she did. I now say that he, also, is in the city, making preparations to take the girl South; in a few days she will leave it with him."
"Why should he take this course, Miss Barker, if it is true? My brother was wealthy, free, and has been for years his own master. If he loved Lina, there was no need of concealment—nothing but my own mad passion stood in the way, and Heaven knows that I was ready to take the heart from my bosom, could that have made him or her happier. There is a mystery in all this that I cannot fathom. My brother, so noble, so more than generous, could not have lived the life he has, to prove this traitor to himself and us at last."