Ralph wrung the hand extended to him, and the two went out, each taking his own way.
CHAPTER LXXV.
THE DESERTED CHAMBER.
Mabel had been very ill; the sense of humiliation, the outrage on every feeling of delicacy that had beset her after the fragments of that vellum book were placed in her hand, fell upon her strength with terrible effect. To herself, she seemed disgraced forever; the holiest portion of her life was torn away, to be trodden down by the feet of the multitude. No sin, however heinous, could have fallen upon her with more crushing effect. The very maturity of age, which should have so far removed her from the romance of love, embittered her grief by a sense of self-ridicule. At times, she felt like reviling and scoffing at affections that up to this time had been hoarded away from her own thoughts. For a train of wrong feelings, unaccompanied by a single false act, save that of her marriage, she was suffering the most terrible humiliation before God and her own conscience.
Is it strange that her nerves, so long excited and so delicate in themselves, gave way at last, prostrating her to the earth, strengthless as a child? She did not leave her room, she scarcely looked up when the servants entered it, and was so broken and bowed down by the weight of her shame, that even the absence of her son was disregarded. No criminal ever shrank from the face of man more sensitively than this high-souled woman.
It annoyed Mabel to see any one enter her apartments. When the mulatto chambermaid came there, in the ordinary course of her duties, she would shrink back in her chair and shade her eyes, as if some hideous spectre had crossed her path; but, if Agnes Barker entered, this nervous shock became unendurable, and it was with the greatest effort that she could refrain from rushing madly into the next room, and holding the door against her intrusions.
One night—it was that on which James Harrington went out in search of an explanation from the General—Mabel was more terribly oppressed than ever; all the bitter recollections of a most tedious life crowded upon her at once. She longed to flee away into some new place, where human intrusion would be impossible—and yet Agnes Barker would enter the room; again and again she saw the poor woman wince and shiver at her approach, but with malicious servility insisted on arranging her cushions, and performing all those little services which are so sweet when love prompts them, yet which fall upon us like insults when rendered by those against whom our natures are in repulsion. To save herself from this officious tending, Mabel inquired for the mulatto woman, preferring her presence to the endurance of attentions so oppressive.
Agnes smiled sweetly at the inquiry: "but the chambermaid had gone out," she said, "and might not be back till late; meantime, it was a happiness to attend madam—was the cushion comfortably arranged? should she move the footstool?"
The girl sank upon her knees, and, in moving the ottoman, touched Mabel's foot with her hand. The excited woman sprang up with a shudder, as if a rattlesnake had crept across her ankles, and, unable to endure the presence of her tormentor a moment more, hurried out of the room.
"Is there no place," she said, moving wildly forward, "no place in which I can hide myself, and snatch a moment's rest? Will these creatures trail themselves in my path forever and ever!"