“Ah, what is this?” exclaimed my mother, holding up a rose-colored note which she had found among the cape jessamines that lay in a wreath between the basket and the fruit.
“This will explain who has sent the gift, I fancy,” answered my father, taking the note; “I searched for something of the kind at first, but could find nothing.”
He unfolded the paper carelessly as he spoke. She was looking up, and I had stopped eating, curious to know all about it. I shall never forget the change that came over my father as the writing struck his eye. His face, even to the lips, whitened. He felt her gaze upon him, and crushed the note in his hand, while flashes of red came and went across his forehead.
She turned pale as death, and without asking a question stood up, swaying as if a current of air swept over her. Some magnetic influence must have linked us three together. Surely the pulses in my father’s heart reached some string in ours by those subtle affinities that no wisdom has yet explained. I felt a chill creeping over me; the fruit lay neglected in my lap, I cast it aside upon the carpet, and creeping to my mother, clung to her hand, hiding myself in the folds of her robe.
My father still held the note, gazing upon it in silence, buried in thought. His face had regained its pallid composure; he seemed to have forgotten our presence. At length he looked up, but not at us, and with a forced smile broke the seal. He glanced at the contents, then held it toward my mother with the same constrained air and smile; but his hand shook, and even I could see that something very painful had come over him.
“From Marston Court.”
This, with a date, was all the note contained. She read it over and over again. It explained nothing. It was but a single sentence, the name of a place of which she had never heard, but she looked in his face and remained pale as before. The intuition of a heart like hers is stronger than reason.
A constraint fell upon us. I crept away among my cushions, and felt the twilight darken around us. Then I sunk into a heavy-hearted sleep, for my parents were both silent, and I was soon forgotten.
When I awoke the windows were still open, and the room seemed empty. The moonbeams lay white and full upon the clematis vines, and their blossoms stirred beneath them like masses of snow. Children always turn to the light. Darkness seems unnatural to them. I crept out into the balcony, and clambering up the old balustrade, looked out on the garden. Close by the wilderness where the shadows lay deepest, I saw a man walking to and fro like a ghost. Once he came out into the moonlight, and I knew that it was my father.
A narrow flight of steps, choked up with creeping vines, ran down from the balcony. I scrambled over them on my hands and knees, tearing my way through the clematis like a wild animal, and leaving great fragments of my dress behind. I ran through the flower-beds, trampling down their sweet growth, and pausing on the verge of the shadow—for I was afraid of the dark—called out.