Turner was there in the evening, and they conversed together alone, for more than an hour. The old man left us, with tears in his eyes. I heard my mother say to him in her low, sad voice, for she was always sad now,
“Do not fail me, my good friend; I shall never ask another favor of you, so grant me this.”
“Poh, poh!” was his answer, “you will ask five thousand; and I shall perform every one, trust old Turner for that!”
But there were tears in the old man’s voice, I was sure of that. After his departure my mother was greatly disturbed, walking the room, wringing her hands, and convulsed with the tearless grief that rends one’s heart-strings so silently.
CHAPTER XX.
MY MOTHER’S LAST APPEAL.
When it drew toward midnight, and she saw me, to all appearance, sleeping tranquilly on the floor, I heard a movement in the room as if my mother were preparing to go out. I opened my eyes and watched.
She took up the cashmere shawl and folded it over her head and person, leaving only the face exposed, after the fashion of a Spanish mantilla. Her face looked thin, but very beautiful, surrounded by those gorgeous colors, for her cheeks were of a burning scarlet; and her eyes—in my life I have never seen an expression like theirs. It was like the reflection of a star in deep waters. She stole out through the balcony. I heard her descend to the garden, and followed, actuated, I think, by a vague dread that she was about to leave me forever.
She threaded the wilderness with a quick step, and kept her way through the grounds cut up into thickets and flower-beds that lay around Greenhurst. I do not think that she had ever been there before in her life, but she seemed to find the way by intuition. I followed close, but unseen, and to my surprise saw her pass into the hall by the back entrance, through which Lord Clare had led me. The door was not entirely closed after her, and I crept through. The hall was dark, but she moved noiselessly on, gliding like a shadow up the broad staircase.
Now I was guided only by the faint ripple of her garments, for the upper halls lay in perfect darkness, and she was more in advance.
I saw by the glow of light that came into the darkness, that a door had been softly opened, in which a lamp was burning, and moved along the wall till I stood in view of a bed-chamber lighted as with moonbeams, for a lamp had been placed within an alabaster vase, evidently for this subduing purpose. I saw nothing distinctly in the room, but have a vague remembrance of a cloud of azure silk and rich lace brooding in one corner of the chamber—a couch underneath, white as mountain snow, and on it that woman, asleep, and my mother gazing upon her.