CHAPTER LVII.
MRS. DENNISON URGES LAWRENCE TO PROPOSE.
The next morning Mrs. Dennison kept up the subdued character of the previous night. Her eyes were heavy and full of troubled mist, her movements had lost their elasticity, and an air of touching depression supplanted the graceful audacity of her usual manner.
Mr. Lee was grave and silent; he once or twice glanced at our guest, with some anxiety in his look, but made no comment on her changed appearance.
After breakfast I went out for a walk. The morning was bright and cool, inviting me to a long ramble. But my health was not altogether restored, and anxiety made me listless; so I walked slowly across the face of the hill, came out at the footpath on the ridge, and wandered on till I came to the rock which terminated it. I had been sitting on it a little while, gazing languidly down at the gleams of water that came up through the green hemlocks, some two hundred feet beneath, when the sound of voices from the grove disturbed me.
I had a nervous dread of being seen by Mrs. Dennison or her friends, and let myself down from the rock to the face of the precipitous descent—a perilous exploit—for a false step might have sent me headlong to the river below. I became sensible of the danger of my position after the first moment, and, clinging to a young ash-tree, pressed myself against the leaning trunk of a hemlock and waited for the persons, whose voices I had heard, to pass.
Directly two persons came winding down the path, and stood upon the rock I had just left. It was Mrs. Dennison and Mr. Lawrence, talking eagerly. The languor that had marked her appearance at breakfast was gone. She was sharp and animated, spoke with earnestness, and seemed now pleading, now explaining. I caught a glimpse of his face. It was flushed with anger, not to say rage.
"It is useless to upbraid me. I loved you; it was death to give you up. At a distance it seemed easy enough; but when I saw you together and marked something too real in your devotion, it drove me mad. I could not marry you myself, poverty-stricken wretches that we are! but you cannot blame me if the trial of giving you to another was beyond human strength."
"But you were false. You told me that she also was false; that she secretly encouraged young Bosworth; that I was treacherously undermining my own friend."
Lawrence spoke in a loud, angry voice. The look which he bent on her was stormy with passion.
"Lawrence, this rage is useless. I did all that lay in my power to break up the work I had helped to do. For a time, poverty, anything seemed better than the possibility of seeing you the husband of that proud girl. Then my own future was uncertain; now it is assured. Between them the father and daughter have unbounded wealth. It is worth a great sacrifice—I make it. This is my first step, my first humiliation. It was false. All that I told you was false. She did not love that young man, she did love you. I fancied—and here the trouble arose—that you were beginning to love her, that it gave you no pain to change. This embittered me. I misrepresented her, told you that she visited Bosworth's sick-chamber from affection, when I knew that it was only the persuasion of that troublesome Miss Hyde which sent her to the house. Now I take it all back. She is heart-whole save in love for you. She never cared for him in the least. It was you she loved."