"I thought his mirth indecent, his manner out of keeping with the occasion, and the whole situation atrocious. But I saw he was about to leave, and said nothing; but I did not drink his toast. When he was gone, I broke his glass by flinging it at my own reflection, in a glass I had bought to mirror her beauty; and before the day was spent, I had destroyed every destructible article in the house whose value or whose prettiness spoke of the attempt I had made to alter my home from a bachelor's abode to the nest I had thought in keeping with the dove I had failed to place there. As I did it I filled the house with mocking laughter; that I should have thought that this or that would please her, who would have found a palace open to criticism, and the splendors of a throne room scarce grand enough for her taste! I was but suffering the stings of a lifetime compressed into a day, and was miserable because I could see no prospect but further addition to my suffering."
CHAPTER XIII.
BEFORE THE WEDDING.
"Two weeks after this I was sitting beside my solitary hearth, musing upon my misery and longing for the blessed relief of sleep. There was no one with me in the house. I had dismissed every servant; for I would have no spies about me, prying into my misery; and though I could not keep the world of men and women from my doors, I could at least refuse to admit them; and this I did—living the life of a recluse almost as much as I do here, but with less ease, because the wind would bring whispers, and the walls were not thick enough to shut out from my fancy the curious glances I felt to be cast upon them by every passer-by that wandered through the street.
"On this night I had been thinking of Miss Dudleigh, of whose visibly failing health various murmurs had reached me, and I felt, notwithstanding my determination to hold myself aloof from every one and everything that could in any way reopen my still smarting wound, I could more easily find the sleep I longed for if some word from the great house would relieve the suspense in which my ignorance kept me. But I would not go there if I died of my anxiety, nor would I stoop to question any of the market men or women, who were the only persons admitted now within my doors.
"The clock was striking, and the strange sense of desolation which is inseparable from this sound to a solitary man (you see I have no clock here) was stealing over me, when I heard a tap on one of the windows overlooking my small garden, and a voice came through the lattice, crying:
"'Massa—Massa Felt.'
"I knew the voice at once. It was that of one of Miss Dudleigh's servants, an honest black, who had always been devoted to me from the day he did me some trifling service with Miss Leighton. Hearing it now, and after such thoughts, I was so moved by the promise it gave of news from the one quarter I desired, that I stumbled as I rose, and found difficulty in answering him. Nor did I recover my self-possession for hours; for the story he had to tell—after numerous apologies for his presumption in disturbing me—was so significant of coming evil that my mind was thrown again into turmoil, and the passions which I had tried to smother were roused again into action.
"It was simply this: That one evening after Mr. Urquhart's departure, and the extinguishing of all the lights in the house, he had occasion to cross the garden. That in doing this he had heard voices, and, stepping cautiously forward, perceived, lying upon the snow-covered ground, near a certain belt of evergreens, the shadows of two persons, whose forms were hidden from his sight. Being both curious and concerned, he halted before coming too close and, listening, heard Mr. Urquhart's voice, and presently that of Miss Leighton, both speaking very earnestly.