“I will never turn you off.”
“Not if I should do a dreadful thing? Not if I should run away with my lover some fine night, and leave uncle to discover how his affectionate partiality had been requited?”
It was lightly said, and lightly meant, for she did not even wait for my reply. But its seed sank deep into our two hearts for all that. And for the next few days I spent my time in planning how I should manage, if it should ever fall to my lot to conduct to a successful issue so enthralling a piece of business as an elopement. You may imagine, then, how delighted I was, when one evening Hannah, this unhappy girl who is now lying dead under my roof, and who was occupying the position of lady’s maid to Miss Mary Leavenworth at that time, came to my door with a note from her mistress, running thus:
“Have the loveliest story of the season ready for me to-morrow; and let the prince be as handsome as—as some one you have heard of, and the princess as foolish as your little yielding pet,
“MARY.”
Which short note could only mean that she was engaged. But the next day did not bring me my Mary, nor the next, nor the next; and beyond hearing that Mr. Leavenworth had returned from his trip I received neither word nor token. Two more days dragged by, when, just as twilight set in, she came. It had been a week since I had seen her, but it might have been a year from the change I observed in her countenance and expression. I could scarcely greet her with any show of pleasure, she was so unlike her former self.
“You are disappointed, are you not?” said she, looking at me. “You expected revelations, whispered hopes, and all manner of sweet confidences; and you see, instead, a cold, bitter woman, who for the first time in your presence feels inclined to be reserved and uncommunicative.”
“That is because you have had more to trouble than encourage you in your love,” I returned, though not without a certain shrinking, caused more by her manner than words.
She did not reply to this, but rose and paced the floor, coldly at first, but afterwards with a certain degree of excitement that proved to be the prelude to a change in her manner; for, suddenly pausing, she turned to me and said: “Mr. Clavering has left R——, Mrs. Belden.”
“Left!”