I stopped her in time. I was not there to listen to anything which would force me to act. If there was action to be taken she must take it or Edgar.
“I don’t want to hear anything against Edgar,” I admonished her as soon as I could get her attention. “I am not the one to be told his faults. If they are such as Justice requires to have made known, you must seek another confessor. What I want is for you to refrain from further alarming the whole household. Miss Bartholomew is frightened, very much frightened by what she hears of your manner below stairs and of the complete isolation in which you keep your patient. It was she who sent for me to come here. I do not want to stay,—I cannot. Will you promise me to remain quiet for the rest of the night? To think out your problem quietly and then to take advice either from the doctor who appears to understand some of your difficulties or from—”
“Don’t say it! Don’t say it,” she cried below breath. “I know what my duty is, but, oh, I had rather die on the spot than do it.”
“Remember your young mistress. Remember how she is placed. Forget yourself. Forget your love for Edgar. Forget everything but what you owe to your dead master whose strongest wish was to see his daughter happy.”
“How can she be? How can she be? How can any of us ever be light-hearted again? But I will remember. I—will—try.” Then in a burst, as another cry of “Lucy” came from the other room, “Do you think Miss Orpha’s heart will go out to you if—if—”
I shrank away from her; I groped for the door. That question here!—in this semi-gloom—from such lips as these! A question far too sacred and too fraught with possibilities of yea and nay for me to hear it unmoved, bade me begone before I lost myself in uncontrollable anger.
“Do not ask me that,” I managed to exclaim. “All I can say is that I love my cousin sincerely and that some day I hope to marry her, fortune or no fortune.”
I thought I heard her murmur “And you shall,” but I was not sure and never will be. What I did hear was a promise from her to be quiet and to keep to the room where she was.
However, when I had rejoined Haines and we had gone to the floor below, I asked him if he would be good enough to relieve me for the night by keeping a personal watch over his young mistress. “If only I could feel assured that you were sitting here somewhere within sight of her door I should rest easy. Will you do that for me, Haines?”
“As I did that last night on my own account, I do not think it will be very hard for me to do it to-night on yours. I am proud to think you trust me, sir, to help you in your trouble.”