“Go on. I wish to learn whose treachery betrayed the secret of my retreat.”
Pressing her feverish lips to the hand she admired so enthusiastically, Miss Dexter resumed her recital of what had occurred since her journey to London, and finally ended it with an account of her removal to ‘Grassmere,’ and of the discovery of the miniatures that guided her to ‘Solitude.’
A long pause followed, and a heavy sigh, only partially smothered, indexed the contest that raged under Mrs. Gerome’s calm exterior.
“Edith, would you have inferred from Dr. Grey’s manner that he was not only acquainted with my history, but yours, at least, so far as it intersected mine? Did he furnish no hint, no clew, that aided you in your search?”
“None whatever. On the contrary, he appeared so preoccupied, so abstracted, that I reproached him with indifference to my troubles. It is not possible that he knew all, while I briefly summed up a portion of the past.”
“At that moment he was thoroughly cognizant of everything that I could tell him. But, at least, one honorable, trustworthy man yet graces the race; one pure, incorruptible, and consistent Christian remains to shed lustre upon a church that can nowhere boast his peer. I confided all to Dr. Grey, and he has kept the trust. Ah, Edith, if you had only reposed the same confidence in me, during those halcyon days of our early friendship,—days that seem to me now as far off, as dim and unreal, as those starry nights when I lay in my little crib, dreaming of that mother whose face I never saw, whose smile is one of the surprises and blessings reserved for eternity,—how different my lot and yours might have been! Why did you not trust me with your happy hopes, your lover’s name and difficulties? How differently I would have invested that fortune, which proved our common ruin, 421 and doomed three lives to uselessness and woe. To-day you might have proudly worn the name that I utterly detest; and I, the outcast, the wanderer, the tireless, friendless waif, drifting despairingly down the tide of time,—even I, the unloved, might have been, not a solitary cumberer, not a household upas,—but why taunt the hideous Actual with a blessed and beautiful Impossible? Ah, truly, truly,—
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“‘What might have been, I know, is not: What must be, must be borne; But ah! what hath been will not be forgot, Never, oh! never, in the years to follow!’” |
She closed her eyes and seemed pondering the past, and mutely the governess prayed that hallowed memories of their former affection might soften her apparently petrified heart.
Edith saw a great change overspread the countenance, but could not accurately interpret its import; and her own heart began to beat the long-roll.
The heavy black eyelashes lying on Mrs. Gerome’s marble cheeks glistened, trembled, and tears stole slowly across her face. She raised her hand, but dropped it in her lap, and frowned slightly and sighed. Then she lifted it once more, and looking through the shining mist that magnified her splendid eyes, she laid her fingers on the golden head of the kneeling woman.