Now, as Maltravers looked up to answer, he caught Evelyn's glance, and his voice faltered.
"Yes," he said, "we shall meet—once again. Adieu!" He wheeled round his horse, and they separated.
"I can bear this no more," said Maltravers to himself; "I overrated my strength. To see her thus, day after day, and to know her another's, to writhe beneath his calm, unconscious assertion of his rights! Happy Vargrave!—and yet, ah! will she be happy? Oh, could I think so!"
Thus soliloquizing, he suffered the rein to fall on the neck of his horse, which paced slowly home through the village, till it stopped—as if in the mechanism of custom—at the door of a cottage a stone's throw from the lodge. At this door, indeed, for several successive days, had Maltravers stopped regularly; it was now tenanted by the poor woman his introduction to whom has been before narrated. She had recovered from the immediate effects of the injury she had sustained; but her constitution, greatly broken by previous suffering and exhaustion, had received a mortal shock. She was hurt inwardly; and the surgeon informed Maltravers that she had not many months to live. He had placed her under the roof of one of his favourite cottagers, where she received all the assistance and alleviation that careful nursing and medical advice could give her.
This poor woman, whose name was Sarah Elton, interested Maltravers much. She had known better days: there was a certain propriety in her expressions which denoted an education superior to her circumstances; and what touched Maltravers most, she seemed far more to feel her husband's death than her own sufferings,—which, somehow or other, is not common with widows the other side of forty! We say that youth easily consoles itself for the robberies of the grave,—middle age is a still better self-comforter. When Mrs. Elton found herself installed in the cottage, she looked round, and burst into tears.
"And William is not here!" she said. "Friends—friends! if we had had but one such friend before he died!"
Maltravers was pleased that her first thought was rather that of sorrow for the dead than of gratitude for the living. Yet Mrs. Elton was grateful,—simply, honestly, deeply grateful; her manner, her voice, betokened it. And she seemed so glad when her benefactor called to speak kindly and inquire cordially, that Maltravers did so constantly; at first from a compassionate and at last from a selfish motive—for who is not pleased to give pleasure? And Maltravers had so few in the world to care for him, that perhaps he was flattered by the grateful respect of this humble stranger.
When his horse stopped, the cottager's daughter opened the door and courtesied,—it was an invitation to enter; and he threw his rein over the paling and walked into the cottage.
Mrs. Elton, who had been seated by the open casement, rose to receive him. But Maltravers made her sit down, and soon put her at her ease. The woman and her daughter who occupied the cottage retired into the garden, and Mrs. Elton, watching them withdraw, then exclaimed abruptly,—
"Oh, sir, I have so longed to see you this morning! I so long to make bold to ask you whether, indeed, I dreamed it—or did I, when you first took me to your house—did I see—" She stopped abruptly; and though she strove to suppress her emotion, it was too strong for her efforts,—she sank back on her chair, pale as death, and almost gasped for breath.