There was a silence, only broken by the monotonous ticking of the carved Swiss clock and the deep sobs of the kneeling girl. There was a sudden whiz of spinning wheels—"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" screamed the little painted bird derisively, as he appeared for an instant from his tiny box to mark the hour. Both girls started at the inauspicious interruption.
"I save you, my darling! How can I save you? And father, poor father. Oh, Lucy! how could you—how could you so deceive us all? But he must be sent for—who is the man? He must marry you—he will marry you, of course, at once, this gentleman!"
But Lucy only sobbed the more.
"He will never marry me, Georgie. You can save me, you alone!"
She never named the man.
They talked on far into the night; and as they wept and whispered, the painted wooden demon ever and again sprang from his box and startled them with his discordant cry,
"Cuckoo! cuckoo!"
How could she refuse? Much against her will at last she yielded; she agreed to deceive the absent husband who trusted her—that heartless husband whom she idolized. From that day forward the sound of a cuckoo clock—the voice of the bird himself, as she heard him in the woods—sounded in her ear as the cry of a mocking devil. Little did she dream that, in weakly yielding to her cousin's piteous entreaty, she was sowing the seed of which she and hers should reap the bitter harvest.
What could she do, poor girl? She felt it was her duty. Who can tell if she erred? If so, it was on mercy's side. Next morning Lucy was herself again; she was once more the buoyant, merry girl, who smiled and chattered, and sang her little scraps of French songs, making the sunshine of the house. The rôles were changed. Never again shall the light of perfect happiness beam in Georgie Haggard's once honest eyes—those eyes now red with weeping, full of the secret sorrow of her cousin's bitter confidence. It is always painful to an honourable mind to play the part of a conspirator, and that thankless rôle was now forced upon poor Georgie—willy-nilly she had to do it. Lucy's fertile brain teemed with plan, with plot, with stratagem; certain of ultimately conquering the scruples of her gentle and loving cousin, she had evidently thought the matter out.
"We ought to trust nobody, you know," said the younger girl, who had suddenly assumed the management of everything. Startled and horrified, Georgie had become in regard to her cousin, that born intriguer, but as clay in the hands of the potter. "No, we ought not to, but we must. If ever a girl in this world could keep her tongue between her teeth, it's that pale Hephzibah of ours, and trust her we must, there's nothing else for it."