Two hours afterward all Barton was placarded with the announcement that, in consequence of sudden domestic bereavement, Miss Doris Marlowe would not appear that evening, and that in place of “Romeo and Juliet,” would be performed the famous drama, “The Corsican Brothers.”
Mr. Spenser Churchill was as good as his word. If he had been a near and dear relative of the bereaved girl, he could not more completely have taken the whole arrangements into his own hands. He saw to the funeral, examined the dead man’s papers and effects; even carried his thoughtful consideration so far as to ask Mrs. Jelf to order mourning for Miss Marlowe and herself. In fact he did all that was necessary on such mournful occasions—all except one thing. By a strange oversight, Mr. Spenser Churchill omitted to send notice of the death to the newspapers, so that there was nothing to tell Lord Cecil Neville, away in Ireland, that the girl he loved had suddenly been left alone in the world!
CHAPTER XVII.
A CHANCE FOR ESCAPE.
Alone in the world! Lying back in a chair by the open window of the woodman’s cottage—for she could not bring herself to go back to the lodgings in Barton, where every inanimate object would remind her of the father-like friend she had lost—Doris kept repeating the ominous words to herself. Although a week had passed since the funeral she had not yet recovered from the terrible blow, and as she lay back with half-closed eyes and white, wan face she still looked “like one wandering in other worlds than this.”
The dead man had been so much to her. Mother, father, brother—indeed her only friend and companion—that the sense of helplessness which follows all bereavement was intensified in her case. She was indeed utterly alone; drifting on the stream of life like a rudderless vessel, to be blown hither and thither by the cruel caprice of every wind. Since the day of Jeffrey’s death she had seen no one excepting the kind-hearted woman of the cottage, Mrs. Jelf; and had done nothing but commune in silence with the great sorrow that had fallen upon her.
In one day, in one hour, she had lost her lover and the man who had been as a father to her.
She tried to put all thought of Lord Cecil Neville away from her, and to think of Jeffrey alone; but with an agony of remorse she found that the loss of her lover seemed almost as great a grief as the death of poor Jeffrey.
All day long she dwelt upon the joy and happiness of those few short days while he had been hers; recalling every word he had spoken, every tone of the musical voice that seemed to have spoken of nothing but love—deep, true, passionate love to her. She remembered how many times he had kissed her, the fond endearing names by which he had called her; and now it was all over! So completely a thing of the past, and gone from her life, that it appeared more like a dream than a reality. Were it not for the aching void in her heart, and the letter—the cruel letter he had written, and that lay crushed and hidden against her bosom—she could almost have believed that no such person as Cecil Neville existed.
Where was he now? she wondered. Did he still think of her? or had he never really loved her?