CHAPTER XX.
ON THE STROKE OF ELEVEN.
"What, my daughter, up at this late hour!" exclaimed Fawkes, as he entered the room where Elinor sat. "I had deemed thee long abed."
The man threw himself into a chair by the fire with an air of fatigue, and sat in moody silence. The girl glanced up; then arising, passed over to him and lightly kissed his brow. The caress did not meet with any response; in fact, he seemed scarcely conscious of it, and after a moment's hesitation, Elinor resumed her seat.
She had led a strange existence for the past eight months;—ever waiting, ever dreading, and as yet nothing had occurred. To her this period had been one of breathless suspense, like the moment before the storm, when trees hang lifeless in a stifling atmosphere, and animals raise their heads in frightened expectancy, awaiting with nameless terror the first gust which shall herald the tornado. Since her father's return from France, she noted that the air of preoccupation apparent before his departure, was now intensified. While in his kindness toward her the girl could detect no change, still, there had come between them a species of estrangement. Seldom was there an opportunity for them to converse, for Fawkes was up before daylight, and rarely returned until after the midnight hour had sounded. Often it was in her heart to ask his confidence—often to hint that she had overheard his words on that fearful night,—but when she approached with such intent, a nameless something in his manner held her mute.
The source from which she had hoped would flow sweet waters of comfort and relief proved dry and arid as summer dust; he to whom in an outburst of anguish she had confided her grief vanished completely from her life, as though the earth had engulfed him. True, Garnet visited her many times after the night she unburdened her heart to him, but his counsel was ever the same—to wait; at times she even imagined there was in his tones a hint at justification of her father's utterance. However, since the day on which Fawkes had returned, the Jesuit had never passed the threshold of the house. How to account for this absence she knew not, but in a vague way associated it with the mystery surrounding her father.
Winter, Elinor had not seen; her wonder at his studious avoidance of her was matched by the terror with which she anticipated meeting him. And her first grief?—the forced sacrifice of life's happiness with the man she loved—had time been kind, and stilled the aching of her heart? No; for in it the flame burned as brightly as when upon that day, long ago, his first kiss had breathed upon the glowing spark, changing it into a tongue of flame which leaped to her very lips. Where Effingston had gone, she did not know, but her prayers were ever the same, that in the abyss wherein lay her own fair fame he should cast his love;—so grief for him would cease to exist.
At last the silence of the room was broken by the man before the fire, who turned toward her, and, as if but just noting her presence, said, drowsily: "Daughter, methinks such late hours ill befit thee. It hath long since struck twelve; thou hast already lost thy beauty sleep."