CHAPTER LI.
‘Who would trust slippery chance?’
But, after all, Ella has a card of her own, that is not from Susan, or Betty, or Carew. Some hours ago the post brought it to her, and she has gone out into the garden, that is now lovely in its white garments, with the red berries of the holly-trees peeping through the snow, to read it and look at it again.
The walks have been swept clear by Denis, who has come down from Dublin to spend a long (a very long) and happy Christmas week with his wife. A third person in Mrs. Denis’s kitchen and private apartments might have questioned about the happiness, but that it is a lively week goes beyond all doubt.
With Ella’s card a little line had come too. Mr. Wyndham was coming down by the afternoon train, to see to something for Crosby, who had written to him from Carlsbad, and he hoped to call at the Cottage before his return. Ella reads and re-reads the little note. The afternoon train comes in at one o’clock. It is now after twelve. Soon he will be here! How kind he is to her! How good! And to remember that Christmas card! She had heard Susan and Betty talking of Christmas cards, and they had sent her one, each of them, and Carew had sent one, too. They also were kind, so kind; but that Mr. Wyndham should remember her, with all his other friends to think of!
Alone in this dear garden, with no one to hear or see her, she gives way to her mood. Miss Manning has gone up to Dublin to spend her Christmas Day with an old friend, urged thereto by Ella, who, indeed, wished to be alone after her post had come. Now she can walk about here, and speak to her own heart without interruption, Mrs. Denis being engaged in that intellectual game called ‘words’ with her husband. Oh, how happy she feels—how extraordinarily happy! She laughs aloud, and, lifting her arms, crosses them with lazy delight behind her head, and amongst the warm furs that encircle her neck. This action draws her head backwards—her eyes upwards——
Upwards! To the top of the wall on that far distant corner. There her eyes rest as if transfixed, and then grow frozen in this awful horror that has come to her. Where is the happiness now in the eyes—the young, glad joy?
She stands as if stricken into stone, staring into a face that is staring back at her.
On the wall close to the old tree, from which she loves to look into the Rectory garden and wave a handkerchief to the children there to come to her, sits Moore, the man from whom she had fled; the man whom she dreads most of all things upon earth; the man who wanted to marry her!
Oh dear, dear Heaven, is all her good time ended? Such a little, little time, too—such a transient gleam of light—and all so black behind it! Like a flash her life spreads itself out before her. What a childhood! Unmothered, unloved! What a cold, terrible girlhood! and then a few short months of quiet rest and calm, and now again the old, hideous misery.