“Ha, jolife!” said Ada, under her breath. She did not like Oakham.
Clarice, on the contrary, was inclined to make an exclamation of horror. For never to return to Oakham meant never to see Heliet again. And what could the Countess mean by a statement which sounded at least as if she were not intending to return?
Concerning Felicia the Countess said nothing. That misnamed young lady had during the past few months been trying her best to make Heliet miserable. She began by attempting to flirt with Sir Ademar, but she found him completely impervious material. Her arrows glanced upon his shield, and simply dropped off without further notice. Then she took to taunting Heliet with her lameness, but Heliet kept her temper. Next she sneered at her religious views. Heliet answered her gently, gravely, but held her own with undiminished calmness. This point had been reached when the Countess’s order was given to depart from Oakham.
Even those least disposed to note the signs of the times felt the pressure of some impending calamity. The strange manner of the Countess, the restless misery of the Earl, whom they all loved, the busy, bustling, secretly-triumphant air of Father Miles—all denoted some hidden working. Father Bevis had been absent for some weeks, and when he returned he wore the appearance of a baffled and out-wearied man.
“He looks both tired and disappointed,” remarked Clarice to Heliet.
“He looks,” said Heliet, “like a man who had been trying very hard to scale the wall of a tower, and had been flung back, bruised and helpless, upon the stones below.”
During the four months last spent at Oakham, Clarice had been absolutely silent to Heliet on the subject of her own peculiar trouble. Perhaps she might have remained so, had it not been for the approaching separation. But her lips were unsealed by the strong possibility that they might never meet again. It was late on the last evening that Clarice spoke, as she sat rocking Rose’s cradle. She laid bare her heart before Heliet’s sympathising eyes, until she could trace the whole weary journey through the arid desert sands.
“And now tell me, friend,” Clarice ended, “why our Lord deals so differently with thee and with me. Are we not both His children? Yet to thee He hath given the desire of thine heart, and on mine He lays His hand, and says, ‘No, child, thou must not have it.’”
“I suppose, beloved,” was Heliet’s gentle answer, “that the treatment suitable for consumption will not answer for fever. We are both sick of the deadly disease of sin; but it takes a different development in each. Shall we wonder if the Physician bleeds the one, and administers strengthening medicines to the other?”
Clarice’s lip quivered, but she rocked Rose’s cradle without answering.