“Frightened! what at? oh, you silly child! But come, let us have dinner; I shall be ready in less than ten minutes. The idea of being frightened!” and with a smile of compassionate derision, Harry marched off to dress, humming—
“A southerly wind and a cloudy sky
Proclaim it a hunting morning.”
And this was Alice’s recompense for a lonely day spent in looking forward to, and longing for, her husband’s return, ending in half-an-hour of breathless anxiety for his safety! She felt decidedly cross, and we think she had a right to be so. During dinner she was silent and dignified on principle—her husband should see that she felt his neglect. But Harry didn’t see it one bit, bless him! He was very hungry, so for some time kept strictly to business, and he was very happy, so when his appetite was appeased, he rattled on about anything and everything, and was so pleasant and cheerful that Alice felt dignity would be quite out of place, had a little struggle with her feelings, and then mentally forgave him.
To prove that she did so, she laid herself out to entertain and amuse him, and with this view, when the servant had left the room, she treated him to a comic account of her day’s adventures, and having talked herself into a great state of communicativeness and sociability, had just reached the bass cow episode, when a slight sound, not very unlike the voice of the cow itself, reached her ear—Harry had fallen fast asleep!
CHAPTER XXII.—KATE SOWS THE WIND.
So Kate Marsden married the cotton-spinner, and old Mr. Hazlehurst repurchased his farm on very easy terms. We wonder which of the two was best pleased with the bargain! Kate turned very pale when she promised to love, honour, and obey a man whom she disliked, despised, and intended to rule; nor do we wonder at it, for, with all her faults, Kate perceived the intrinsic beauty of truth, and loved it, as she did everything beautiful. But though she loathed herself for what she was doing, though her bitterest enemy could not have taken a harsher view of her conduct than she herself took, she had gone too far to retract, and having swallowed the camel of crushing her own heart and that of Arthur Hazlehurst, she could not stultify herself by straining at the gnat of swearing falsely in the service for the solemnization of matrimony. Kate’s was one of that peculiar order of consciences which can commit a sin knowingly, on an emergency, but dare not be guilty of a blunder. In the one case, the end appears to justify the means; while in the other, the entire transaction is unworthy. Sophistry, Kate, sophistry! which, while you think it, and act upon it, fails to satisfy even your warped and distorted sense of right and wrong.
Kate Marsden married Mr. Crane—there was a union! On the one side youth and beauty; intellect, lofty enough to have aimed at any achievement which the mind of woman has accomplished; energy, sufficient to have gained the object striven for; ambition, that when all was won would have despised the trophies at her feet, and sighed for more worlds to conquer; and a deep passionate nature, combining the fiery elements of a southern temperament with the steady perseverance and inflexible resolution characteristic of a daughter of the sturdy north: on the other side, advancing age, mental weakness, timidity, and its natural concomitant—suspicion, together with a general paucity of ideas, centred in a vulgar pride of wealth. All Kate’s friends congratulated her, and many envied her good fortune; and Horace D’Almayne smiled on his future victim, as he surely reckoned her; and Arthur Hazlehurst sat alone in his dusky chambers, with bitter thoughts busy at his heart, struggling, like a brave and good man, against the tempting fiend that bade him rise up and curse her who had thus rendered desolate his young existence; and the minister of religion stood before the altar, and pronounced his blessing over this hollow mockery of marriage, which no amount of blessing could hallow; and the happy pair drove off to some fool’s paradise to enjoy the honeymoon.