Advancing a step, Lewis took the chair from her, and leaning on the back for support, said with a faint smile—
“I have indeed somewhat miscalculated my strength, Miss Grant; I am very, very weak,” and as he spoke he sank upon the seat, while the bright flush, which the excitement of beholding Annie had called into his cheeks, faded to the most deathlike paleness: his companion became alarmed.
“You are faint,” she said; “let me ring for assistance.”
A tray, with a decanter of water and some glasses, stood upon a table near; Lewis’s eye fell upon them.
“It is merely the unaccustomed exertion,” he said feebly, “it will pass away in a moment.”
Annie caught the direction of his glance. “You would like a glass of water,” she exclaimed, “let me give you one;” and suiting the action to the word, she filled a glass with the sparkling liquid and handed it to him. He took it with a slight inclination of the head, drank it eagerly, and was about to rise, in order to put down the glass, when Annie, by a deprecating gesture, prevented him, and taking it from his trembling fingers replaced it on the table. As she turned from doing so, their eyes met, and she perceived that his were fixed on her features with a deep, earnest, scrutinising gaze, as though he strove to read in her countenance the history of her inner life. For a moment she met his gaze with a bright, truthful, unshrinking look; then, unable to bear the power of his eagle eye, she turned away with a blush and a smile, half tender, half reproachful, for Annie was no stoic, and every feeling of her heart revealed itself in her tell-tale countenance. Lewis could bear it no longer—speak he must.
“Miss Grant—Annie,” he said, and as he pronounced her Christian name his deep voice trembled with suppressed emotion, “when I came here to-day I had no thought of seeing you; but accident (if, indeed, in this strange, complicated life anything may be so considered) has determined it otherwise, and the opportunity shall not be lost. Not very many days since I was so grievously ill that the chances were strongly against my rallying; it has pleased God to spare my life a little longer; but such an escape as this gives rise to deep and solemn thoughts. While I lay upon the bed of sickness, which had so nearly proved the bed of death, I learned to read my own heart—my past life glided as it were in review before me, and my faults and errors, no longer hidden by the mists of self-deceit or of passion, revealed themselves clearly in the light of an awakened conscience: above them all stood forth in its evil beauty the master-demon pride, and I saw how it had embittered my whole existence, and how, if ever I hoped to obtain even peace of mind, much more happiness, I must relax no effort until I should subdue it. Annie, I have loved you long; you cannot, do not doubt it; but because I deemed you richer than I was, and of higher rank, I was too proud to own it to you. Years of mental torture have been my punishment: I do not complain that this should have been so—I do not impugn the justice of the decree; on the contrary, I acknowledge it with deep contrition. I sinned, and it was fitting I should pay the penalty, however bitter; but there was a grief I was not prepared for, and in which I could not discern retributive justice; for whatever a slanderous world may say, my love for you has been deep, pure, and disinterested, the truest, most earnest feeling of my inmost soul. Annie, I will be frank with you, and even if my presumption ruins my cause, I have suffered too much from concealment not to tell you the whole truth. When, distracted by my hopeless passion for you, and maddened by the insults of one who is now no more, I tore myself away from Broadhurst, and left you, as I deemed, for ever, the most bitter pang proceeded from a secret belief, which even despair could not banish, that I read in your soft glances assurance that had I dared to urge my suit, I might have learned I had not loved in vain; and in the midst of my desolation I was happy, deeply happy, in the thought. Then a ray of light broke in upon the darkness—a strange chain of events led to the discovery that I was heir to an ancient and honourable name and an ample fortune, and I waited but to obtain legal evidence of the fact, ere I hastened to tell you of my affection, in the fond hope of eliciting that I was beloved again: once assured of that, I determined that nothing should prevent my winning your hand—all obstacles must yield before such a love as mine. With these feelings burning in my breast, imagine the dismay which overwhelmed me on learning by a letter from your father that scarcely twenty-four hours after I had quitted Broadhurst, you, of your own free will, had renewed your engagement with your cousin. Hear me out,” he continued, as Annie, who with blushing cheeks and tearful eyes, had remained as though spell-bound, drinking in his every tone, attempted eagerly to interrupt him—“hear me out, and then if you can explain this mystery, the devotion of a life-time shall plead forgiveness for my having misjudged you. How I lived through the wretchedness that letter caused me, I do not know. I believed I was going mad, for a time I was mad, and railed at Heaven for having created a being so fair and false as then I deemed you. Oh! the misery, the heavy, crushing grief, when the heart adores, with all its faculty of loving, one whom the reason points out as light, fickle, and all unworthy to have called forth such true affection. For two years this black veil of doubt and mistrust hung between your image and my spirit—I cast from me any idea of claiming the rank and riches that were my birthright, for I valued them only as they could bring me nearer to you; and went forth a wanderer, tormented by the consciousness, doubly humiliating to one of my proud nature, that although I believed you unworthy of my affection, I still loved you devotedly as ever. The first person who won me from my gloomy thoughts, and led me to hope your conduct might be satisfactorily explained, was your kind friend Laura, who in her honest singleness of heart could not believe in the possibility of the fickleness of which I imagined you. guilty—and I (though her arguments failed to convince my reason), how I loved her for her unbelief! I could say much more—could tell you of the agony of mind I endured, when unseen by you I watched you leaning on his arm and smiling upon him, and deemed my worst fears realised, and that you loved him; but it is needless—Annie, I cannot look on you and believe you false; if indeed you ever loved me, I know that, despite appearances, you have been true to that affection, and that you love me still. Annie, dearest, tell me that it is so?”
He ceased, and with his hands clasped, as those of some votary adoring his saint, sat gazing on the April of smiles and tears that played over the expressive features of her he loved, until reading in her tender glances the secret her lips refused to speak, happiness lent him strength, and springing to her side, he drew her unresistingly towards him, and reproved the coral lips for their silence by sealing his forgiveness upon them with a loving kiss. And as Annie, albeit there is no reason to doubt that she was an exceedingly moral and well-conducted young lady, did not appear to discern any great impropriety in this act, but, on the contrary, disengaged herself from his embrace gently and tenderly, the probabilities are, looking at the matter in a correct light, and with an artist eye (an optical delusion, popularly supposed to fulfil one of the main duties of charity by clothing the naked), that the view she took of the affair was a right one. And then by degrees, having declared that it was impossible she could ever tell him anything about it, but that Laura knew—would not he go and ask Laura at once? (a proposition Lewis coolly but decidedly rejected), she contrived, she never knew how, to enable him to guess the truth, which he did very quickly and cleverly, and found so perfectly satisfactory that his anger (such mild anger!) instantly changed to the most unmitigated pity, an emotion so nearly akin to that other Christian virtue, love, that we fear we shall lay ourselves open to the charge of writing an actual love scene if we pursue the subject any further. And as it is a well-ascertained fact that young persons strictly brought up and never allowed to inflame their imaginations and gain perverted views of life by perusing those inventions of the enemy of man- (and woman-) kind, works of fiction, either never fall in love at all or do so according to parental act of parliament, passed in the year one of the reign of good king Mammon, we (lest we incur the high displeasure of any of this monarch’s respectable subjects) will say no more about it. But when Laura, grieved at what she considered the unsatisfactory issue of her interview with Richard Frere, returned to her boudoir to make the best report her conscience would allow of to Annie, she was especially surprised, and a little frightened, to discover her friend, with heightened colour, downcast eyes, and a bright smile playing about the corners of her mouth, sitting on a sofa by the side of what Laura would have taken for the ghost of Lewis Arundel, only that ghosts do not in a general way look intensely happy, and are not usually addicted to holding young ladies’ hands caressingly between their spectral fingers. However, the ghost soon vindicated his claim to the protection of the Habeas Corpus Act by rising and shaking Laura’s hand cordially, and taking the initiative in conversation by exclaiming—
“My dear, kind Mrs. Leicester, I owe all my happiness to you.” Then Laura began to surmise what had happened, and in the excess of her joy scolded Lewis so vigorously for his madness in venturing out, and Annie for her folly in allowing him to talk, that she was forced to stop in the midst of her harangue to declare herself a virago, and to laugh so heartily at her own vehemence that in order to save herself from becoming hysterical she was fain to betake herself to her own bedroom and indulge in the feminine luxury of a good cry. And then Lewis and Annie sat and looked into each other’s eyes; their joy was too full for words, but such silence as theirs is far more eloquent, for as there is a grief too deep for tears, so is there happiness which language is powerless to express, and such happiness did they experience at that moment. At length Lewis spoke.
“Dearest,” he said, in a low, soft voice that trembled with the tenderness which filled his soul, “I must leave you now; there are many reasons which forbid my meeting your father till we reach England and I am prepared to prove to him all that your trustful, loving heart believes because I tell you that it is so. Until we meet in our own happy country, which for the future will be as dear to me for your sake as lately it has been for the same cause hateful, our engagement must remain a secret from all but Laura.”