John Tincroft, bachelor and benedict

by George E. Sargent

"Let him have it—let him!" cried poor Sarah.

"That's what I say, dear; let him have it. Why shouldn't he? I declare if I was in your place, I should write and tell him so at once. I think it would be very selfish in you to try to keep him dangling after you when he has the chance of bettering himself. Don't you see it in that light, dear?"

"Have you got anything more to say, Elizabeth?" asked the other, faintly.

"No, I think that's pretty much all I have to say now."

"Then please go, and let me alone. Go, go!" she added, more vehemently.

And then there was a sound of departing footsteps faintly echoing in the inner grotto, and reaching John's ears. Then followed a low wailing cry, and after that there was silence.

How long the involuntary eavesdropper remained in concealment after the conversation ended, he never exactly knew, for strange thoughts and feelings rushed unbidden into his mind and made him oblivious to the flight of time. From these meditations, whatever their import, he was presently roused by distant shouts which proclaimed that the cricket match in the meadow was concluded, and that the players, with the spectators, were returning to the lawn.

Not caring to be missed at the breaking up of the party, Tincroft roused himself from his lair and prepared to leave the grotto. And then he was surprised to find how rapidly the shades of evening had drawn on, so that even the entrance chamber, which opened upon the lawn, was in semi-darkness.

It was not so wrapped in gloom, however, but that while rapidly passing through it, his steps were suddenly arrested by what at first appeared to be a bundle of white clothes in an angle close to the doorway.

In another moment he had made a further discovery, which turned back his thoughts to the conversation he had overheard, and quickened the current of blood in his veins. In yet another moment, he was clumsily but anxiously endeavouring to raise the insensible form of the poor girl from whose lips had broken the low wail of distress which had just now fallen so sorrowfully on his ear.