Beneath the Shadow.
As, muttering a savage oath, John Gurdon crept through the yielding shrubs, Jane Barker softly closed the window, and then glided to the door.
“Not gone to bed?” exclaimed Mrs Elstree. “Thank Heaven! Rouse Sir Murray and my husband while I run back.”
“Have you called Dr Challen, ma’am?” said Jane, in agitated tones.
“Oh yes: he is in the bedroom,” sobbed Mrs Elstree; and she hurried back.
In a few minutes husband and father were by the bedside, watching with agitated countenances the struggle going on, for truly it seemed that the long lethargy into which Lady Gernon had been plunged was to be terminated by the triumph of the dread shade. As Mrs Elstree had sat watching her, she had suddenly started up to talk in a wild, incoherent manner; and as Sir Murray Gernon stood there in his long dressing-gown, with brow knit, a shade that was not one of sorrow crossed his brow upon hearing some of his stricken wife’s babblings.
“Philip,” she said—and as she spoke her voice softened, and there was a yearning look of gentleness in her countenance—“Philip, the cross: where is the cross? Have you hid it?—have you taken it away? Pray, pray restore it! He will be angry. They are favourite old jewels, that I wear for his sake. You loved me once; for the sake of the old times give it me back! He will ask for it. Where is the cross? Do you see: blue sapphires, each like a little forget-me-not peering up at you. Your flowers—true blue, Philip. But the cross—I must have the cross!”
She was silent for a few minutes, and then, wildly turning to her husband, she caught his hand in hers.
“Philip,” she cried, addressing him, “it is all madness—something of the past. It was not to be, and we have each our path to follow. I heard the rumours: trouble—failure—your income swept away—dearest Ada. But you must not come to want. You will give me back the cross, though; not the forget-me-nots. Keep them, though they are withered and dry—withered and dry as our old love—something of the past. Let me see,” she said—and her eyes assumed a troubled, anxious expression—“you cannot claim me now. I am another’s—his wife. How blue the lake looks! and how plainly it mirrors the mountains! Fair blue waters—blue—true blue. If I could have died then—died when you plucked the flowers from my breast—but it was not to be. I have a duty to fulfil—a burden—a cross”—she said, dreamily—“a cross? Yes—yes—yes, the cross. You will give it me back, Philip,” she whispered, with a smile; “it lies, you see, where once your forget-me-nots lay. I cannot wear them now, but the colour is the same—true blue. But you will find them for me, those bright gems, and all will yet be well.”
She raised Sir Murray’s hand to her lips, and kissed it reverently, as she continued: