About three months after my return to Elmsley, I was sitting one afternoon at that library window where I mentioned once before having often watched the sunset with Edward. The autumnal tints were gilding the trees in the park with their glowing hues, and the air had that wintry mildness which is soothing though melancholy. The window was open; and, wrapped up in a thick shawl, I was inhaling the damp moist air, and listening to the rustle of the dried leaves which were being swept from the gravel walk below; the low twitter of some robin-redbreasts was in unison with the scene, and affected me in an Unaccountable manner. My tears fell fast on the book in my hand. This book was the "Christian Year;" that gift of Edward, which I had thrust away in a fit of irritation about a year ago. I had opened it again that morning, and, partly as a kind of expiation, partly with a vague hope of awakening in myself a new tone of feeling—something to put in the place of that incessant review of the past, around which my thoughts were ever revolving,—I forced myself to read a few of the passages marked with a pencil. I had been interrupted while so doing, but had carried away the book with me, and now again applied myself to the same task. I read stanza after stanza which spoke of guilt, of suffering, and of remorse; but I did not close the book in anger as before. It was true that they were carefully chosen, pointedly marked; but what of that? Was I not guilty? Was I not wretched? Did I not deserve worse at his hands? Nay more; had I deserved the forbearance, the mercy, he had shown me? Ought I not to bless him for them? It was such thoughts as these that made my tears flow, but that at the same time soothed the bitterness of my feelings.
I put down my book; and, while gazing on the darkening clumps of trees before me, I watched the approach of the boy who was riding through the avenue to the house, with the letter-bag strapped before him. I heard the step of the servant who was crossing the hall on his way to my uncle's study. In a few moments I heard Mrs. Middleton's voice on the stairs; and, about an hour after that, when it was getting quite dark, and I was leaving the library, I met Mrs. Swift, who told me that my aunt wished to speak to me in her dressing-room.
There is something very apt to make one feel nervous in the fact of being sent for; and if it happens to be immediately after the arrival of the post, all the more so. I walked up-stairs in consequence with a kind of feeling that something had happened or was going to happen; so that when I opened the door, and saw at one glance that my aunt was much agitated and in tears, I felt frightened.
"What has happened?" I exclaimed. "What is it? Who is ill?"
"Nobody—nothing of that kind," she replied, "but it is painful" (she paused, struggled with herself, and went on)—"it is painful, and you must prepare yourself, my dear child, to hear something that will shock and grieve you. Henry" (she looked into my face with intense anxiety)—"Henry has made us all very unhappy, but you, my child, you" (she seized both my hands and put them upon her eyes, as if to give herself courage to speak) "it will make you miserable. What shall I say to you, my own love? He is utterly unworthy of you; he has forgotten you, Ellen—given up all thoughts of you; he is—"
"Is he going to be married?" I eagerly exclaimed, "speak, dearest aunt, speak—is it so?"
"He is married" (she replied in a tone of deep dejection), "disgracefully married!"
She looked up in my face, and seemed quite bewildered at the expression of my countenance. I was expecting her next words with breathless anxiety, and could only repeat, "To whom, to whom?"
"You could not have imagined it," she answered—"you could not have believed it possible; he has married that girl whom you saw at Bridman—Alice Tracy."
Married to Alice Tracy! Was it possible? What a crowd of conjectures, recollections, suppositions, and fears, rushed upon me at that moment!