"O Philip!" cried his mother, "let us go away quickly from this place. Let us start at once. I am not myself here. Take me away as quickly as we can go."
"Yes, mother," he answered, drawing her hand tenderly through his arm. He did not dare to ask her any question. He guessed whose grave this was by which she was standing, and felt sure that she knew something of the dread secret that oppressed himself. But it was impossible for him to ask her. She stood nearer to his father even than he did. The close, inseparable, sacred nature of the tie that unites man and wife struck him as it had never done before. Any sin of her husband would be an intolerable burden to her.
He hurried their departure from the hotel, though it was difficult to get a carriage on a festa day like this. But at length they started, and he felt that every step taking them away from Cortina was a gain. They passed little groups of peasants going homeward; and the sound of church bells ringing joyous peals pursued them for several miles. But they left the valley behind them after a time. The drive they were hurrying over was one of the most beautiful in Europe, but only Dorothy saw it that day. Once, when she saw a red peak, with clouds rolling across it, and the spots of crimson gleaming like flames beneath the vapor, and a pale gray rock close by looking ghostlike beside it, she turned to Margaret with a low exclamation of delight. But Margaret's eyes were closed, and her ears were deaf. A vague, undefined terror in her soul had almost absolute rule over her. She must have been blind and deaf to the glories of heaven itself, with that fear of an almost impossible crime in her husband which was haunting her.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A FORCED CONFESSION.
In fleeing as swiftly as she could from Cortina, Margaret had no intention of deserting Sophy's son. But it seemed essential to her to get away from the spot for a little while, that her brain might be clear enough for thought. They stopped, then, at Toblach, at the entrance of the Ampezzo Valley, and only half a day's journey from Cortina. It was a relief to her to hear that Philip had already telegraphed for his father, and as he must pass through Toblach they waited for him there.
The tumult in Margaret's mind calmed a little, but still she shrank from gathering up the threads of what she had heard at Cortina and weaving them together. Sophy Goldsmith lay buried there, and her son was living and bore the name of Martin. Philip had been recognized as being like the man who had deserted her and left her to die. Her mind constantly recurred to these points. She reproached herself vehemently for suffering any doubt of Sidney to invade her love for him. Her love was so deep and vital that it seemed impossible for doubt to undermine it. If any human being could know another, she felt that she must know her husband's nature; and treachery and vice were abhorrent to it. She did not call him faultless, but she had seen none besides the little flaws and errors which must always hang about frail humanity—such as she was herself guilty of. "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults," was a prayer often in Margaret's heart; and she had never been prone to mark little sins, such as men and women outgrow, if their path be upward. Sidney's whole life lay before her in the clear and searching light of their mutual love and close companionship; and looking at it thus she refused to believe any evil of him, and tried to shut her eyes to the black cloud dimming her horizon.
But there could not but be times when doubt and suspicion stole like traitors into her heart. There was no doubt in her clear brain that it was Sophy Goldsmith who was lying in that forsaken grave, and that the wretched pariah she had seen was Andrew Goldsmith's grandson. That was terrible enough; a most mournful discovery to come upon after so many years of faint hope, and of constant grief. But if the man who wrought all this misery, and was guilty of this base treachery, should prove to be Sidney! It was incredible; it was madness to believe it.
All this time Margaret did not cease to trust in the love of God, and in his love toward all men. Though fierce tempests troubled the very depths of her soul, below them was a deeper depth, not of her own soul, but of that Eternal Spirit in whom she lived, and moved, and had her being. She was conscious of resting in this love. But a child resting in its mother's arms, and on her breast, may suffer agonies of pain. So Margaret suffered.
Sidney was in London when Philip dispatched his first message from Cortina. It was evening when he sent it, and the first thing the next morning it reached his father's hands. Margaret had written from Venice as soon as their departure had been decided upon; but Sidney had not as yet received the letter. Philip's telegram, therefore, came upon him like a thunderbolt falling out of a clear blue sky. He had felt no forewarning of this danger. Their route on their return from Venice had been settled before he left them, and so accustomed was he to arrange and direct the movements of all about him, that no apprehension of any change of plan had crossed his mind. It was only of late that the conviction that his son was a man, and one who would assert and enjoy the freedom of manhood, had been thrust upon him. It was evident that Philip had felt himself man enough to change his route homeward as it pleased him.