Eleanor was looking at him as he spoke, and saw, more plainly than before, the haggardness, and the lines upon his face; it seemed to her that they had been planted there since she had last seen him, but this might be imagination. She was startled by a resemblance which she fancied she discovered in this altered face of his, to a miniature of their father which was in her possession—that father who had been in tastes, character, and disposition, so utterly unlike the son who followed him. Since coming to Thorsgarth she had often studied this miniature, wondering how such a father came to have such a son. At this moment Otho was leaning his head back, as if weary. His wild eyes were closed, so that their strange, savage look did not distort the likeness. Compunction, longing, yea, love rushed into her heart.
‘Otho!’ she said, in a voice which trembled; and he looked up.
‘What’s up?’ he demanded, seeing with surprise that she had risen and was coming towards him.
‘Dear Otho!’ she repeated, as she knelt before him, and clasped his hand in her own; ‘why am I better away from you? Why better away from my own brother, and my father’s house, where he intended me to find my home? It is not right, Otho; it is not right that it should be so. Ah, if you would only be different, how happy we might be—you and Magdalen and I; and where in all your world outside will you find anything that will endure as our love to you will?—for I know that Magdalen does love you, though you treat her cruelly, as you treat me.’
Otho stared down into her face with a strange, alien glance; a shocked, wondering look. He was not rough; he did not repulse her, but he looked as if she had been apostrophising him in some strange tongue, which he could not understand. Presently he said—
‘Little girl, you don’t know what you are talking about. I settle down with you and Magdalen! Heaven help you! I should be mad, or dead of it in a very short time. It is a thousand pities you should think you have got anything to do with my concerns. Leave me alone, that’s a good child. I’m past any mending of yours.’
She still knelt by his chair, gazing, as if she would have forced the secret of his wild, unhappy nature to show itself. Perhaps she thought of the happy dark days she had read of, when holy women, by dint of fasting and prayer and faith, could master even such savage souls as Otho’s—could cast forth devils, and so relieve the souls of wretched men. Those days must be past, for she could gather nothing from her searching gaze. Perhaps she was not holy enough. She had prayed, but she had not fasted; and to judge from Effie’s chatter, she had renounced none of the pomps and vanities of her station.
‘You will be all right at the Dower House,’ Otho resumed presently. ‘Then you can have people to stay with you, and make yourself a little less dull. There! get up, don’t look so desperately sentimental. I am as I am; and I shall get along, if you’ll leave me alone.’
With that, he rose and put her aside, but gently and quietly; and she was almost sure that the hands which rested for a moment on her shoulders, quivered a little.
Otho went into the smoking-room, shut the door, and turned up the light. He took a brandy decanter from a case of spirits which stood on the sideboard, and poured some into a glass; and this time there was no question as to his hand trembling. His lips, too, were unsteady. He drank the brandy, and muttered to himself—