‘She would keep me no longer. I put her off by telling her that he was coming down there to marry me—that he’d sent me there to wait for him. I said it all depended on her keeping silence; that was why she let me stay so long.’
‘At what time will your father be back?’
‘At eleven to-morrow morning, they said.’
‘You will go home now, and stay there all night. At nine o’clock to-morrow morning come to me. I shall have had time to make arrangements then. I will see your father. I do not think he will turn you out of doors. If he does, you shall come here. I will send for—my brother. I think I can make him come. I do not wish to seem harsh to you, but you must go home now, that I may have time to arrange things. You will go to your room at once, when you get home. You understand—you can say you are tired. Try not to be frightened,’ she added, bending over Ada, who was crouched in an attitude of blank despair; ‘because I can shelter you, and I will do so, as God is above us. I promise you this. Now go.’
Slowly Ada rose. Eleanor felt afraid lest she should break down before she had left the house. But she did not. She submitted to have her shawl pinned on again, and with the same look of utter, vacant despair, walked away.
‘Either it will turn her brain or kill her,’ Eleanor felt, as the girl departed, and she sat down at the table, and rested her head on her hands, and tried to put away the recollection of the awful figure she had seen, and to reflect upon what must be done. But she scarcely had sufficient power yet, over her emotion, to be able to reflect. She could only remember, and shudder, and feel horrified, while all kinds of wild speculations darted through her mind, as to the effect the event would have upon this person, and that person; and, above all, she wondered how it was that it had never for one moment occurred to any of them that when Ada was in Wensleydale, and Otho in Friarsdale, they might easily have met. In fact, she could think of nothing but of the thing itself, and the crushing, the overwhelming horror of it, except that every now and then a thought crossed her mind that something must be done at once, and that there was no one but herself to do it; which thought reduced her to complete powerlessness.
While she sat in this chaos of thought and emotion she heard a knock at the door. She said nothing; she had forgotten all about the little things that one remembers at ordinary times, and after a moment, while she still sat, unheeding, it was gently opened, and Michael Langstroth looked in.
‘I have been sent to fetch you,’ he had begun, and then he came to a dead stop, as he saw and comprehended her strange attitude; and when, at his voice, she raised her head and looked at him, he beheld her face, and knew that since she had quitted them, a quarter of an hour ago, something terrible had happened to her. And he knew that moment—he did not in so many words state it to himself, but he knew it—that it was to him she would appeal for help. He was glad of that, but he was sorry that he had let the days go by in a dream, and had not given her the right to come to him, without thought and without question.
Eleanor, as she looked at him, felt at first a little bewildered. So overwhelmed was she with what had passed, that it was a moment or two before she actually realised who he was.
‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,’ says the Psalmist, ‘from whence cometh my help.’ And, in a certain degree, it was so with her. A voice supreme and unerring spoke to her; all her nature, every fibre seemed to bow to an overwhelming intuition which directed her towards the man who stood before her, looking so earnestly down upon her. She loved him, and that with a love which had grown into a great passion, and an absorbing one. But it was something different—something deeper and higher than even this great love which impelled her action now;—instinct, some might call it, and others say that she had naturally a gift for reading character correctly, and for discerning which persons were, and which were not to be relied upon. She herself would have said that God inspired her. She sat motionless for a moment, bending to this inner voice which spoke to her, acknowledging what her belief told her was the providential arrival of the one person whom she would most implicitly trust—and fighting down the unwillingness—natural and good in itself, but which she felt it was useless to stand upon now—to speak openly of such things as had happened, to a man who was neither her husband, her father, nor her brother. And then, her resolution taken, or rather, that importunate inner voice obeyed, she got up, and leaning over the table towards him, said—