"My father," Marian answered with a shudder. "He wanted my money, I suppose; and instead of killing me, he shut me up in that place."
She said no more just then, being too weak to say much; and Ellen, who was employed in soothing and comforting her, did not want her to talk. It was afterwards, when she had been established in her old rooms at the Grange, and had taken a little breakfast, that she told Ellen something more about her captivity.
"O, Ellen, if I were to tell you what I have suffered! But no, there are no words can tell that. It's not that they ill-used me. The girl who waited on me brought me good food, and even tried to make me comfortable in her rough way; but to sit there day after day, Ellen, alone, with only a dim light from the top of the window above the wood-stack; to sit there wondering about my husband, whether he was searching for me still, and would ever find me, or whether, as was more likely, he had given me up for dead. Think of me, Ellen, if you can, sitting there for weeks and months in my despair, trying to reckon the days sometimes by the aid of some old newspaper which the girl brought me now and then, at other times losing count of them altogether."
"Dear Mrs. Holbrook, I can't understand it even yet. Tell me how it all came about—how they ever lured you into that place."
"It was easy enough, Ellen; I wasn't conscious when they took me there. The story is very short. You remember that day when you left the Grange, how happy I was, looking forward to my husband's return, and thinking of the good news I had to tell him. We were to be rich, and our lives free and peaceful henceforward; and I had seen him suffer so much for the want of money. It was the morning after you left when the post brought me a letter from my father—a letter with the Malsham post-mark. I had seen him in town, as you know, and was scarcely surprised that he should write to me. But I was surprised to find him so near me, and the contents of the letter were very perplexing. My father entreated me to meet him on the river-side pathway, between Malsham station and this house. He had been informed of my habits, he said, and that I was accustomed to walk there. That was curious, when, so far as I knew, he had never been near this place; but I hardly thought about the strangeness of it then. He begged me so earnestly to see him; it was a matter of life or death, he said. What could I do, Nelly? He was my father, and I felt that I owed him some duty. I could not refuse to see him; and if he had some personal objection to coming here, it seemed a small thing for me to take the trouble to go and meet him. I could but hear what he had to say."
"I wish to heaven I had been here!" exclaimed Ellen; "you shouldn't have gone alone, if I had known anything about it."
"I think, if you had been here, I should have told you about the letter, for it puzzled me a good deal, and I knew how well I could trust you. But you were away; and my father's request was so urgent—the hour was named—I could do nothing but accede to it. So I went, leaving no message for you or for my husband, feeling so sure of my return within an hour or two."
"And you found your father waiting for you?"
"Yes, on the river-bank, within a short distance of Mr. Whitelaw's house. He began by congratulating me on the change in my prospects,—I was a rich woman, he said. And then he went on to vilify my husband in such hateful words, Ellen; telling me that I had married a notorious scoundrel and profligate, and that he could produce ample evidence of what he affirmed; and all this with a pretended pity for my weakness and ignorance of the world. I laughed his shameful slanders to scorn, and told him that I knew my husband too thoroughly to be alarmed even for a moment by such groundless charges. He still affected to compassionate me as the weakest and most credulous of women, and then came to a proposal which he said he had travelled to Hampshire on purpose to make to me. It was, that I should leave my husband, and place myself under his protection; that I should go to America with him when he returned there, and so preserve my fortune from the clutches of a villain. 'My fortune?' I said; 'yes, I see that it is that alone you are thinking of. How can you suppose me so blind as not to understand that? You had better be candid with me, and say frankly what you want. I have no doubt my husband will allow me to make any reasonable sacrifice in your favour.'"
"What did he say to that?"