"Indeed! Then Paul Marchmont went with you to Hampshire?"
"He did. He was of great service to me in this crisis. After seeing the paper, my stepdaughter was seized with brain–fever. She was unconscious when we brought her back to the Towers. She was nursed by my old servant Barbara, and had the highest medical care. I do not think that anything more could have been done for her."
"No," answered Edward Arundel, bitterly; "unless you could have loved her."
"We cannot force our affections," the widow said, in a hard voice.
Another voice in her breast seemed to whisper, "Why do you reproach me for not having loved this girl? If you had loved me, the whole world would have been different."
"Olivia Marchmont," said Captain Arundel, "by your own avowal there has never been any affection for this orphan girl in your heart. It is not my business to dwell upon the fact, as something almost unnatural under the peculiar circumstances through which that helpless child was cast upon your protection. It is needless to try to understand why you have hardened your heart against my poor wife. Enough that it is so. But I may still believe that, whatever your feelings may be towards your dead husband's daughter, you would not be guilty of any deliberate act of treachery against her. I can afford to believe this of you; but I cannot believe it of Paul Marchmont. That man is my wife's natural enemy. If he has been here during my illness, he has been here to plot against her. When he came here, he came to attempt her destruction. She stands between him and this estate. Long ago, when I was a careless schoolboy, my poor friend, John Marchmont, told me that, if ever the day came upon which Mary's interests should be opposed to the interests of her cousin, that man would be a dire and bitter enemy; so much the more terrible because in all appearance her friend. The day came; and I, to whom the orphan girl had been left as a sacred legacy, was not by to defend her. But I have risen from a bed that many have thought a bed of death; and I come to this place with one indomitable resolution paramount in my breast,––the determination to find my wife, and to bring condign punishment upon the man who has done her wrong."
Captain Arundel spoke in a low voice; but his passion was all the more terrible because of the suppression of those common outward evidences by which anger ordinarily betrays itself. He relapsed into thoughtful silence.
Olivia made no answer to anything that he had said. She sat looking at him steadily, with an admiring awe in her face. How splendid he was––this young hero––even in his sickness and feebleness! How splendid, by reason of the grand courage, the chivalrous devotion, that shone out of his blue eyes!
The clock struck eleven while the cousins sat opposite to each other,––only divided, physically, by the width of the tapestried hearth–rug; but, oh, how many weary miles asunder in spirit!––and Edward Arundel rose, startled from his sorrowful reverie.
"If I were a strong man," he said, "I would see Paul Marchmont to–night. But I must wait till to–morrow morning. At what time does he come to his painting–room?"'