He was obeyed; Eunice going to her room, to weep and pray in mingled gratitude and sorrow; Jessie flying down the stairs into the hall, thence out into the garden.
The sky was one expanse of cloud by this time. The wind moaned fitfully in the tree-tops; brought down showers of dry leaves into her face and upon her uncovered head. They whispered drearily to her as they hurtled by and crackled under her feet, and each thicket had its sigh of desolation. She heard and felt all—her soul in unison with the night and its voices of woe. She had fled from her father's presence, feeling like one accursed, forsaken by God and man. The return for which the dying saint's praise had gone up to heaven, was the event she had anticipated with shame and terror that made her long to bury herself in the wilderness or the grave, to escape the sight of him whom she had deceived. To him, her father was now bequeathing her—his dearest earthly treasure. Would Roy let him, indeed, depart in peace, or would his stern sense of truthfulness and honor impel him to a revelation of her perfidy? True, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, but she had received this as his farewell, not his salutation;—seen in it the resistless overflow of the old-time fondness at sight of her and her affliction. Better—a thousand times better—that he had not come until the eyes that had lighted into gladness at sight of him were sealed in death, than to plant thorns in the painless pillow of the death-bed by relating how she had betrayed the trust of her betrothed, and disappointed her father's hopes.
If she could have warned him! If she had had the presence of mind to make some sign of caution before she left them together!
Would Roy—"the man of granite"—have mercy? or must her father's last words to her be reproof and not blessing? regret and not thankfulness?
Up and down! up and down! she trod the long alley, looking at the faintly illuminated windows of that upper chamber; wringing her hands in her dry-eyed agony, longing yet fearing to hear the summons that should end her suspense.
It came at length! Roy's step upon the piazza, and his call, guarded that it should not reach the sick-room, but audible to her as would be the trump of doom.
"Jessie! where are you?"
She went toward him without hesitation. Women have gone to the hall of sentence and to the block in the same way. He met her, guided by her rustling tread among the leaves.
"This should not be!" he said. "You will be ill next!"
He led her into the house, and to the parlor where there were lights.