"Thank you! I knew I might make the venture with you! My own mind being ill at ease, I could not resist the impulse to waylay you and unburden"—making as though she would clutch her heart, then sprawling both hands, her arms widely divergent lines from her heaving bust—"unburden myself to you, as the person most likely to sympathize with and ameliorate my anxieties. I had nearly said, my maternal anxieties. And indeed, Mr. Fordham, I could scarcely love your dear wife more, if she were, in truth, my child. Dear to me as the representative of the beloved friend of my youth, she has enhanced that partiality a thousandfold by her own worth and loveliness. This is my apology—this and the solicitude to which I have referred, for what may appear to you indelicate interference with your domestic affairs."
The polite interest with which her auditor had received her prefatory remarks was supplanted by uneasiness, instant and intense, as he perceived the drift of her speech. He had made a motion to rise when the words, "your dear wife," passed her writhing lips.
She hindered him with outstretched hands.
"Not that there is any cause for new and immediate alarm," she hastened to assure him. "But I was in to see her this morning. She keeps bravely up when you are at home, I dare say."
"She never complains. I have had my apprehensions that the untimely heat of the weather has been prejudicial to her strength. Her appetite is variable, and she is paler than she was in the winter, but I attributed—"
"Yes! of course!" interrupted Mrs. Baxter. Once bent upon an harangue, she was about as easily checked as a Yellowstone geyser in full play. "I am not surprised that your fears have not been awakened. I taxed her, to-day, with having deceived you as to the extent of her lassitude and depression. I surprised her lying on the sofa in her room, with the traces of fresh and copious tears upon her cheeks. She tried to laugh me out of my fears by talk of nervousness and hysteria, and would doubtless have succeeded, such are her spirit and address—but, Mr. Fordham! her precise likeness in look and manner at that moment to her sainted mother sent a poignant fear through my soul! Far be it from me to censure the dead, but I have always maintained—I shall ever believe that my precious Ginevra's life might have been spared—prolonged for years—had her husband conferred with those who were conversant with her idiosyncrasies—spiritual and physical. Although—I will reveal to you, my dear sir, under the seal of a secrecy you will see the expediency of respecting, what I have never lisped to her daughter, or even to the best of husbands and men—Dr. Baxter. My cousin Ginevra carried a blighted heart to Dundee when she went thither as Mr. Kirke's bride. An unfortunate misunderstanding had alienated her from one to whom her girlish affections were given. It is needless to enter into particulars. It is enough to say that they had loved and they were parted. She had not seen or heard from him for two years, most of which time she had passed abroad; indeed, she believed him to be the husband of another when she accepted Mr. Kirke. I own to you that my instinct and my reason opposed this fatal step. I expostulated with her.
"'Jane!' said she (you can imagine how Jessie would utter it!) 'say no more. My resolution is taken. This is a good man, and he loves me! In this union I shall—I may find rest, quiet, and in some measure, peace. I have been storm-tossed until I have no strength left for struggling!'
"Upon the eve of her marriage, the man whom she loved returned and sought an interview. I was with her in her chamber when his card, requesting this favor, was handed her. At sight of the familiar characters the buried love sprang up alive, strong, importunate! It was a fearful scene—that resurrection! What should she have done?"
"Confessed all to her promised husband!" came low and sternly from the man's heart. "He would have resigned her to her lover without a word of blame. I knew Mr. Kirke well. I do not speak unadvisedly."
"Such was my counsel. But she would not heed it. She refused to look again upon the face of him whose heart was breaking with love and vain regrets, and went right on to her bridal. And her daughter, if subjected to a like test, would act as she did."