She was doing more than escaping the malignant tongue that had blackened the fair fame of her betrothed. She despised Hester Sanford's intellect and inventive talents so heartily that she should have laughed to scorn the tale to which she had hearkened; dissected the ill-formed mass of contradictions, and boldly refuted her statements by a comparison of their incongruities. Three months earlier she would have covered the traducer with confusion, and rightly punished her gloating audience by standing forth as the defender of Roy's honor and truth, and proudly announcing the nature of the bond between them. She was incapable of such an attempt now. Like a cowed hound, she had crouched in a corner and suffered the outrage to him who was her other self—the gallant gentleman, whose name she was to bear some day—lifted neither tongue nor finger to save that name from obloquy. Not even to amiable Fanny (how much braver than her craven self!) had she been able to say—"This man is to be my husband! Who strikes him, wounds and makes an enemy of me!"
Why was this?
She stopped midway across the bridge; leaned over the parapet with locked hands and rigid features; stared down upon the shining black ice—still not feeling the cold—and tried to answer the question thrust upon her.
Why had she made no fight to save the character of him for whom she had once declared herself willing to die?
"How dared they?" she had muttered between her teeth, in leaving Judge Provost's portico. On the bridge she spoke again—a hoarse whisper it hurt her throat to sibillate.
"If this be true!" she said, letting her clasped hands fall upon the stone wall.
There was a livid bruise on both, when she removed her gloves that evening, but she had not felt it when it was dealt.
Had then her belief in her lover's integrity succumbed to the weight of the first doubt cast upon it, in her presence? Were her faith and her love made of such flimsy stuff as to be torn into wretched rags by a single gale? If these were ever well-founded, must not the inroads of distrust have been gradual in order to be effectual? Had suspicion and forebodings visited her before to-day? been harbored, but not recognized? If so, what were the grounds for doubts and fears?
"If it be true—" she repeated, with a desolate moan—"there is no help for me in earth or in heaven! I can never trust or love again!"
Some one was coming on behind her with quick steps, which echoed loudly on the icy planks, and she walked on hastily. Her first unwise impulse was to increase her speed in the hope of getting away from the intruder, whoever he might be. But finding, on reaching the opposite shore, that he gained on her, she slackened her pace to let him pass. She would be the sooner alone and unobserved if she allowed him to go on. It was only a chance wayfarer, of course, but she would shun all eyes, idle or searching, while her brain was in such a whirl, her heart rent and quaking. She detected nothing familiar in the footfall, but she did remark, with a sense of irritation, that it was more deliberate in nearing her. Did the unseen pursuer mean to dog her?