“It is not necessary to describe in detail that elaborate dinner of ten courses, which was served from solid silver, with two or three servants in attendance. Haverleigh was very rich and very purse-proud, and it suited him to live like a prince wherever he was; besides, he wished to impress the simple New England girl with a sense of his greatness and wealth, and he enjoyed her evident embarrassment, or rather bewilderment, at so much glitter and display for just themselves and no one else. Anna had not forgotten her resolution to try to love him, and after their return to the salon, where a bright wood fire had been kindled, as the autumn night was chilly, she stole up behind him as he lounged in his easy-chair, and laying her white arms about his neck, drew his head back until her lips touched his forehead. Then she said, softly and timidly:
“‘Ernest, this is our first coming home, and I want to thank you for all the beautiful things with which you have surrounded me, and to tell you that I mean to be the best and most faithful of little wives to you.’
“It was quite a speech for Anna, who stood in great fear of the man she could not understand, and who seemed to her to be possessed of two spirits, one good and one bad, and should she rouse the latter she knew it would not be in her power to cope with it. But she had no fear of rousing it now, and she felt as if turning into stone when, for reply to her caress, he sprang to his feet and placing a hand on either of her shoulders, stood looking at her with an expression in his eyes she could not meet and before which she cowered at last, and with quivering lip said to him:
“‘Please take your hands from my shoulders; you hurt me, you press so hard. And why do you look so terribly at me? You make me afraid of you, and I wanted to love you to-night. What have I done?’
“Then he released her, and flinging her from him left the salon without a word, and she saw him no more that night. At eleven o’clock Celine came in to undress her, and when Anna managed to make her understand that she wished to know where Monsieur Haverleigh was, she only received for answer a meaning shrug and a peculiar lifting of the eyelids, which she could construe as she liked. It was not so pleasant a home-coming after all, and Anna’s first night at the chateau was passed with watching, and waiting, and tears, and that intense listening which tells so upon the brain. Once she thought to leave the room, but the door was bolted on the other side, and so at last, when wearied with walking up and down the long apartment, she threw herself upon the rosewood bed and fell into a disturbed and unrestful sleep.
“Meanwhile the master—Haverleigh—was fighting a fiercer battle with himself than he had ever fought before. He had said that his mind was made up, and he was one who boasted that when once this was so nothing could turn him from his purpose; his yea was yea, his nay, nay, but those white arms around his neck, and the touch of those fresh lips upon his forehead had not been without their effect, though the effect was like the pouring of molten lead into his veins, and had made him what, at times, he was, a mad man. When he rushed from Anna’s presence, with that wild look in his eye and the raging fire in his heart, he went straight to the dark, dreary room where Agatha had died with the sweet refrain ‘Je vais revoir, ma Normandie,’ upon her lips, and there amid the gloom and haunting memories of the place walked up and down the livelong night, now thinking, thinking, with head bent down, and now gesticulating in empty air with clinched fist, and again talking to himself, or rather to the spirits, good and bad, which seemed to have possession of him.
“‘Was she in earnest? Did she mean it? Is it possible that she might learn to love me through these baubles she prizes so much?’ he questioned of his better nature, which replied:
“‘Try her, and see. Don’t leave her here in this dreary place Don’t shut out all the gladness and sunshine from her young life. Give her a chance. Remember Agatha.’
“Just then, through the casement he had thrown open, there came a gust of the night-wind, which lifted the muslin drapery of the tall bed in the corner and swept it toward him, making him start, it was so like the white, tossing, billowy figure he had seen there once, begging him for the love of God to set her free, and let her go back to ‘la belle Normandie,’ where the father was watching for her, and would welcome her home again.
“Was Agatha, the wild rose of Normandy, pleading for Anna, the singing bird from New England? Possibly; and if so, she pleaded well, and might have gained her cause if the wicked spirit had not interposed, and sneeringly repeated: ‘Do not love him—shrink from his caresses—can’t endure to have him touch me—married him for money—can wind him round my little finger.’ And that last turned the scale. No man likes to be wound round any finger, however small it may be, and Ernest Haverleigh was not an exception.