“‘Poor child, you don’t know what you ask. You have no home to go to. Your mother is dead—died suddenly—and in kindness to you I have withheld your sister’s letter, wishing to spare you pain, but I have it with me. Can you read it now?’
“He held a worn-looking envelope toward her but for a moment she did not see it. The blow had fallen so suddenly, and was so terrible in its magnitude, that for a brief space both sight and sense failed her, and she sat staring blankly into his face as if she neither saw nor heard. After a moment, however, her eyes relaxed from their stony expression; there was a quivering of the lips, a rapid heaving of the chest, and then in a voice her husband would never have recognized as hers, she said:
“‘Give me the letter, please. I can read it now.’
“He gave it to her, and holding it mechanically in her hand she studied the address, in her sister’s handwriting: ‘Ernest Haverleigh, Esq., Paris, France. Care of Munroe & Co.’ The date upon the back was Dec. 8th, and there was the dear old Millfield post-mark seeming to bring her so near her home, and making her heart throb wildly in her throat, where was a strange sense of suffocation. At last, when every part of the soiled envelope had been studied, she slowly opened it and drew forth the sheet folded inside. Then the look of anguish on her face gave way to one of perplexity, as she said:
“‘Look, this is not Mary’s letter. It is from your agent in Scotland.’
‘My agent in Scotland! Not Mary’s letter! What do you mean?’ Mr. Haverleigh asked, and taking the paper from her he saw that she was right, and that he held a communication from his Scottish steward regarding his estate in the Highlands. ‘What can this mean? I don’t understand,’ he said, and seemed to be intently thinking; then suddenly he added: ‘Oh, I believe I know how the mistake occurred. This from McKenzie I received the same day with the one from your sister, and instead of putting the latter in this envelope, as I meant to do, I tore it up, as I do all my letters of no importance, and put this in its place. I am sorry, but I can give you the particulars. Can you bear it now? There, lay your head against my arm, you look so white and strange.’
“He sat down beside her, and drawing her to him made her lean against him while he told her how her mother, after an unusually hard day’s work, had sickened suddenly and died within three days peacefully, happily, with a message of love on her lips for her absent daughter. After the funeral was over, yielding to the earnest solicitations of a lady who was visiting in Millfield, Mary had decided to rent the house and go West with the woman as governess for her children. Fred, too, had accompanied them, as there was in the place a good school, where he could finish his preparation for college. The name of the lady Mr. Haverleigh could not recollect, except that it was something like Creydock or Heydock, while the town he had quite forgotten, and could by no means recall. It was very unfortunate, that mistake about the letters, and he was so sorry, he kept reiterating; but Anna did not seem to hear, or if she did, she did not care. She only was conscious of the fact that her mother was dead, her home broken up, and all hope of help from that quarter cut off. The effect was terrible, and even her husband was alarmed when he saw how white and motionless she sat, with her hands dropped helplessly at her side. Bad as he was, he did not wish her to die then and there, and he tried to move her from her state of apathy; but she only answered, ‘Please go away. I want to be alone.’
“He made her lie down on the couch, and to this she did not object, but, like a tired child, laid her head among the soft silken cushions, and with a long, low gasping sob, closed her eyes wearily, as if to shut out all sight of everything. Madame Verwest and Celine were sent to her, and were told of the sad news which had so affected her, and one believed it, and the other did not; but both were unremitting in their attentions to the poor heartbroken girl, who gave no sign that she knew what they were doing or saying to her, except to moan, occasionally: ‘Oh, my mother is dead! my mother is dead.’
“Mr. Haverleigh, too, was exceedingly kind, and very lavish with his caresses, which Anna permitted in a dumb, passionless kind of way, like one who could not help herself. Once, when he stroked her long, bright hair, she lifted her mournful eyes to him, and asked: ‘Won’t you take me from here? Won’t you let me go back to where you found me? I can take care of myself; I can work in the shop again, and after awhile you will be free from me. Will you let me go?’
“Free from her! Did he wish to be that? For a moment, when he remembered the glittering black eyes, the only eyes in the world which had power to make him quail, he half believed he did. On his return to Paris he had met the woman with the glittering eyes, which seemed to read his very soul, and ferret out his inmost thoughts. There had been a stormy scene, for Eugenie Arschinard was not one to brook a rival. She had compassed the ruin of poor Agatha of Normandy, whom, but for her, Haverleigh might have dealt fairly with, and made the marriage tie more than a mere farce, a horrid mockery. From his town-house in London, Eugenie had seen the young, fair-haired girl driving by and looking so eagerly at the place, and with her thorough knowledge of the world, she knew her to be an American, and guessed her to be some new flame whom he had lured from home, as the plaything of an hour. She never for a moment believed him married; he was not a marrying man; he dared not marry, bound as he was to her by the tie of honor, which, in her infidel heart, she held above the marriage vow. So when she met him in Paris by appointment, she charged him with his new fancy, demanding who and where she was, and he was a very coward in her presence, and dared not tell her the truth of that simple wedding among the New England hills, but suffered her to believe that Anna, like Agatha, was only his dupe, whom he could cast off at pleasure. Eugenie had no wish, at present, to be bound herself. She was true to Haverleigh, and she enjoyed to the full the luxuries with which he surrounded her, and in Paris, where such connections were common, she had her circle of friends, and reigned among them a queen because of Haverleigh’s name and the style in which she lived. By and by, when she was older, and ceased to attract admiration, she meant to marry him and so pass into a respectable old age, but just now her freedom suited her best, and she gave no sign of her real intentions for the future. But Haverleigh knew well that to confess he had a wife was to raise a storm he had not courage to meet, and so he told her the girl she had seen was a little wild rose from America, whom he had lifted from poverty and taken to Chateau d’Or.