“Of me?” and Anna looked up quickly, but poor, deluded Adam, mistook her guilty flush for a kind of grateful pride that Dunallen should talk of her.
“He said you were the prettiest girl he ever saw, and when I suggested, ‘except Miss Atherton,’ he added, ‘I will not except any one; Milly is pretty, but not like your fiancee.’”
Anna had not fallen so low that she could not see how mean and dastardly it was for Herbert Dunallen to talk thus of her to the very man he was intending to wrong so cruelly; and for a moment a life with Adam Floyd looked more desirable than a life with Herbert Dunallen, even though it were spent in the midst of elegance of which she had never dreamed. Anna’s good angel was fast gaining the ascendency, and might have triumphed had not the sound of horse’s feet just then met her ear, and looking from the window she saw Herbert Dunallen riding by, his dark curls floating in the wind and his cheek flushing with exercise. He saw her, too, and quickly touching his cap, pointed adroitly towards the beechwood grove. With his disappearance over the hill her good angel flew away, and on her face there settled the same cold, unhappy look, which had troubled Adam so much.
“Darling,” he said, when he spoke again, “there is something on your mind which I do not understand. If you are to be my wife, there should be no secrets between us. Will you tell me what it is, and if I can help you I will, even though—though——”
His voice began to falter, for the white, hard look on Anna’s face frightened him, and at last in an agony of terror, he grasped both her hands in his and added impetuously:
“Even though it be to give you up, you whom I love better than my life—for whom I would die so willingly. Oh, Anna!” and he sank on his knees beside her, and winding his arms around her waist, looked her imploringly in the face. “I sometimes fear that you have sickened of me—that you shrink from my caresses. If it is so, in mercy tell me now, before it is too late; for, Anna, dear as you are to me, I would rather to-morrow’s sunshine should fall upon your grave and mine, than take you to my bosom an unloving wife! I have worked for you, early and late, thinking only how you might be pleased. There is not a niche or corner in my home that is not hallowed by thoughts of you whom I have loved since you were a little child and I carried you in the arms which now would be your resting place forever. I know I am not your equal, I feel it painfully, but I can learn with you as my teacher, and, my precious Anna, whatever I may lack in polish, I will, I will make up in kindness!”
He was pleading now for her love, forgetting that she was his promised wife—forgetting everything, save that to his words of passionate appeal there came no answering response in the expression of her face. Only the same fixed, stony look, which almost maddened him; it was so unlike what he deserved and had reason to expect.
“I shall be lonely without you, Anna—more lonely than you can guess, for there is no mother here now to bless and cheer me as she would have cheered me in my great sorrow. She loved you, Anna, and blessed you with her dying breath, saying she was glad, for your sake, that the chair where you sit would be empty when you came, and asking God to deal by you even as you dealt by me.”
“Oh, Adam, Adam!” Anna gasped, for what had been meant for a blessing rang in her ears like that blind woman’s curse. “May God deal better by me than I meant to deal by you!” she tried to say, but the words died on her lips, and she could only lay her cold hands on the shoulder of him who still knelt before her, with his arms around her waist.
Softly, gladly came the good angel back, and ’mid a rain of tears which dropped on Adam’s hair, Anna wept her hardness all away, while the only sound heard in the room was the beating of two hearts and the occasional roll of thunder muttering in the distance. In reality it was only a few moments, but to Anna it seemed a long, long time that they sat thus together, her face bent down upon his head, while she thought of all the past since she could remember Adam Floyd and the blind old woman, his mother. He had been a dutiful son, Anna knew, for she had heard how tenderly he would bear his mother in his strong arms or guide her uncertain steps, and how at the last he sat by her night after night, never wearying of the tiresome vigil until it was ended, and the sightless eyes, which in death turned lovingly to him, were opened to the light of Heaven. To such as Adam Floyd the commandment of promise was rife with meaning. God would prolong his days and punish those who wronged him. He who had been so faithful to his mother, would be true to his wife—aye, truer far than young Dunallen, with all his polish and wealth.