The light in her eyes was softer now, and her voice full of entreaty; for Ethie felt almost as if pleading for her life. But she might as well have talked to the wall for any good results it produced. Richard was moved from his lofty height of wrath and vindictiveness, but he did not believe her. How could he, with the fatal note in his hand, and the memory of the degrading epithet it contained, and which Ethie, too, had used against him, still ringing in his ears? The virgin queen of England was never more stony and inexorable with regard to the unfortunate Mary than was Richard toward his wife, and the expression of his face froze all the better emotions rising in Ethie's heart, as she felt that in a measure she was reaping a just retribution for her long deception.
"I do not believe you, madam," Richard said; "and if I were inclined to do so, this note, which Harry said was sent to you, and which I found upon the floor, would tell me better," and tossing into her lap the soiled bit of paper, accomplishing so much harm, he continued: "There is my proof; that in conjunction with the name of opprobrium, which you remember you insinuatingly used, asking if you were pretty enough to make the old maid, Elizabeth, jealous. You are pretty enough, madam; but it is an accursed beauty which would attract to itself men of Frank Van Buren's stamp."
Richard could not get over that epithet. He would have forgiven the other sin almost as soon as this, and his face was very dark and stern as he watched Ethelyn reading the little note. She knew in a moment what it was, and the suddenness of its appearance before her turned her white and faint. It brought back so vividly the day when she received it--six or seven years ago, the lazy September day, when the Chicopee hills wore the purplish light of early autumn, and the air was full of golden sunshine. It was a few weeks after the childish betrothal among the huckleberry hills, and Frank had come up to spend a week with a boy friend of his, who lived across the river. There was to be an exhibition in the white schoolhouse, in the river district, and Frank had written, urging her to come, and asking that Aunt Barbara should be left behind--"the old maid," he sometimes called her to his cousin, thinking it sounded smart and manlike. Aunt Barbara had stayed at home from choice, sending her niece in charge of Susie Granger's mother; but the long walk home, after the exercises were over, the lingering, loitering walk across the causeway, where the fog was riding so damply, the stopping on the bridge, and looking down into the deep, dark water, where the stars were reflected so brightly, the slow climbing of the depot hill, and the long talk by the gate beneath the elms, whose long arms began to drop great drops of dew on Ethie's head ere the interview was ended--all this had been experienced with Frank, whose arm was around the young girl's waist, and whose hand was clasping hers, as with boyish pride and a laughable effort to seem manly, he talked of "our engagement," and even leaped forward in fancy to the time "when we are married."
All this came back to Ethelyn, and she seemed to feel again the breath of the September night, and see through the clustering branches the flashing light waiting for her in the dear old room in Chicopee. She forgot for a moment the stern, dark face watching her so jealously, and so hardening toward her as he saw how pale she grew, and heard her exclamation of surprise when she first recognized the note, and remembered that in turning over the contents of the ebony box she must have dropped it upon the floor.
"Do you still deny all knowledge of Frank's presence in town?" Richard asked, and his voice recalled Ethelyn from the long ago back to the present time.
He was waiting for her answer; but Ethie had none to give. Her hot, imperious temper was in the ascendant now. She was a prisoner for the night; her own husband was the jailer, who she felt was unjust to her, and she would make no explanations, at least not then. He might think what he liked or draw any inference he pleased from her silence. And so she made him no reply, except to crush into her pocket the paper which she should have burned on that morning when, crouching on the hearthstone at home, she destroyed all other traces of a past which ought never to have been. He could not make her speak, and his words of reproach might as well have been given to the winds as to that cold, statue-like woman, who mechanically laid aside the fanciful costume in which she was arrayed, doing everything with a deliberation and coolness more exasperating to Richard than open defiance would have been. A second knock at the door, and another servant appeared, saying, apologetically, that the note he held in his hand had been left at the office for Mrs. Markham early in the morning, but forgotten till now.
"Give it to me, if you please. It is mine," Ethelyn said, and something in her voice and manner kept Richard quiet while she took the offered note and went back to the chandelier where, with a compressed lip and burning cheek, she read the genuine note sent by Frank.
"Dear cousin," he wrote, "business for a Boston firm has brought me to Camden, where they have had debt standing out. Through the influence of Harry Clifford, who was a college chum of mine, I have an invitation to Mrs. Miller's, where I hope to meet yourself and husband. I should call to-day, but I know just how busy you must be with your costume, which I suppose you wish to keep incog., even from me. I shall know you, though, at once. See if I do not. Wishing to be remembered to the Judge, I am, yours truly,
"FRANK VAN BUREN."