“She says she is Everard’s wife; and I have seen the certificate. They were married more than four years ago, before his mother died, and she,—oh, Rossie, my child, my child, don’t give way like that; it may—it must be false,” she added, in alarm, as she saw the death-like pallor which spread over Rossie’s face, and the look of bitter pain and horror which leaped into her eyes, while the quivering lips whispered:
“Everard’s wife? No, no, no!”
“Don’t, Rossie,—don’t!” Mrs. Markham said again, as she passed her arm around the girl, whose head drooped upon her shoulder, in a hopeless kind of way, and who said: “You saw the certificate? What was the name? Was it——”
“Fleming,—Josephine Fleming, of Holburton,” Mrs. Markham replied, and with a shiver Rossie drew herself away from Mrs. Markham’s arms, and turning her face to the wall, said: “Yes, I know. I understand it all. She is his wife. She is Joe Fleming.”
After that she neither spoke nor moved, and when Mrs. Markham, alarmed at her silence, bent down to look at her, she found that she had fainted. The shock had proved too great for Rossie, whose mind, at the mention of Josephine Fleming, had with lightning rapidity gathered all the tangled threads of the past, and comprehended what had been so mysterious at times in Everard’s behavior. He was married,—hastily, no doubt, but still married; and Joe Fleming was his wife, and he had never told her, but suffered her to believe that he loved her, just as she knew now that she loved him. It was a bitter humiliation, and for an instant there gathered round her so thick a horror and blackness that she fancied herself dying; but it was only a faint, and she lay so white and rigid that Mrs. Markham summoned Aunt Axie from the dining-room, where she was making preparations for kindling a fire in the grate.
“Be quiet,” Mrs. Markham said to her as she came up the stairs. “Miss Rossie has fainted, but don’t let those people know it; and bring me some hot water for her feet, quick.”
Axie obeyed, wondering to herself why her young mistress should faint, when she never knew her to do such a thing before, and with her ready wit connecting it in some way with the strangers whom Mrs. Markham had designated as “those people,” and whom the old negress directly set down as “no ’count folks.”
It was some time before Rossie came back to consciousness, and when she did her first words were:
“Where is she? Where is Everard’s wife? Don’t let her come in here; I could not bear it now.”
“Everard’s wife! Mars’r Everard’s wife!” Axie repeated, tossing her turbaned head and rolling up her eyes in astonishment. “In de deah Lord’s name, what do de chile mean? Dat ain’t Mars’r Everard’s wife?” and she turned to Mrs. Markham, who, now that Rossie had betrayed what she would have kept until Everard came to confirm or deny the tale, replied: