“Oh, Frederic, did you thus wrong that girl? I never thought you capable of such an act. I knew you did not love her, but the rest——. It hurts me to think you did it, and that you still live on her money.”
“Hush, Will!” And Frederic bowed his head for very shame. “I deserve your censure, I know, but if my sin was great—great has been my punishment. Look at me, Will. I am not the lighthearted man you parted with six years ago upon the college green; for, since that dreadful night when I first knew poor Marian had fled, and thought she was in the river, I have not had a single moment of perfect peace or freedom from remorse. I have not spent more of her money either than I could help. Bad as I am, I shrink from that. Redstone Hall grew hateful to me—it was haunted with so many bitter memories of her, and was, besides, the place where I sinned against her a second time by daring to think of another—of Isabel. You remember her?”
“Fred Raymond!” and in his indignation, Will’s feet came down from the top of the chair, “you did not aggravate your guilt by talking of love to her?”
“No, no,” groaned Frederic, “I did not, though Heaven only knows the fierce struggle it cost me to see her there every day, and know I must not say one word to her of love. I left Redstone Hall at last, as you know. Left it because it was Marian’s and Riverside was my father’s, before Marian came to us; so it did not seem quite so much like spending her money, for I did try to be a man and earn my own living. They did not get on well without me in Kentucky. They needed me there a part of the time, at least; and when, at last, I began to feel differently toward Marian, I felt less delicacy about her fortune, and I have spent my winters at Redstone Hall, where the negroes and the neighbors around all suppose Marian dead, for I have never told them that she was with me in New York. Isabel knows it, but for some reason she has kept it to herself; and I am glad, for I would rather people should not talk of it until she is really found. I have sought for her so long and unsuccessfully that I’m growing discouraged now.”
“If you knew that she was dead, would you marry Isabel?” asked Will; and Frederic replied,
“Never!”
Then, in a reverent tone, as if speaking of one above him in purity and innocence, he told how the little blind girl had stood between him and temptation, holding up his hands when they were weakest, and keeping his feet from falling. “But that desire is over. I can look Isabel Huntington calm in the face and experience no sensation, save that of relief, to think I have escaped her. With the legacy left her by Mr. Rivers, and the little means her mother had, she has bought a small house near Riverside; so I shall have them for neighbors every Summer. But I do not care. I have no love now for Isabel. It all died out when I was sick, and centered itself upon that little sweet-faced girl, who, I know, was Marian, though I cannot find her. If I could, Will, I’d willingly part with every cent of money I call mine, and work for my daily bread. Labor would not seem a hardship, if I knew that when my toil was done, there was a darling wife waiting for me at home—a wife like what I hope my Marian is, and like what your Marian Grey may be.”
“Not mine, Frederic. There is in all the world no Marian for me,” said Will.
“Nor for me, perhaps,” was the sad response, and in the dim firelight, the two mournful faces looked wistfully at each other, as if asking the sympathy neither had to give.
And there they sat until the clock in the room below, struck the hour of midnight. Two weary heart-broken men, in the pride of their early manhood, sat talking each to the other, one of “My Marian,” and one of “Mine;” but never, never dreaming that the beautiful Marian Grey, so much beloved by William Gordon, was the lost Marian so greatly mourned by Frederic Raymond.