The day had been rainy and dark, and as she sat there in the gathering night and listened to the low moan of the October wind, she thought with gloomy forebodings of the future, and what it would bring to her.
“Oh, it is dreadful to be so homeless—so friendless, so poor,” she cried, and in that cry there was a note of desolation which touched a chord of pity in the heart of him who stood on the threshold of the door, silently watching the young girl as she battled with her stormy grief.
He did not know why he had come to that room, and he surely would not have come had he expected to find her there. But it could not now be helped; he was there with her; he had witnessed her sorrow, and involuntarily advancing toward her he laid his hand lightly upon her shoulder and said, “Poor child, don’t cry so hard.”
She seemed to him a little girl, and as such he had addressed her; but to the startled Marian it mattered not what he said—there was kindness in his voice, and lifting up her face, which even in the darkness looked white and worn, she sobbed, “Oh, Frederic, you don’t hate me, then?”
“Hate you, Marian,” he answered, “of course not. What put that idea into your head?”
“Because—because you act so cold and strange, and don’t come near me when my heart is aching so hard for him—your father.”
Frederic made no reply, and resolving to make a clean breast of it, Marian continued, “There’s nobody to care for me now, and I wish you to be my brother, just as you used to be, and if your father said any thing else of me to you he didn’t mean it, I am sure; I don’t at any rate, and I want you to forget it and not hate me for it. I’ll go away from Redstone Hall if you say so, but you mustn’t hate me for what I could not help. Will you, Frederic?” and Marian’s voice was again choked with tears.
She had stumbled upon the very subject uppermost in Frederic’s mind, and drawing a chair near to her, he said, “I will not profess to be ignorant of what you mean, Marian. My father had some strange fancies at the last, but for these you are not to blame. Did he say nothing to you of a letter?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Marian quickly, “and I’ve been for it so many times. Will you give it to me now, Frederic? It’s mine, you know,” and Marian looked at him wistfully.
Frederic hesitated a moment, and misapprehending the motive of his hesitancy, Marian continued,