She only felt that she was not indifferent to him—that the story Alice was to tell him on the morrow would be received with a quiet kind of happiness at least—that he would not bid her go away as she once had done before—and with the little blind girl, she, too, began to think the morrow would never come.
CHAPTER XXIX.
TELLING FREDERIC.
It was midnight, and from the windows of the library at Redstone Hall there shone a single light, its dim rays falling upon the haggard face of the weary man, who, since parting from Marian in the parlor, had sat there just as he was sitting now, unmindful of the lapse of time—unmindful of every thing save the fierce battle he was waging with himself. Hour by hour—day by day—week by week, had his love for Marian Grey increased, until now he could no more control it than he could stay the mighty torrent in its headlong course. It was all in vain that he kept or tried to keep Marian Lindsey continually before his mind, saying often to himself: “She is my wife—she is alive, and I must not love another.”
He did not care for Marian Lindsey. He did not wish to find her now—he almost hoped he never should, though even that would avail him nothing, unless he knew to a certainty that she were really dead. Perhaps he never could know, and as he thought of the long, dreary years in which he must live on with that terrible uncertainty forever haunting him, he pressed his hands upon his burning forehead and cried aloud: “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Oh, Marian Grey, can it be that you, who might have been the angel of my life, were sent to avenge the wrongs of that other Marian?”
He knew it was wicked, this intense, absorbing passion for Marian Grey, but he could not feel it so, and he would have given half his possessions for the sake of abandoning himself for one brief hour to this love—for the sake of seeing her eyes of blue meet with the look he had so often fancied her giving to the man she loved. And she loved him! He was sure of it! He saw it those nights when he watched with her by Alice’s bedside; he had seen it since in the sudden flushing of her cheek and the falling of her eyes when he approached. And it was this discovery which prompted him to the act he meditated. Not both of them could stay there, himself and Marian, for he would not that she should suffer more than need be. She had recovered from her first and early love; she would get over this, and if she were only happy, it didn’t matter how desolate her going would leave him, for she must go, he said. He had come to that decision, sitting there alone, and it had wrung great drops of perspiration from his brow and moans of anguish from his lips. But it must be—there was no alternative, he thought, and in the chair where Marian Lindsey once had written her farewell, he wrote to Marian Lindsey’s rival that Redstone Hall could be her home no longer.
“Think not that you have displeased me,” he said, “for this is not why I send you from me. Both of us cannot stay, and though for Alice’s sake I would gladly keep you here, it must not be. I am going to New Orleans, to be absent three or four weeks, and shall not expect to find you here on my return. You will need money, and I enclose a check for a thousand dollars. Don’t refuse to take it, for I give it willingly, and though my conduct is sadly at variance with my words, you must believe me when I say that in all the world you have not so true a friend, as
“Frederic Raymond.”
Many times he read this letter over, and it was not until long after midnight that he sought his pillow, only to toss from side to side with feverish unrest, and he was glad when at last Josh came in to make the fire, for by that token he knew it was morning.
“Tell Dinah I will breakfast in my room,” he said, “and say to Phil that he must have the carriage ready early, for I am going to New Orleans, and he will carry me to Frankfort.”
“Ye-e-es, Sir,” was Josh’s answer, as he departed with the message.