The envelope was torn open—the enclosed sheet was withdrawn, but about it there was a strangely familiar look. Was there a film before Marian’s eyes? Was she growing blind, or did she recognize her own letter—the one she had sent to Redstone Hall? It was the same—for it said “Dear Frederic” at the top, and “Marian” at the bottom! And he had returned it to her unanswered—not a word—not a line—nothing but silence, as cold, as hard and as terrible as the feeling settling down on Marian’s heart. But yes—there was one line—only one, and it read—oh, horror, could it be that he would mock her thus—that he would tear out her bleeding heart and trample it beneath his feet, by offering her this cruel insult.
“Isabel Huntington is now the mistress of Redstone Hall.”
This was the drop in the brimming bucket, and if she had suffered death when the great sorrow came upon her once before, she suffered more now a hundred fold. In her ignorance she fancied they were married, for how else could Isabel be mistress there, and she comprehended at once the shame—the disgrace such a proceeding would bring to Frederic, and the wrong, the dishonor, the insult it brought to her. There was a look of anguish in her eye and a painful contraction of the muscles about her mouth. There were purple spots upon her flesh, which seemed wasting away while she sat there, and a note of agony, rarely heard by human ear, was in her voice, as she cried, “No, no, no—it is too soon—too soon—anything but that,” and the little Marian who, half an hour before, had heard the ticking of the clock and listened to the rain, lay in the arms of Mrs. Burt, a white, motionless thing, unconscious of pain, unconscious of everything. She had suffered all she could suffer, and henceforth no sorrow which could come to her would eat into her heart’s core as this last one had done.
Mrs. Burt thought she was dead, as did those who came at her loud call, but the old physician said there was life, adding, as he looked at the blue pinched lips and shrunken face: “The more’s the pity, for she has had some awful blow, and if she lives she’ll probably be a raving maniac.”
Poor Marian! As time passed on the physician’s words seemed likely to be verified. For days she lay in the same deathlike stupor, and when at last she roused from it, ’twas only to tear her hair and rave in wild delirium. At first, Mrs. Burt, who had examined the letter, thought of writing to Frederic and telling him the result of his cruel message, the truth of which she did not believe; but she seldom acted without advice, so she wrote first to Ben, who came quickly, crying like a very child, and wringing his great rough hands when he saw the swaying, tossing form upon the bed and knew that it was Marian.
“No, mother,” he said, “we won’t write. It’s a lie the villain told her, but we will let him be till she’s dead. God will find him fast enough, the rascal!” and Ben struck his fist upon the bureau as if he would like to take the management of Frederic into his own hands.
It was a long and terrible sickness which came to Marian, and when the delirium was on, the very elements of her nature seemed changed. For her hair she conceived an intense loathing; and clutching at her long tresses, she would tear them from her head and shake them from her fingers, whispering scornfully:
“Go, you vile red things! He hates you, and so do I.”
“Better shave the hull concern and not let her yank it out like that,” said Ben; and when she became more and more ungovernable, he passed his arms around her and held fast her little hands, while her head was shorn of the locks once so displeasing to Frederic Raymond.
Ben’s taste, however, was different, and putting them reverently together, he dropped great tears upon them, and then laid them carefully away, thinking: “’Twill be something to look at when she’s gone. Poor little picked bird,” he would say as he watched by her side and listened to her moaning cries for home, “you’ll be out of your misery afore long, and go to a’nough sight better hum than Red stun Hall; but I hev my doubts ’bout meetin’ him there. Poor little girl if you hadn’t been born a lady and I hadn’t been born a fool, and we’d been brung up together, mabby you wouldn’t be a lyin’ here a biting your tongue and wringin’ your hands, with your head shaved slick and clean,” and the sweat dropped from Ben’s face, as he thought of what under widely different circumstances might have been. “But it can’t be now,” he said, “for even if she wan’t jined to this villain she loves so much, she’s as far above Ben Burt as the stars in Heaven.”