“For the dear Lord’s sake, what are you doing?” was Dinah’s exclamation, which at once roused Marian, who unhesitatingly answered,
“I got up to look in the glass, and see if I was so very homely.”
“Humbly! Nonsense, child,” returned old Dinah. “You look like a picter lyin’ thar with the sun a shinin’ on yer har, and makin’ it look like a piece of crimson satin.”
The compliment was a doubtful one, but Marian knew it was well meant, and, without a word in reply, commenced her morning toilet. That day, somewhat to her disappointment, her guardian did not resume the conversation of the previous night. He was convinced that Marian could be easily won, but he did not think it wise to encourage her until he had talked with his son, whose return he looked for anxiously. But day after day went by, and it was in vain that Alice listened, and Marian watched, for the daily stage. It never stopped at the gate; and each time that the old man heard them say it had gone by, he groaned afresh, fearing Frederic would not come until it was too late.
“I can at least tell him the truth on paper,” he said to himself at last, “and it may be he will pay more heed to words, which a dead father wrote, than to words which a living father spoke.”
Marian was accordingly bidden to bring him his little writing desk, and then to leave the room, for he would be alone when he wrote that letter of confession. It cost him many a fierce struggle—the telling to his son a secret which none save himself and God had ever known—aye, which none had ever need to know if he would have it so—but he would not. The secret had worn his life away, and he must make reparation now. So, with the perspiration dropping from every pore, he wrote; and, as he wrote, in his disordered imagination, there stood beside his pillow the white-haired Englishman, watching carefully to see that justice was done at last to Marian. Recently several letters had passed between the father and his son concerning the marriage of the latter with Marian—a marriage every way distasteful to the young man, who, in his answer, had said far harsher things of Marian than he really meant, hoping thus to put an end to his father’s plan. She was “rough, uncouth, uneducated and ugly,” he said, “and if his father did not give up that foolish fancy, he should positively hate the red-headed fright.”
All this the old man touched upon—quoting the very words his son had used, and whispering to himself, “Poor—poor Marian, it would break her heart to know that he said that, but she never will—she never will;” and then, with the energy of despair, he wrote the reason why she must be the wife of his son, pleading with him as only a dying man can plead, that he would not disregard the wishes of his father, and begging him to forget the dark-haired Isabel, who, though perhaps more beautiful, was not—could not—be as pure, as gentle and as good as Marian.
The letter was finished, and ’mid burning tears of remorse and shame the old man read it through.
“Yes, that will do,” he said. “Frederic will heed what’s written here. He’ll marry her or else make restitution;” and laying it away, he commenced the last and hardest part of all—the confessing to Marian how he had sinned against her.
Although there was no tie of blood between them, the gentle young orphan had crept down into his inmost heart, where once he treasured a little golden-haired girl, who, before Frederic was born, died on his lap, and went to the heaven made for such as she. In the first moments of his bereavement, he had thought his loss could never be repaired, but when, with her soft arms around his neck, Marian Lindsey had murmured in his ear how much she loved the only father she had ever known, he felt that the angel he had lost was restored to him tenfold in the little English girl. He knew that she believed that there was in him no evil, and his heart throbbed with agony as he nerved himself to tell her how for years he had acted a villain’s part, but it was done at last, and with a passionate appeal for her forgiveness, and a request that she would not forget him wholly, but come some time to visit his lonely grave, he finished the letter, and folding it up, wrote upon its back, “For Marian;” then, taking the one intended for Frederic, he attempted to write, “For my Son,” but the ink was gone from his pen, there was a blur before his eyes, and though he traced the words he left no impress, and the letter bore no superscription to tell to whom it belonged. Stepping upon the floor, he dragged his feeble limbs to the adjoining room, his library, and placing both letters in his private drawer, retired to his bed, where, utterly exhausted, he fell asleep.