“I could tell them something if I would,” she thought, as she bent over the hemlock boughs, and listened to the remarks; but for that time she kept her secret and worked on moodily, while the unsuspecting Lucy went her way, and was soon alighting at the parsonage-gate.
Arthur saw her as she came up the walk, and went out to meet her. He was looking very pale and miserable, and his clothes hung loosely upon him, but he welcomed her kindly, and lead her in to the fire, and tried to believe that he was glad to see her sitting there with her little high-heeled boots upon the fender, and the bright hues of her balmoral just showing beneath her dress of blue merino. She went all over the house as she usually did, suggesting alterations and improvements, and greatly confusing good Mrs. Brown, who trudged obediently after her, wondering what she and her master were ever to do with the gay-plumaged bird, whose ways were so unlike their own.
“You must drive with me to the church,” she said at last to Arthur. “Fresh air will do you good, and you stay moped up too much. I wanted you to-day at Prospect Hill, for this morning the express from New York brought—” she stood up on tiptoe to whisper the great news to him, but his pulses did not quicken in the least, even when she told him how charming was the bridal dress.
He was standing before the mirror, and glancing at himself, he said half laughingly, half sadly, “I am a pitiful-looking bridegroom to go with all that finery. I should not think you would want me, Lucy.”
“But I do,” she answered, holding his hand and leading him to the carriage, which took him swiftly to the church.
He had not intended going there as long as there was an excuse for staying away, and he felt himself grow sick and faint when he stood amid the Christmas decorations, and remembered the last year, when he and Anna had fastened the wreaths upon the wall. They were trimming the church very elaborately in honor of him and his bride-elect, and white artificial flowers, so natural that they could not be detected from the real, were mixed with scarlet leaves and placed among the mass of green. The effect was very fine, and Arthur tried to praise it, but his face belied his words, and after he was gone, the disappointed girls declared that he looked more like a man about to be hung, than one so soon to be married.
It was very late that night when Lucy summoned Valencia to comb out her long, thick curls, and Valencia was tired and cross and sleepy, and handled the brush so awkwardly, and snarled her mistress’s hair so often, that Lucy expostulated with her sharply, and this awoke the slumbering demon, which, bursting into full life, could no longer be restrained, and in amazement which kept her silent, Lucy listened, while Valencia vulgarly taunted her with “standing in Anna Ruthven’s shoes,” and told all she knew of the letter stolen by Mrs. Meredith, and the one she carried to Arthur. But Valencia’s anger quickly cooled, and she trembled with fear when she saw how deathly white her distress grew, and even heard the loud beating of the heart which seemed trying to burst from its prison, and fall bleeding at the feet of the poor, wretched girl, around whose lips the white foam gathered as she motioned Valencia to stop, and whispered “I am dying.”
She was not dying, but the fainting-fit which ensued was more like death than that which had come upon Anna when she heard that Arthur was lost. Once they really thought her dead, and in an agony of remorse Valencia hung over her, accusing herself as a murderess, but giving no other explanation to those around her than:
“I was combing her hair when the white froth spirted all over her wrapper, and she said that she was dying.”
And that was all the family know of the strange attack which lasted till the dawn of day, and left upon Lucy’s face a look as if years and years of roguish had passed over her young head, and left its footprints behind. Early in the morning she asked to see Valencia alone, and the repentant girl went to her, prepared to take back all she had said, and declare the whole a lie. But something in Lucy’s manner wrung the truth from her, and she repeated the story again so clearly, that Lucy had no longer a doubt that Anna was preferred to herself, and sending Valencia away, she moaned piteously: