“Where is she?”
“In the breakfast-room, looking at her flowers.”
I started for the room in a wild tumult of anger and passion, resolved to make her confess the reason of this treatment. Surely, three years of an intimacy like ours, gave me the right. In three minutes I confronted her where she stood, in the door between the breakfast-room and conservatory, like a statue draped in crape.
“Eleanor!”
She shrunk back; she held up her hands with an expression of horror. My God! that look in Eleanor’s eyes was enough to kill me. I turned away as hastily as I had come. As I stumbled along the passage, half blind with the terrible surging and throbbing of the blood through me, a soft pair of arms fell about my neck, a cheek wet with tears was pressed to mine—it was Mary.
“Never mind what they say about you, Richard,” she sobbed. “I don’t believe one word of it—not one word! I never shall. I am your friend. I love you; indeed I do. I do not want you to go away,” and she kissed me twice or thrice.
I took the sweet face in my cold hands, looked into the brimming eyes, hastily kissed the blushing cheek—“God bless you, Mary,” said I, and was gone.
END OF THE PART FIRST.
THE DEAD LETTER.