Strange fears were working within her, Dr. Bevary's manner was so different from ordinary. 'I think I see it all,' she gasped. 'The worst has happened.'
'The best has happened,' responded Dr. Bevary. 'Miss Gwinn, you have requested me more than once to bring you here without preparation should the time arrive—for that you could bear certainty, but not suspense. Will you see her?'
Her face had grown white and rigid as marble. Unable to speak, she pointed forward with her hand. Dr. Bevary drew it within his own to support her. In a clean, cool chamber, on a pallet bed, lay a dead woman. Dr. Kerr gently drew back the snow-white sheet, with which the face was covered. A pale, placid face, with a little band of light hair folded underneath the cap. She—Miss Gwinn—did not stir: she gave way to neither emotion nor violence; but her bloodless lips were strained back from her teeth, and her face was as white as that of the dead.
'God's ways are not as our ways,' whispered Dr. Bevary. 'You have been acting for revenge: He has sent peace. Whatsoever He does is for the best.'
She made no reply: she remained still and rigid. Dr. Bevary stroked the left hand of the dead, lying in its utter stillness—stroked, as if unconsciously, the wedding-ring on the third finger. He had been led to believe that it was placed on that finger, years and years ago, by his brother-in-law, James Lewis Hunter. And had been led to believe a lie! And she who had invented the lie, who had wrought the delusion, who had embittered Mr. Hunter's life with the same dread belief, stood there at the doctor's side, looking at the dead.
It is a solemn thing to persist though but tacitly in the acting of a vile falsehood, in the mysterious presence of death. Even Miss Gwinn was not strong-minded enough for that. As Dr. Bevary turned to her with a remark upon the past, she burst forth into a cry, and gave utterance to words that fell upon the physician's ear like a healing balm, soothing and binding up a long-open wound.
CHAPTER X. THE YEARS GONE BY.
Those readers will be disappointed who look for any very romantic dénoûment of 'A Life's Secret.' The story is a short and sad one. Suggesting the wretchedness and evil that may result when truth is deviated from; the lengths to which a blind, unholy desire for revenge will carry an ill-regulated spirit; and showing how, in the moral government of the world, sin casts its baleful consequences upon the innocent as well as the guilty.
When the carriage of Dr. Bevary, containing himself and Miss Gwinn, drove from Mr. Hunter's door on the unknown errand, he—Mr. Hunter—staggered to a seat, rather than walked to it. That he was very ill that day, both mentally and bodily, he was only too conscious of. Austin Clay had said to him, 'Do not return: I will manage,' or words to that effect. At present Mr. Hunter felt himself incapable of returning. He sank down in the easy chair, and closed his eyes, his thoughts thrown back to the past. An ill-starred past: one that had left its bane on his after life, and whose consequences had clung to him. It is impossible but that ill-doing must leave its results behind: the laws of God and man alike demand it. Mr. Hunter, in early life, had been betrayed into committing a wrong act; and Miss Gwinn, in the gratification of her passionate revenge, had visited it upon him all too heavily. Heavily, most heavily was it pressing upon him now. That unhappy visit to Wales, which had led to all the evil, was especially present to his mind this day. A handsome young man, in the first dawn of manhood, he had gone to the fashionable Welsh watering-place—partly to renew a waste of strength more imaginary than real; partly in the love of roving natural to youth; partly to enjoy a few weeks' relaxation. 'If you want good and comfortable lodgings, go to Miss Gwinn's house on the South Parade,' some friend, whom he encountered at his journey's end, had said to him. And to Miss Gwinn's he went. He found Miss Gwinn a cold, proud woman—it was she whom you have seen—bearing the manners of a lady. The servant who waited upon him was garrulous, and proclaimed, at the first interview, amidst other gossip, that her mistress had but a limited income—a hundred, or a hundred and fifty pounds a year, she believed; that she preferred to eke it out by letting her drawing-room and adjoining bed-room, and to live well; rather than to rusticate and pinch. Miss Gwinn and her motives were nothing to the young sojourner, and he turned a careless, if not a deaf ear, to the gossip. 'She does it chiefly for the sake of Miss Emma,' added the girl: and the listener so far roused himself as to ask apathetically who 'Miss Emma' was. It was her mistress's young sister, the girl replied: there must be twenty good years between them. Miss Emma was but nineteen, and had just come home from boarding-school: her mistress had brought her up ever since her mother died. Miss Emma was not at home now, but was expected on the morrow, she went on. Miss Emma was not without her good looks, but her mistress took care they should not be seen by everybody. She'd hardly let her go about the house when strangers were in it, lest she should be met in the passages. Mr. Hunter laughed. Good looks had attractions for him in those days, and he determined to see for himself, in spite of Miss Gwinn, whether Miss Emma's looks were so good that they might not be looked at. Now, by the merest accident—at least, it happened by accident in the first instance, and not by intention—one chief point of complication in the future ill was unwittingly led to. In this early stage of the affair, while the servant maid was exercising her tongue in these items of domestic news, the friend who had recommended Mr. Hunter to the apartments, arrived at the house and called out to him from the foot of the stairs, his high clear voice echoing through the house.