Anne Hereford: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Yes, he's there. I've seen him."

"Ah, I knew it," she said, with a relieved sigh, and she suddenly poured out another glass of sherry, and lifted it to her lips. "Here's to your health, George Heneage! Have the police got him?"

"No, the police have gone. I dismissed them."

Charlotte flung down her knife and fork in a passion. "Dismissed them! Without taking him! Are you going to show leniency at the eleventh hour, like a weak woman, Mr. Edwin Barley? After what I have done to trace him!"

"You have done a little too much," returned Mr. Edwin Barley. And, abandoning his short and crusty answers, he spoke at length his opinion of her acts at Chandos. He was not in the humour to suppress any bitterness of tongue, and said some keen things.

Charlotte went into a real passion.

What with the disappointment at finding Mr. Edwin Barley in this mood, which seemed to promise badly for her semi-idea of prolonging her stay under his roof; what with his ingratitude after all her pains; what with her recent ignominious exit from Chandos; and what with the good old sherry, that is apt to have its effects when taken at mid-day, Mrs. Penn lost control of her temper. Prudence was forgotten in passion; and Mr. Edwin Barley was doomed to listen to the wild ravings of an angry woman. Reproach for the past, for things that she had deemed wrongs in the bygone years, came out all the more freely for having been pent up within her so long. She contrasted her conduct with his: her ever anxious solicitude for his interests; his neglect and cruel non-recognition of them. As the most forcible means of impressing his ingratitude upon him, she recapitulated the benefits she had wrought one by one; talking fast and furiously. Mr. Edwin Barley, a cool man under petty grievances, listened in silence: he had said his say, said it with stinging coldness, and it was over. Feeling very much inclined to stop his ears was he, when something further said by her caused him to open them, as ears had never perhaps been opened yet. Charlotte had shot beyond her mark in her reckless rage; and was scarcely aware that she had done so until Mr. Edwin Barley, his face and eyes alike ablaze, seized her wrists.

She had gone too for to retract, and she brazened out her avowal, making a merit of it, rather than taking shame.

It was she who had stolen Mrs. Edwin Barley's will. She, Charlotte Delves. She had taken it as a duty—in her regard for his, Edwin Barley's interests. Who was the child, Anne Hereford, that she should inherit what of right belonged to him? When she had appeared to find the keys in the china basket on the mantel-shelf, it was she who had put them there ready to be found.

There ensued no reproach from Mr. Barley's lips. At first she thought he was going to strike her, staring at her with his white and working face; but the minutes passed and he overcame his emotion. Perhaps he feared he might be tempted to strike her if he spoke: it seemed as if a blow had fallen on him—as if the depth of feeling aroused by her confession were, not so much wrath, as a sense of awful injury to himself that could never be repaired.