This ungenial weather had brought complication with it. Just as Sir Nash Bohun was about to quit Dallory Hall, taking Arthur with him, the wind caught him in an unguarded moment, and laid him up with inflammation of the chest. Sir Nash took to his bed. One of the results was, that Arthur Bohun must remain at the Hall, and knew not how long he might be a fixture there. Sir Nash would not part with him. He had come to regard him quite as his son.
Ellen Adair thought Fate was cruel to her, taking one thing with another. And so it was; very cruel. Whilst they were together, she could not begin to forget him: and, to see him so continually with Mary Dallory, brought her the keenest pain. She was but human: jealousy swayed her just as it sways other people.
Another thing was beginning to trouble her--she did not hear from Mr. Adair. It was very strange. Not a letter had come from him since that containing the permission to marry Arthur Bohun;--as Mrs. Cumberland had interpreted it--received at Eastsea. Ellen could not understand the silence at all. Her father had always written so regularly.
"He ought not to remain here," she murmured passionately as she walked, alluding to Arthur Bohun. "I cannot help myself; I have nowhere else to go: but he ought to leave, in spite of Sir Nash."
A greyer tinge seemed to creep over the sky. The shrubbery seemed to grow darker. It was only the first advent of twilight, falling early that melancholy evening.
"Will there ever be any brightness in my life again?" she continued, clasping her hands in pain. "Is this misery to last for ever? Did any one, I wonder, ever go through such a trial and live? Scarcely. I am afraid I am not very strong to bear things. But oh--who could bear it?"
She sat down on one of the benches, and bent her aching brow on her hands. What with the surrounding gloom, and her dark dress, some one who had turned into the walk, came sauntering on without observing her. It was Arthur Bohun. He started when she raised her head: his face was every whit as pale and sad as hers; but he could not help seeing how ill and woebegone she looked.
"I fear you are not well," he stopped to say.
"Oh--thank you--not very," was the confused answer.
"This is a trying time. Heaven knows I would save you from it, if I could. I would have died to spare you. I would die still, if by that means things for you could be made right. But it may not be. Time alone must be the healer."