Bessy Rane: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

She could not help it. Had it been to save her life, she could not have helped lifting her face and glancing at him as the refrain died away. His eyes were fixed on her, a wistful, yearning expression in their depths; an expression so sad that in itself it was all that can be conceived of pain. Ellen bent her face again; her agitation at that moment seeming greater than she knew how to suppress. Lifting her hand to shade her eyes, the plain gold ring, still worn on it, was conspicuously visible.

"You look as though you had all the cares of the nation on your shoulders, Arthur."

He started at the address, which came from Miss Dallory. She had gone close up to him. Rallying his senses, he smiled and answered carelessly. The next minute Ellen saw them walking across the room together, her hand within his arm.

The next morning, Jelly made her appearance at the Hall, with two letters. They were from Australia, and from Mr. Adair. One was addressed to Mrs. Cumberland, the other to Ellen. Dr. Rane had desired Jelly to take both of them to Miss Adair, whom he now considered the most proper person to open Mrs. Cumberland's. Ellen carried it to Mr. North, asking if she ought to open it. Certainly, Mr. North answered, confirming Dr. Rane's view of the matter.

Ellen carried the letters to a remote and solitary spot in the garden, one that she was fond of frequenting, and in which she had never yet been intruded upon. She opened her own first: and there read what astonished her.

It appeared that after despatching his last letter to Mrs. Cumberland: the one already alluded to, that she had read with so much satisfaction to Arthur Bohun at Eastsea: Mr. Adair had been called from his station on business, and had remained absent some two or three months. Upon his return he found other letters awaiting him from Mrs. Cumberland, and learnt, to his astonishment, that the gentleman proposing for Ellen was Arthur Bohun, son of the Major Bohun with whom Mr. Adair had once been intimate. (The reader has not forgotten how Mrs. Cumberland confused matters in her mind, or that in her first letter she omitted to mention any name.) In a few peremptory lines written to Ellen--these that she was now reading--Mr. Adair retracted his former consent. He absolutely forbade her to marry, or ever think of marrying, Arthur Bohun: a union between them would be nothing less than a calamity for both, he wrote, and also for himself. He added that in consequence of an unexpected death he had become the head of his family, and was making preparations to return to Europe.

Wondering, agitated, Ellen dropped the letter, and opened Mrs. Cumberland's. An enclosure fell from it: a draft for a sum of money, which, as it appeared, Mrs. Cumberland was in the habit of receiving every half-year for her charge of Ellen. Mr. Adair wrote in still more explicit terms on the subject of the proposed marriage to Mrs. Cumberland--almost in angry terms. She, of all people, he said, ought to know that a marriage between his daughter and the late Major Bohun's son would be unsuitable, improper, and most distasteful to himself. He did not understand how Mrs. Cumberland could have laid such a proposal before him, or have permitted herself to entertain it for a moment: unless indeed she had never been made acquainted with certain facts of the past, connected with himself and Major Bohun and Major Bohun's wife, which Cumberland had known well. He concluded by saying, as he had said to Ellen, that he hoped shortly to be in England. Both letters had evidently been written in haste and in agitation: all minor matters being accounted as nothing, compared with the distinct and stern embargo laid upon the marriage.

"So it has happened for the best," murmured Ellen to her breaking heart, as she folded the letters and put them away.

She took the draft to Mr. North's parlour. He put on his spectacles, and mastered its meaning by the help of some questions to Ellen.

"A hundred and fifty pounds!" exclaimed he. "But surely, my dear, Mrs. Cumberland did not receive three hundred a-year with you! It's a large sum--for so small a service.