[CHAPTER XXIX.]
A SPECIAL FAVOUR FOR NEAL.
The whole night subsequent to the meeting in the Abbey graveyard with Oswald Cray, did Sara lie awake, striving to battle with her pain. It was very sore to bear. She knew now the cause of his absenting himself; and she knew that they were lost to each other for ever. It is the worst pain that a woman can be called upon to endure; no subsequent tribulation in life can equal its keen anguish.
Ten times in the night she prayed for help--for strength to support, and live, through her mind's trouble. She did not pray that it might be taken from her; that was hopeless; she knew that weeks and months must elapse before even the first brunt would lose its force; that years must roll on before tranquillity could come.
She did not blame Oswald Cray. She believed that that unhappy secret, of the precise nature of which she was yet in ignorance, had become known to him: how, she could not conjecture. Perhaps he knew it in all its terrible details--and that these were terrible, she doubted less now than ever. Were they not--ay, she fully believed it?--shortening her father's life? What had been that awful word spoken by Oswald Cray?--though she could not believe it to be so bad as that. But she knew that it was something to bring disgrace and danger in its train; and she fully justified Oswald Cray in the step he had taken. Still she thought that he should have come to her in the first onset and plainly said, "Such and such a thing has come to my knowledge, and therefore we must part." He had not done this; he had left her for weeks to the slow torture of suspense--and yet that very suspense was more tolerable than the certainty now arrived at. Oh, the dull dead pain that lay on her heart!--never for a long, long while to be lifted from it.
She strove to reason calmly with herself; she essayed to mark out what her future course should be. She knew that there was nothing at present but to bear her burden and hide it from the world's eye; but she would do her duty all the same, Heaven helping her, in all the relations of life; she would strive nobly to take her full part in life's battle, whatever the inward struggle.
There is no doubt that in that night of tribulation she looked at the future in its very darkest aspect. It was well perhaps, that it should be so, for the horizon might clear a little as she went on. That Mr. Oswald Cray would in time marry, she had no right to doubt--a word or two of his had almost seemed to hint at it: man forgets more easily than woman.
Towards morning she dropped into a heavy sleep, and had slept longer than usual. This caused her to be late in dressing, and brought upon her the reproof of punctual Miss Bettina. She looked at herself in the glass ere she went down; at her pale face, her heavy eyelids; hoping, trusting they would escape observation. What a happy thing it is that others cannot read our faces as we read them! Miss Bettina was at the head of the breakfast-table. She was suffering from a cold; but, ill or well, she was sure to be at her post and Dr. Davenal stood at the fire, his elbow on the mantelpiece, his forehead leaning on his hand.
Sara went up to him, and he seemed to rouse himself from a reverie as he kissed her. She noticed how ill he looked.
"Papa, I am sure you are worse!"