“She always was,” said Frederick, pulling his peaked beard with a certain complacency. He thought he saw through it all. When he brought her from Italy she had been very young, and had not understood her own feelings; and then he married, and his position was changed. But now a further change had come. He was a widower; he was free to love and to marry over again. And Innocent, developed into self-consciousness, felt this; and felt that she herself in her perilous position had need of great additional prudence in her intercourse with him. Poor Innocent! This interpretation of her motives entirely removed any offence that Frederick might have felt. It gave him a delightful sense of his own powers and attractions, and inclined him doubly towards the little cousin who had so just an appreciation at once of himself and his circumstances. It opened his eyes to many things, among others, to her beauty, which had developed wonderfully. She was now not only very handsome, but handsome in a way which struck everybody. Hers were not the sweet and bright good looks of Nelly, but a quite distinct beauty of a high order—and Frederick began to admire Innocent more than she had ever admired him. He inquired into everything about her, and in the course of his inquiries learned all that happened with Sir Alexis, and was more amused and pre-occupied by this piece of news than his mother could have supposed possible. He was amused, she supposed, for he laughed long and low, and could not be done with the subject. “So Longueville thought he could have her for the asking,” Frederick said, with a laugh which was full of keen and covert excitement. “He was very nice about it,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I think he was really fond of her; and it would be a good thing for Innocent; a man who knows her so thoroughly, and would not expect too much. I don’t think he has given up hope.”
“Oh, he has not given up hope,” said Frederick half fiercely, half laughing. He would not give any explanation of his amusement, but he returned to the subject again and again with a curious interest. And gradually he came to show a great deal of regard and attention to the invalid of the house, to all Innocent’s desires and likings, as she came out of her fever. Sometimes she would look at him strangely, as if she had something to tell him, and then would sigh and shrink away, and avoid all conversation with him. Poor, dear little Innocent! she felt the difference. He was no longer a married man, he was free; she could not disclose her guileless love any longer with the sense of security she had once had. Nothing could be more natural, nothing sweeter, more interesting to Frederick—and the whole secret of her conduct seemed to him to be in his hands.
Strangely different were poor Innocent’s thoughts. The thing she wanted to do was to tell him of the one event she had never forgotten. “I killed your wife;” these were the words that were constantly on her lips, which in her forlorn honesty, poor child, she could not rest without saying. Though the sense of guilt had never left her, her mind had begun to accustom itself to the idea, horrible as it was. She began to feel herself in a measure the innocent victim of fate, guilty without intention. She had not meant it. Innocent’s mind grew by degrees capable of taking in this thought, which was more complex than anything she had ever embraced with her intelligence before; she had not meant it—and yet she was guilty. She had reft another of sweet life, she had freed Frederick from his wife. She felt uneasy with him until she had told him, an impostor, approaching him under false pretences. Poor Innocent was in a sad strait between him and his mother. If she told Frederick the terrible secret, which stood like a ghost between them, Mrs. Eastwood would be angry with her. This kept her back; and who could doubt that he, too, would be “angry” when he knew what she had done? The latter thought, however, was an inducement to make the disclosure, for Innocent, in her simplicity, could not bear the thought of keeping the secret, which might alienate her cousin from her, and yet accepting his kindness while she did not deserve it. Thus her secret had driven her out of the primitive region of sentiment in which her mind had hitherto dwelt, into that sphere of mental and moral complication in which most of us have our home. This it was that made her uneasy, embarrassed, almost unhappy with Frederick. It may seem strange to the reader that any additional weight was necessary to disturb the calm of an unhappy girl who thought herself guilty of a murder. But Innocent was passive in feeling, and imagination scarcely existed in her; and besides, I believe that though fictitious miseries are often very terrible, a fictitious guilt like this, though it may affect the mind as if it were real, can scarcely weigh upon the conscience like an actual crime. It is difficult to grope into such darkling corners of nature or to discriminate between moral and intellectual impressions to a point so fine drawn. I do not affirm this as a certainty, but I put it forth as an opinion. Innocent believed that she had been guilty of a terrible crime, and yet she knew, poor child, that she was not guilty. Her mind was oppressed by it, her life clouded, all her peaceful, passive existence revolutionized; but her conscience was not affected to a similar degree. Her consciousness had entered upon an entirely new chapter since this terrible event. Herself had become revealed to her by the light of it, and it was only by this light that she could realize her own individual and independent being; but she was not so unhappy as in the circumstances she ought to have been. She was unhappy with Frederick because he did not know, because he thought otherwise of her than as she deserved; but the general course of her life, though weighed down by this strange new consciousness, was not so unhappy as, according to all rules, it ought to have been.
There came a moment, however, when the crisis of this doubtful intercourse between Innocent and her cousin could not be put off further. Mrs. Eastwood and Nelly were dining out, and Frederick had benignly announced his intention of staying at home to take care of Innocent. This benevolent proposal did not quite meet with the gratitude it deserved. His mother immediately hesitated about her engagement, wondered whether it was necessary that she should go, and betrayed a general uneasiness, in which Nelly shared. Innocent took little notice, but she did not look at him with soft grateful eyes as she once would have done. He was piqued, and he was rendered obstinate by this mingled indifference and opposition, and, as her engagement was one which Mrs. Eastwood could not really give up, Frederick had his way. Innocent and Dick and he dined together, and when Dick went off to his studies, as was needful, the two, between whom, as poor Innocent felt, that ghost stood, were left alone. It was winter by this time, and the drawing-room at The Elms was very warm and homelike when the ruddy curtains were drawn, the lamp lighted, and the room full of cheerful firelight. Frederick placed his little cousin in the easiest chair; he drew his own seat near her, and took the book he had been reading to her on the previous evening. It was a soft domestic scene, full of tender brotherly affection, kind and pious duty to that feeblest and gentlest of all the kindred, the youngest, the child of the house. Frederick felt a wave of warm and delightful feeling suffuse his heart. In some cases duty itself is the most pleasant of all pastimes, and this was one of those cases. How lovely that passive, dreamy face was as Innocent sat and listened! She was not at work, as so many women think it necessary to be. She was capable of doing absolutely nothing, sitting with her hands laid loosely across each other in her lap, listening—or dreaming—what did it matter? The book that Frederick read was a story of gentle and unexciting interest, a soft and simple narrative, such as Innocent was capable of following. He felt that it was good of him merely to read such a book—a book not adapted to his manly intelligence, food for babes; to have been seen with it in his hand was a kind of certificate of moral character. He, who had so many memories in his life which were far from being domestic or dutiful, felt in this tender moment such an accession of character as was enough to cover a great many peccadillos. And Frederick loved character as much, or even more, though not with so warm a passion as he liked self-indulgence. How exquisite was the sensation when for once in a way duty and self-indulgence went hand in hand!
“Do you like it, Innocent?” he inquired, after a time, pausing to look at her, and laying down his book.
“Yes,” said Innocent softly; but she did not look at him as she had been wont.
“You do not care very much for books, though? Do you remember, Innocent, in summer, the first summer you were here, when we used to walk about the garden together? you are changed since that time. You liked me better then than you do now.”
“I, Frederick? You were the only one I knew,” she said, with a startled look, moving uneasily in her chair.
“And you know the others now as well as me—my mother, and Nelly, and Jenny, and Dick, and we are all the same to you? Do you know, Innocent, I liked the old way best?”
She made no answer; her hands twined and untwined themselves in her lap; her soft cheek coloured; it was still pale enough, heaven knows—but the faint tint that came upon it was a blush for her.