“Come, my lad, if you are imposing upon these poor people—I must set you right,” said the man who was called Louis’s father. “Do you know what he is, my good woman, that you harbour this idle young rascal in despite of my known wishes? Home, you young vagabond, home! This boy is——”
“My lord, my lord,” interposed Mrs Atheling, in sudden agitation, “if any disgrace belongs to him, it is yours and not his that you should publish it. Go away, sir, from my door, where you once did harm enough, and don’t try to injure the poor boy—perhaps we know who he is better than you.”
What put this bold and rash speech into the temperate lips of Mamma, no one could ever tell; the effect of it, however, was electric. Lord Winterbourne fell back suddenly, stared at her with his strained eyes in the moonlight, and swore a muttered and inaudible oath. “Home, you hound!” he repeated in a mechanical tone, and then, waving his hand with a threatening and unintelligible gesture, turned to go away. “So long as the door is yours, my friend, I will take care to make no intrusion upon it,” he said significantly before he disappeared; and then the shadow departed out of the moonlight, the stealthy step died on the grass, and they stood alone again with beating hearts. Mamma took Marian’s hand from Louis, but not unkindly, and with an affectionate earnestness bade him go away. He hesitated long, but at length consented, partly for her entreaty, partly for the sake of Rachel. Under other circumstances this provocation would have maddened Louis; but he wrung Agnes’s hand with an excited gaiety as he lingered at the door watching a shadow on the window whither Marian had gone with her mother. “I had best not meet him on the road,” said Louis: “there is the Curate—for once, for your sake, and the sake of what has happened, I will be gracious and take his company; but to tell the truth, I do not care for anything which can befall me to-night.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
A CRISIS.
Marian, whom her mother tenderly put to sleep that night, as if she had been a child, yet who lay awake in the long cold hours before the dawn in a vague and indescribable emotion, her heart stirring within her like something which did not belong to her—a new and strange existence—slept late the next morning, exhausted and worn out with all this sudden and stormy influx of unknown feelings. Mamma, who, on the contrary, was very early astir, came into the bed-chamber of her daughters at quite an unusual hour, and, thankfully perceiving Marian’s profound youthful slumber, stood gazing at the beautiful sleeper with tears in her eyes. Paler than usual, with a shadow under her closed eyelids, and still a little dew upon the long lashes—with one hand laid in childish fashion under her cheek, and the other lying, with its pearly rose-tipped fingers, upon the white coverlid, Marian, but for the moved and human agitation which evidently had worn itself into repose, might have looked like the enchanted beauty of the tale—but indeed she was rather more like a child who had wept itself to sleep. Her sister, stealing softly from her side, left her sleeping, and they put the door ajar that they might hear when she stirred before they went, with hushed steps and speaking in a whisper, down stairs.
Mrs Atheling was disturbed more than she would tell; what she did say, as Agnes and she sat over their silent breakfast-table, was an expedient which herself had visibly no faith in. “My dear, we must try to prevent him saying anything,” said Mrs Atheling, with her anxious brow: it was not necessary to name names, for neither of them could forget the scene of last night.
Then by-and-by Mamma spoke again. “I almost fancy we should go home; she might forget it if she were away. Agnes, my love, you must persuade him not to say anything; he pays great attention to what you say.”
“But, mamma—Marian?” said Agnes.
“Oh, Agnes, Agnes, my dear beautiful child,” said Mrs Atheling, with a sudden access of emotion, “it was only friendship, sympathy—her kind heart; she will think no more of it, if nothing occurs to put it into her head.”
Agnes did not say anything, though she was extremely doubtful on this subject; but then it was quite evident that Mamma had no faith in her own prognostications, and regarded this first inroad into the family with a mixture of excitement, dread, and agitation which it was not comfortable to see.