But as I withdrew my hand from Harry’s I remembered Saville’s papers which were crushed together in my grasp; I started with an exclamation of pain when I saw them. Personal misfortune falling on her lover may do very well to awake into action the shy affections of a girl—but I could not bear to be supposed generous to my husband—I trembled lest he should think so; a violent heat and color came to my face—I shut my hand again with an instinct of concealment. Another time! another time would surely do—I dared not disturb our new-found happiness so soon.
But Harry saw my sudden confusion, pain, and embarrassment. He took my hand again half anxiously, half playfully. “What are these?—what were you going to consult me about—must I not be your adviser now, Hester?” he said with a smile. I put them away out of my hand upon the table with momentary terror. “Not now,” I said eagerly, “not now; I got them from your enemy, Saville, that man—do not look at them now.”
His face darkened, his brow knit—once more, once more! it was such a look as women love to see upon the faces of their husbands, but it made him for the moment like my father as I had once fancied him before. “So!” he said, “he has fulfilled his threat—the miserable rascal! he thought to involve my wife in it. Hester, is it because of these papers that you have come to me to-day?”
“Oh, no, no—do not think it!” I cried, anxiously. “I am not escaped long enough from my own delusions to have no fear of them; do not fancy it was any secondary motive—do not, Harry! I could not bear the life we were living; and whenever I really had to speak to you, all that was lying in my heart burst forth. It was so, indeed;—do not take up my sin where I leave it, Harry; do not suspect me—oh, we have had enough of that!”
The tears were shining in his kind eyes I could see—he looked as he used to look in the brief charmed days before our marriage;—no, better than that—for through sorrow, and bitterness, and estrangement—strange lessons!—I knew him now, as then I had no chance to know him. “Do not fear, Hester,” he said; “I am not afraid of your generosity. I told you long ago I could bear to be pitied—the only thing I could not bear was justice;—and so long as what you give me is not barely my ‘rights,’ I will permit you to be as generous as even your nature can be. Now, Hester, at last may I speak of that long ago—that day when I came to Cottiswoode? and of the brave girl who brought me here, and her bit of briony? Not yet?—do you say not yet?”
“Harry, there are graver matters first,” I said; “there is a plot against you—they want to say—he wants to say—that—that—you are only Brian Southcote’s heir—you are not his son. I suppose he thought it would give me pleasure;—he told me—it is horrible! that Cottiswoode would be mine. Harry! think, if this should be true, what a frightful punishment to me! I should never have believed it for a moment, had it not looked so just a penalty for all my sins against you. Tell me, Harry—say it is impossible that such a fatal mistake should be.”
The color rose upon my husband’s face, and he raised his head with an involuntary gesture of pride and defiance. It was a Southcote face! I could not be mistaken—all around were the portraits of our race, and I read them with a quick inspection as my anxious eye glanced from him for a moment. He was not like Edgar the Scholar now—my Harry could never have planned a demon’s revenge upon unborn children—he was not like any one of them perhaps—but in his face I saw, as in a glass, reflections, momentary glances, of all the pictured faces round us. And when I turned to gaze upon himself again, once more I was overwhelmed with that shadow of my father in his resolute expression. Oh, monstrous invention!—how could any one have found all these shadowy likenesses in the face of a stranger?
“Hester,” he said gravely, “when Saville came to me last winter with some vague threats of his power to prove me an impostor, I almost wished at first that I could have yielded to him, and so restored to you the rights you were born to. But a man must be very wretched and debased indeed, when he can make up his mind to deprive himself of his name. Do you remember that you forbade me telling you what he had come to say? I carefully went over then, both by myself and with my lawyer, the proofs which were thought conclusive at a former time. I found no reason to doubt them, Hester—there was neither break nor weakness in the chain. You look at me doubtfully, wistfully—what do you wish me to say?”
“That you are quite sure—quite sure,” I said, “I am speaking folly, I know—but that you remember your father—that you are sure you are my uncle Brian’s son.”
“That is easily done—I am quite sure,” he said with perfect calmness; “but now, Hester, let me know what the fiction is. What does the fellow call me? I do not think his imagination is very brilliant—let me see.”