“Thank you for your kind offer of a home at Milnehill; and with love to Susan, believe me in haste,
“Your dutiful nephew,
“Horace Scarsdale.”
This letter was closed and thrown aside before Horace perceived the other one which lay on the table before him. He turned it over half suspiciously. In a female handwriting, and sent evidently by some private messenger, the look of it puzzled him who had no correspondents. Then the signature threw him into a flush of eager anxiety. What could induce Amelia Stenhouse to write to him? But, after all, the contents were commonplace enough. It was a very brief note, dated from her father’s house the morning of this same day:—
“Dear Sir—Papa is suddenly taken ill. The doctors fear it looks like cholera, and he is rather alarmed himself. He wishes to see you immediately, if you can come. I hope this may reach you soon, and that you will be able to return directly, for he seems anxious to see you, as if he had something to say.
“Yours sincerely,
“Amelia Stenhouse.”
It was some little time before Horace understood distinctly the contents of this note; for he was a lover, unlovely though his love was, and the first communication moved him into a momentary tumult, in which the words lost their due meaning. When he turned over to the address, however, and the “to be forwarded immediately” caught his eye, he began to rouse himself to a consciousness of the urgent circumstances. Mr. Stenhouse was ill, and wanted to see him. Twenty-four hours ago Horace would have supposed that his employer knew something of his father’s secret. Now he was somewhat indifferent as to any communication which Mr. Stenhouse might have to make. But he was Amelia’s father, and she was likely to be there. He got up accordingly, in the haste which was congenial to his agitated condition, and made his toilette rapidly, but with unusual care. He was pale, and his passion of evil thoughts had left traces upon his face; but the very excitement of those murderous fancies lighted an unusual fire in his eye, and animated the countenance, which, in common times, was not a remarkable face. As he went out he took up the letter he had written to his uncle, and tossed it carelessly into the post as he passed, thinking, with a momentary contemptuous wonder as he did so, of the simple old man who had opened his arms and heart to Susan, and who held open for Horace himself that warm domestic shelter, the home of which the young man felt no need. The contrast was wonderful enough—Uncle Edward and his Susan in their bright, peaceful room at Milnehill, in the evening calm and sweet comfort of that home life; and this young solitary, hurrying by himself through the dark streets of Harliflax, the wind flaring the street-lamps overhead, and a crowd of hurrying phantoms rushing through the darkness of his mind, where the air was wild with the excitement of a storm, and lightning gleams of evil intention threw a fitful illumination. He went on, hurrying through the night, with a careless intuition that he was going to a death-bed. It was nothing to Horace. He was going to serve his own purposes, to see Amelia. His pulse beat high at last, with a rising exhilaration. In the changing tide of his thoughts he began to remember that fortune was secure to him, though not now, and he was going to see the first and only creature who had ever touched his selfish soul into passion. His spirit rose into a thrill of expectation and dark enjoyment. That inarticulate horror lay darkling still among his thoughts, but it did not disturb the rising flush of youthful elevation and hope.
The lawyer’s house was lighted all over, but not with lights which could be mistaken for an illumination of pleasure. Even in so short a time the whole place had acquired a look of painful hurry and anxiety. The daughters and the servants were wandering restlessly up and down the stairs, making ceaseless inquiries, and keeping up a perpetual disturbance at the door of the sick-room, where Mrs. Stenhouse, restored to her due place, by the visitation of trouble, watched by her husband, and where even Amelia was not permitted to enter. Amelia was not very anxious for the privilege, it must be owned. She kept up a perpetual succession of messages, sending her sisters and her maid, and every half hour going herself to ask whether papa was any better?—whether there was any change?—with cheeks paled half by anxiety about her father, and half by fright and apprehension for herself; for the cholera had come to Harliflax, a dreaded visitor, some months before, and still made itself remembered in fatal droppings of poison, here and there a single “case” renewing in the public mind its original panic. The beauty was glad to escape from her fears and the troubled atmosphere of the house, into a burst of hurried conversation with Horace, who was not sentimental enough to require of her any great degree of devotion to her father, and did not find it at all unsuitable to the agitated condition of the household that Amelia turned to himself so readily for occupation in her restless idleness. She swept down upon a little sofa, which was lost and disappeared under the covert of her ample skirts, and shaded her face with her hand, and declared that she was so unhappy she did not know what to do. “For it really is the cholera, Mr. Scarsdale,” said Amelia; “and we may all be gone in a week, for anything any one can tell. Poor papa is so bad, it is dreadful to think of it! And I am sure, ever since I knew what it was, I have been in such a state! If you were to listen now, you could hear my heart beat.”
“I am listening; but my ear is too far off,” said Horace, with bold admiration. “I should like to study that sound at a less distance, if I might——”
“Oh! Mr. Scarsdale—if I were not so anxious and so agitated, I should be very angry,” said Amelia. “Pray, go away, sir. You are a great deal too bold, you gentlemen. But to think of poor papa: quite well yesterday morning, and to-night—oh dear! oh dear!”
“Perhaps he is not so bad as you suppose,” said Horace.