"I am very sure, nevertheless, that you are doing so," said Lord Lindores.
The contrast of this brief dialogue with Carry's impassioned tones was extraordinary. She felt it through the haze of excitement that surrounded her, though her intelligence of all outside matters was blurred by the wild strain of her own feelings, which would have utterance. "Father," she said hoarsely, putting her hand on his arm, "go away from us—do not interfere. You know what you made of me when I was in your hands. Oh, let us alone now! I am not a girl—I am a woman. I am the same as you, knowing good and evil. Oh," she said suddenly, "if you want to keep any respect for me, go away, go away, for I don't know what I am saying. My head is turning round. Mother,—Edward; don't you see that I am losing my reason? Oh, don't let him interfere—let him go away." Lady Lindores caught her daughter in her arms, in a trembling effort to control and calm her. "Carry, my dearest! you will be sorry afterwards——"
"Oh yes, I shall be sorry," cried poor Lady Car, drawing herself out of her mother's hold,—"sorry to have been unkind, sorry to have betrayed myself; but I must, I must. I cannot hold my peace. Oh, father, let me alone! What good will that do you to make me wretched? What good has it done you? Nothing, nothing! I might have been poor and happy, instead of all I have come through; and what difference would it have made to you? You have killed me once; but oh, think how cruel, how tyrannous, if you tried to kill me again! And you see nobody speaks for me; I am alone to defend myself. Father, you shall not interfere again."
She had resumed her hold on his arm, grasping it half to support herself, half to enforce what she was saying. He now put his hand upon hers and detached it gently, still keeping down his anger, retaining his tone of calm. "My poor child, you are overdone; let your mother take care of you," he said compassionately. "Mr Beaufort, we are both out of place here at this moment. Lady Caroline has had a great deal to try her; we had better leave her with her mother." Nobody could be more reasonable, more temperate. His compassionate voice and gentle action, and the way in which he seemed about to sweep away with him the somewhat irresolute figure of the man who had no right to be there, filled Carry with a wild pang. It seemed to her that, notwithstanding all her protest and passion, he was about to be victorious once more, and to rob her of all life and hope again. She stretched out her arms wildly, with a cry of anguish: "Edward, are you going to forsake me too?"
Edward Beaufort was very pertinacious in his love, very faithful, poetically tender and true, but he was not strong in an emergency, and the calmness and friendliness of Lord Lindores' address deceived him. He cried "Never!" with the warmest devotion: but then he changed his tone a little: "Lord Lindores is perhaps right—for the moment. I must not—bring ill-natured remark——"
Lady Car burst into a little wild laugh. "You have no courage—you either," she said, "even you. It is only I, a poor coward, that am not afraid. It is not natural to me, everybody knows; but when a soul is in despair——Then just see how bold I am," she cried suddenly, "father and mother! If there is any holding back, it is his, not mine. I have been ready—ready from the first, as I am now. I care nothing about remark, or what anybody says. I will hear no reason; I will have no interference. Do you hear me, all? Do you hear what I say?"
"I hear—what I am very sorry to hear, Carry,—what you cannot mean. Mr Beaufort is too much a gentleman to take advantage of this wild talk, which is mere excitement and overstrained feeling."
She laughed again, that laugh, which is no laugh, but an expression of all that is inarticulate in the highest excitement. "I am ready—to fulfil our old engagement, our old, old, broken engagement, that we made before God and heaven. I have been like Dante," she said; "I have lost my way, and made that dreadful round before I could find it, through hell and purgatory; yes, that is it—through hell——And now, whenever Edward pleases. It is not I that am holding back. Yes, go, go!" she said; "oh, though I love you, you are not like me, you have not suffered like me! go—but don't go with my father. He will find some way of putting everything wrong again."
The two gentlemen walked solemnly, one behind the other, to the door: on the threshold Lord Lindores paused. "I don't suppose you will suspect me of any designs upon your life," he said, with a bitter smile, "if I repeat that you will be welcome at Lindores."
"I had made all my arrangements," said Beaufort, with some confusion, "to stay at Dunearn."