After the lapse of some hours, spent in this horrible restlessness, he again called on the Bloomfields. They had returned from their drive. He ran up the stairs: but, when he reached the landing-place, he paused. Perhaps that stranger might have returned with them. The door of the drawing-room was half-open: he looked, and saw that formidable intruder seated there. He was not formidable, evidently, to Mildred. She stood gracefully before him, and, putting back his dark hair from his fine manly brow, she stooped, and laid a kiss upon his forehead. Winston drew back instantly, and hurried from the house.
He had not retreated, however, so quickly, but that he had been seen by Mildred—thanks to the tall mirror before which she stood, and which had faithfully reflected his image. Had he been less distracted, he would have heard a soft voice call him by his name, from the head of the stairs; but he heard nothing, and he seemed to see nothing, as he strode along the street, and, rushing into his hotel, shut himself up in his room. "This intolerable anguish!" he cried; "it must have an end. To a passion which itself is the merest despair, must I add the maddest of jealousies?"
That day, after the dinner was concluded, Winston accepted an invitation which Mrs. Jackson had often pressed upon him in vain, to adjourn to her sitting-room, and partake of a dessert there. He accepted the invitation. It sealed his fate; and he intended that it should. He left that room—he, the lover of Mildred—the affianced of Louisa Jackson!
The next morning—it was a sleepless night that intervened—he paid his respects, with the due appearance of felicity upon his countenance, to Mrs. Jackson and her daughter. It was into their carriage he was now to enter, to take one of those drives in the environs which he had so often enjoyed with Mildred. It was to their admiration he was now to listen and respond.
The party was preparing to start, when a message was brought to them that two ladies were below who wished to speak to Mr. Winston. Mrs. Jackson, all anxiety to be polite, told the servant to show the ladies into her room. Immediately after Miss Bloomfield and Mildred Willoughby were ushered up stairs.
Never was Mildred looking more beautiful, for never was she so happy in her life. The name even of Mrs. Jackson she had never heard pronounced; and, not aware of being in the apartment of that lady, but considering she was in some room destined for the reception of visiters, she merely made to the ladies that slight curtsey by which the presence of a stranger is recognised, and immediately turned and addressed herself to Winston.
"Congratulate me!" she said. "Congratulate me!—But first I must repeat my message from Mr. Bloomfield, who insists upon it that you break through your unsocial rule, and dine with him to-day. And now again congratulate me! My father has returned from India. It was he whom we called the mysterious stranger. As to the conflicting reports which had been spread of him in England, you shall hear all at leisure. But he has returned!—and he has returned wealthy and amiable."
There was a slight tremor in her voice as she uttered these last words. That slight tremor, it was the response now given to certain passionate but desponding declarations, which he had so often half uttered in her ear.
The answer came one day too late. Winston stood as if struck dumb. His rage, his shame, his agony of vexation, he knew not how to express. And indeed there was that convulsion in his throat which, if he had attempted to speak, would have choked his utterance. But there was one amongst the party who found words fit for the occasion, and quite explanatory. In what she conceived the prettiest manner in the world, Louisa Jackson laid her hand upon Winston's shoulder. She had heard something of an invitation—"But, Alfred dear," she said, "you will not surely dine out to-day!"
Mildred started at the tone of that address, telling as it did so strange a history, so utterly unexpected. Then collecting herself, and taking the arm of Miss Bloomfield, she expressed her regret, in some words of course, that they could not have the pleasure of Mr. Winston's company to dinner, and, curtseying slightly to the rest of the society, withdrew.