CHAPTER XXIV.
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE.
The stars had not begun to pale in the morning twilight when Elizabeth awakened. The dim outlines of houses and trees could be seen through the window as she looked out against the sky. Within the room the furniture, large and heavy, looked still larger in the darkness. She fixed her eyes upon some point, and followed back the lines that flowed from it until they were lost in the dimness, and this assured her that she was awake. Her writing-table was in part sharply outlined against the window, and part of it was lost in the shadow of the draperies. The bureau seemed only a dark mass among the shadows in force in the corners of the room.
These and the tops of the heavy chairs, as she looked at one and another of them, helped to calm her and give her a sense of reality. But they in no way accounted for the startling suggestion, that whether dream or waking thought had first filled her with fear and then set her heart beating hard as she lay wide awake breathing unevenly and striving to learn if she were still under the influence of a dream, or if the unconscious conviction which had come upon her was the result of dwelling upon what she knew. She could not recall her dreams, but they seemed to her to have had no connection with the sudden sense of danger that had startled her awake. She tried to throw it off, but it was like the objects in the room that had seemed almost invisible at first, but that grew every moment more distinct to her as she watched them. She felt more and more sure that the danger was real, however the knowledge of it had come; a terrible danger, but not to herself. It seemed strange now that she had been blind so long, and yet, how could she have suspected such a horror? Lord Bulchester felt it, too, only that he would not allow himself to believe it. But it was he who had brought conviction home; it would never have come, she thought, if she had not seen him yesterday. But it had come, and it remained. It held her like a vise, drawing her back toward it whenever she tried to escape, driving off sleep forcibly when more than once that seemed about to seize her. What was she to do with it? Plainly, something. It and rest could never dwell together. But what? And how could she do it? A conviction which pressed upon herself with the force of a certainty, and yet had no proofs by which to establish itself, was not an easy thing to make felt by another mind. And when it was a conviction of danger, and that other had by nature and training a contempt of danger, the difficulties were increased. Added to this were other difficulties which Elizabeth felt keenly; but the fear was stronger than them all. The longer she studied the matter the more she saw that the only thing for her to do was the one thing that she shrank from most. All the freedom left her was to find out the best way of doing it.
When the dimness of starlight began to grow into the dawn, she arose. But she delayed at her toilet, standing so long in thought with her brush in her hand, and her dark hair sweeping over her shoulders, that it was six o'clock before she crossed the hall and knocked at her father's door.
There was no answer. She knocked again, with the same result, and then opening the door, found the room empty. Mr. Royal had gone down stairs. But it was too early for Mrs. Eveleigh, and Elizabeth might still have her talk with him without interruption. With a mixture of relief and dread she went down the broad, low stairs and crossed the hall into the library.
It had always been her favorite room. She had spent so many happy hours here with the books, that the room with its handsome old furniture and sunny windows was full of the memories and day dreams that her reading had conjured up. But not only this; it was here that she had seen most of her father; they had spent hours together here, while Mrs. Eveleigh attended to her household duties, or amused herself with her friends, or retired for her nap. And whether father and daughter talked, or sat, he with his paper or his writing, she with her book, each felt a companionship in the other. Elizabeth often spoke her thoughts freely to any one who happened to be within hearing when the mood for speech came over her; but as to her feelings, her father understood those best. This was partly on account of his quickness of comprehension, which supplied much that she did not utter, and partly because there came to her times when her father seemed like a second self, and silence grew unnatural.
But that morning speech, evidently, was not easy to her. For, although she had gone to him as a matter of course, her perplexity seemed to grow greater as she sat down by the desk at which he was making up some accounts. It seemed to her that her life was no longer free and simple; a dreadful force had come into contact with it and, as she felt, made it more unworthy. Had a mere jest ever before brought such a train of miseries? Her fingers laid restless folds in a piece of paper she took up, and her father after his greeting went on with the accounts. It was his habit to give people time, and he had found that doing it gave him the best opportunity to take his own bearings. His judgments were usually so accurate, and his decisions so wise that a good many people would have been thankful to find the scales by which he weighed the anxiety or the satisfaction that came under his observation. On that morning the rapid pen travelled several times up and down columns of figures and noted down the results before Elizabeth began:
"Father." It was a small beginning, and followed by silence. But the tone made Mr. Royal push his work aside, and look full into his daughter's face. "Father," she repeated, "I want you to advise me."