Marian's manner was restless and uneasy. My perception was keenly alive to the slightest difference between what she did and said now and to what she did and said formerly. So solicitous was I, that I think the most trifling modulation in her voice had a significance for me.
Much as I had looked forward to this reunion, much as I had desired it, now that Marian was with me, I shrank from being alone with her. I think if we had been that summer evening even in the solitude of a mountain fastness, an intuitive delicacy would have kept both of us from speaking one word upon the only subject that filled our hearts.
My mother's humanizing influence was having its effect on the stately old lady. She was captured without knowing it. Mr. Gaston had gone out for a walk; so Marian and I were left alone. I tried to talk about her new home, and repeated some things Mr. Gaston had told me before the wedding.
"Edward has changed his mind," said Marian, "and has found it necessary to make some different arrangements; so I really cannot tell much about our home. It is very far away; don't you think so, Mary?" I saw that her feelings were beginning to get the upper hand, and I did not dare trust myself to reply. I turned from her immediately on the pretext of having forgotten some household duty. She strolled out to the garden in a spiritless way.
Every thing was revolving itself in my mind, and I was beginning to reproach myself; perhaps if I had encouraged her to speak, it might have lifted the load from her heart; another opportunity might not be permitted us; and yet, bowed down as the poor girl was, it would not have raised her in my esteem had she even with me disparaged her husband. To cover him with a wife's forbearance was now one of her hard but imperative duties, and I knew she would not shrink from it. This must be a check to our confidence, a bridge over which my kindliest sympathy must never pass.
Unmistakable evidences of a storm close at hand made me run to the arbor where I had last seen Marian. She was not there. While deliberating where I should next go, I heard Mr. Gaston's impatient tread. He stopped by a clump of trees near me, and in tones of suppressed anger commenced upbraiding his defenceless wife.
"What did you mean by suggesting such a thing as that?" he began; "have you any right to dispense hospitalities, to propose or consider them in that grand style of yours?"
"In expressing the wish," replied Marian, "that my aunt would be able to spend the winter with us, I had no intention of doing any thing beyond a natural act of gratitude; and I was not aware, Edward, that your feelings had so changed toward her. I am sure she has done nothing to merit your displeasure."
"Nothing to merit my displeasure? You are a most creditable disciple! She has made you like herself, truly. Is it nothing in your eyes that she has always lived a life of nicely-arranged deception? Your accomplished aunt has conducted a forlorn hope with a woman's tact, and the victims of her trickery are expected to bow to her superior sagacity. In a burst of universal sympathy you propose to take this wreck of decayed grandeur to my house. This was a part of the plot, I suppose."
"Edward," interrupted Marian, "how dare you speak in this way of my aunt, who has shown you so many marks of sincere regard? That she has not husbanded her resources, I grant; but that misfortune rests entirely with her, she is the only sufferer. She made you no promises, gave you no reason to expect a fortune with me; this I have learned since our marriage. Have no fear of the incumbrance. Dear as she is to me, I would rather let her beg from door to door than see her a recipient of your bounty!"