The night was nearly spent when Franceline rose up from her knees, numbed and shivering, although the weather was not cold. She walked rapidly up and down for a few moments to warm herself; there was a spring in her step, a light in her eyes, that told of recovered energy and unshaken purpose; her nerves might tingle, her heart might grieve, but they would neither faint nor quail. She dropped on her knees again for one moment and uttered a prayer, more of thanksgiving this time than supplication, and then lay down and soon fell asleep.
When Franceline came down next morning, after breakfasting in her room as if she had been ailing, there was scarcely any trace in her aspect of the conflict of the night. Eyes do not retain the stains of tears very long at eighteen, and if she was a trifle paler than usual, it was accounted for by the over-exertion which had brought the fainting fit. She expressed a wish to go home as early as was convenient to her hosts, and they consented with reluctance, but without offering any resistance. Lady Anwyll said the child was weary and dull, and that the next time she came to Rydal they should make it livelier for her.
With what a feeling of regaining a haven of rest did Franceline enter the little garden at The Lilies, where her father, warned by the sound of the wheels, hastened out and stood waiting to clasp her!—Angélique graciously letting him have the first kiss, before she claimed her turn.
“We have been like fishes out of water without thee!—have we not, ma bonne?” was Raymond’s joyful exclamation, as he gathered his child to his heart, and then held her from him to look wistfully into the sweet, smiling face.
“Yes, we were dull enough without our singing bird, though I dare say she didn’t miss us much!” was Angélique’s rejoinder. Franceline declared she would go away very soon again to teach them to value her more.
But the singing bird was not the same after this. The spirit that had found utterance in its joyous voice was dead. A lark rises from the clover-field, and pours out its sweet, “harmonious madness” over the earth; swiftly it soars away—away—into fathomless space, and while, spell-bound, we strain after the fading notes, lo! the sportsman’s arrow hisses by, a cry rends the welkin, the songster is struck—he will never sing again.
Perhaps you despise Franceline for allowing the loss of an imaginary possession to put the light out of her life in this way. As if our lives were not made desolate half the time by the loss of what we never had! You will say that self-respect and pride ought to have come to her aid, and enabled her to quench in blood, if needs be, the fire that her conscience pronounced guilty. But is the process so quickly accomplished, think you? Franceline was doing her best; she was concentrating all the energies of her mind and soul in the struggle, but it was not to be done in a day; the very purity of her love constituted its strength. If there had been the smallest element of corruption in it, it would have died quicker; but its fibres were enduring because they were pure.
Yet she was not forgetful of her father and of all that he had hitherto been to her, and she to him; far from it. The effort to conceal her sufferings from him was a great help to her in controlling them, though it often taxed her strength severely. Sometimes, when the feeling of isolation pressed on her almost beyond endurance, when she felt that she must have the solace of his sympathy, cost what it might, she would steal into his study, determined to speak and let the murder out; but the sight of the venerable head bowed over his books, absorbed, and happy in his unconsciousness, would arrest her words and choke them back into silence. The strain was hard, but was it not a mercy that she had as yet only her own burden to bear? What a price would she not have to pay for the momentary relief of leaning it on him! What might not be dreaded from the effect of the revelation on his sensitive pride, and still more sensitive love? And then the inevitable breach between him and his oldest, almost his only friend, Sir Simon! They would leave The Lilies and go forth she knew not where. No; silence indubitably was best. To speak might be to kill her father.
This state of things lasted for a week, and then there was granted an alleviation. Father Henwick had been called to a distance to see his mother, who was dying; he arrived in time to assist her with his filial ministry in the last passage; remained to settle all that followed, and then came back to resume the even tenor of his life at Dullerton.
Father Henwick was one of those men whom you may know for a lifetime, and never find out until some special circumstance reveals them. There was no sign in his outward man of anything remarkable in the inner man. He had not acquired, or at any rate retained, any French polish or grace from his early sojourn at the French seminary. His manners were very homely, and abrupt almost to brusqueness; he was neither tall nor small, but of that height which steers between the two, and so escapes notice; his voice had the unmistakable ring of refinement and early education, yet he seldom associated with his equals, his intercourse being confined chiefly to the poor. These and their children were his familiars at Dullerton. The latter looked on him as their especial property, and took all manner of liberties with him unrebuked—hanging on to his coat-tails, and plunging their audacious little paws into the sacred precincts of his pockets, whence experience had taught them something might turn up to their advantage: penny whistles, Dutch dolls, buns, lollypops, and crackers were continually issuing from those mysterious depths which the small fry sounded behind Father Henwick’s back, and apparently unbeknown to him, while he administered comfort of another description to their elders.