A low and melancholy melody was dreaming from the organ through the corridors, as Harrington entered the still and darkened dwelling. He was about to ascend to the library, when the parlor door opened, and Mrs. Eastman, severe and ashen, beckoned him, with a ghostly motion, to come in. He entered at once. Closing the door behind him, and folding her in his arms, he looked tenderly into her still and grief-worn face, while the low music brooded above them in aërial and solemn lamentation.
“John,” she whispered, “where have you been? John, an awful feeling has been with me since you left the house—a feeling that you are doing that which I cannot bring my heart to have done—that you have already done it.”
She stopped to pore with a ghastly gaze into his countenance. In the dead stillness, tranced into deeper stillness, as it seemed, by the low creeping music, he came into rapport with the cold, dark terror that froze her soul, and he felt his blood curdle and his hair stir.
“If you have done this,” she whispered in a tone that thrilled him, “it will kill me. I cannot survive it. Tell me that you whom I love so dearly—tell me that you have not been so cruel to me. Have you done it?”
“Mother,” he said sadly, “be at ease. I have not, and I never will. But, oh! my mother, you who dread this disgrace and dishonor, think of the disgrace and dishonor it would be if that wretched fugitive were sacrificed by us! How can you bear to think of that?”
She shuddered and clung to him, wildly agitated, but smiling ghastlily with the joy she felt at the assurance of her brother’s safety from public obloquy; and still the low, lamenting strain above them dreamed sombrely in hollow murmurs through the darkened air.
“I know it; it is terrible,” she whispered. “But it must be. Yes, it must be. Hate me—despise me—never look at me again; but it must be so, and I am glad—very glad. Glad in my grief; full of grief, but glad. I am weak, I am degraded, but it is for his sake, for my brother’s sake. Oh, I bless you, I bless you that you have spared him, and me through him; I bless you. Hate me, despise me, if you must. But he is safe; the little child I played with once is safe; my brother whose sins are many and grievous, he is safe, and I am glad—I am glad!”
“Peace, peace, my mother! Let it go,” he cried. “Do not speak so to me. Do not load yourself with reproach. Oh, I feel with you, and I am not removed from you. There there—let it all be forgotten. Time will efface these sad hours, and we will be happy again.”
She gently withdrew from his embrace, weeping, and turned away; and gazing at her for a moment, full of mournful pity, he left the room, and went slowly up-stairs, with the sad music deepening around him.
It stopped as he entered the room, and Muriel rose from the organ, and came swiftly toward him, clad all in white, and noble in her beauty. He clasped her in his arms as if he had not seen her for a year.