“Feel!” cry I, driven out of all
moderation by disgust and exasperation. “Would
you like to know how I feel? I feel as if a
slug had crawled over me!”
His face contracts, his eyes darken with a raging
pain. He throws my hands—the
hands a moment ago so jealously clasped—away
from him.
“Thank you!” he says, after a pause, in
a stiff voice of constraint. “I am satisfied!”
“And a very good thing too!” say I, sturdily,
still at boiling-point, and diminishing with quick
steps the small space still intervening between me
and the road.
“Stay!” he says, overtaking me once again,
as I reach it, and laying his hand in detention on
my arm. “One word more! I should be
sorry to part from you—such friends as
we have been”—(with a sneer)—“without
one good wish. Lady Tempest, I hope”—(smiling
with malevolent irony)—“that your
fidelity will be rewarded as it deserves.”
“I have no doubt of it!” reply I, steadily;
but even as I speak, a sharp jealous pain runs through
my heart. Thank God! he cannot see it!
Yes, here out in the open it is still quite light;
it seems two hours earlier than it did below in the
dark dingle—light enough as plainly to
see the faces of those one meets as if it were mid-day.
I suppose that my late companion and I were too much
occupied by our own emotions to hear, or at least
notice the sound of wheels approaching us; but no
sooner have I turned and left him, before I have gone
three paces, than I am quickly passed by an open carriage
and pair of grays—quickly and yet
slowly enough for me to recognize the one occupant.
As to her—for it is Mrs. Huntley—she
must have seen me already, as I stood with Mr. Musgrave
on the edge of the wood, exchanging our last bitter
words.
It is impossible that she could have helped it; but
even had it been possible—had there been
any doubt on the subject, that doubt would be removed
by the unusual animation of her attitude, and the interest
in her eyes, that I have time to notice, as she rolls
past me.
I avert my face, but it is too late. She has
seen my hat thrown on anyhow, as it were with a pitchfork—has
seen my face swollen with weeping, and great tears
still standing unwiped on my flushed cheeks.
What is far, far worse, she has seen him, too.
This is the last drop in an already over-full cup.
There is nothing in sight now—not even
a cart—so I sit down on a heap of stones
by the road-side, and, covering my hot face with my
hands, cry till I have no more eyes left to cry with.
Can this be the day I called good? Can
this be that bright and merry day, when I walked
elate and laughing between the deep furrows, and heard
the blackbird and thrush woo their new loves, nor
was able myself to refrain from singing?
