ROSALIND came down to breakfast next morning at the usual hour. She was the most important member of the household party, and everything depended upon her. Sometimes Aunt Sophy would have a little cold and did not appear. She considered it was her right to take her leisure in the mornings; but Rosalind was like the mother of the young ones, and indispensable. Rivers had come down early, which is an indiscreet thing for a stranger to do in a house with which he is unacquainted. He felt this when Rosalind came into the breakfast-room, and found Sophy, full of excitement and delight in thus taking the most important place, entertaining him. He thought Rosalind looked at him with a sort of question in her eyes, which she turned away the next moment; but afterwards put force upon herself and came up to him, bidding him good-morning. He was so much interested that he felt he could follow the processes in her mind; that she reproved herself for her distaste to him, and said within herself, it is no fault of his. He did not yet at all know what he had done, but conjectured that the woman whose photograph was on Rosalind’s table must be some dear friend or relation who had either made an imprudent marriage, or, still worse, “gone wrong.” It was the mention of the man who had been with her which had done all the mischief. He wished that he had bitten his tongue rather than made that unfortunate disclosure, which evidently had plunged them into trouble. But then, how was he to know? As for Rosalind, her pain was increased and complicated by finding this new visitor with the children; Sophy, her eyes dancing with excitement and pleasure, doing her utmost to entertain him. Sophy had that complete insensibility which is sometimes to be seen in a clever child whose satisfaction with her own cleverness overbalances all feeling. She was just as likely as not to have poured forth all the family history into this new-comer’s ears; to have let him know that mamma had gone away when papa died, and that nobody knew where she had gone. This gave Rosalind an additional alarm, but overcame her repugnance to address the stranger who had brought news so painful, for it was better at once to check Sophy’s revelations, whatever they might have been. That lively little person turned immediately upon her sister, knowing by instinct that her moment of importance was over. “What a ghost you do look, Rosie!” she cried; “you look as if you had been crying. Just as I do when Miss Robinson is nasty. But nobody can scold you except Aunt Sophy, and she never does; though—oh, I forgot, there is Uncle John.”
“Miss Robinson will be here before you are ready for her, Sophy,” said Rosalind. “I fear I am a little late. Has she been giving you the carte du pays, Mr. Rivers? She is more fond of criticism than little girls should be.”
“I have had a few sketches of the neighborhood,” he answered quickly, divining her fears. “She is an excellent mimic, I should suppose, but it is rather a dangerous quality. If you take me off, Miss Sophy, as you take off the old ladies, I shall not enjoy it.”
Rosalind was relieved, he could see. She gave him a look that was almost grateful as she poured out his coffee, though he had done nothing to call forth her gratitude, any more than he had done anything last night to occasion her sorrow. A stranger in a new household, of which he has heard nothing before, being introduced into it, is like an explorer in an unknown country; he does not know when he may find himself on forbidden ground, or intruding into religious mysteries. He began to talk of himself, which seemed the safest subject; it was one which he was not eager to launch upon, but yet which had come in handy on many previous occasions. His life had been full of adventures. There were a hundred things in it to tell, and it had delivered him from many a temporary embarrassment to introduce a chapter out of his varied experiences. He had shot elephants in Africa and tigers in India. He had been a war-correspondent in the height of every military movement. “I have been one of the rolling stones that gather no moss,” he said, “though it is a kind of moss to have so many stories to tell. If the worst comes to the worst, I can go from house to house and amuse the children.” He did it so skilfully that Rosalind felt her agitation calmed. A man who could fall so easily into this narrative vein, and who was, apparently, so full of his own affairs, would not think twice, she reflected, of such a trifling incident as that of last night. If she had judged more truly, she would perhaps have seen that the observer who thus dismissed the incident totally, with such an absence of all consciousness on the subject, was precisely the one most likely to have perceived, even if he did not understand how, that it was an incident of great importance. But Rosalind was not sufficiently learned in moral philosophy to have found out that.
Her feelings were not so carefully respected by Roland Hamerton, who would have given everything he had in the world to please her, but yet was not capable of perceiving what, in this matter at least, was the right way to do so. He had, though he was not one of the group round the writing-table, heard enough to understand what had happened on the previous night, solely, it would seem, by that strange law which prevails in human affairs, by which the obstacles of distance and the rules of acoustics are set aside as soon as something is going on which it is undesirable for the spectators to hear. In this way Hamerton had made out what it was; that Madam had been seen by the stranger, travelling with a man. Rosalind’s sudden departure from the room, her face of anguish, the speed with which she disappeared, and the confused looks of those whom she thus hastily left, roused young Hamerton to something like the agitation into which he had been plunged by the incidents of that evening, now so long past, when Madam Trevanion had appeared in the drawing-room at Highcourt with that guilty witness of her nocturnal expedition clinging to her dress. He had been then almost beside himself with the painful nature of the discovery which he had made. What should he do—keep the knowledge to himself, or communicate it to those who had a right to know? Roland was so unaccustomed to deal with difficulties of this kind that he had felt it profoundly, and at the end had held his peace, rather because it was the easiest thing to do than from any better reason. It returned to his mind now, with all the original trouble and perception of a duty which he could not define. Here was Rosalind, the most perfect, the sweetest, the girl whom he loved, wasting her best affections upon a woman who was unworthy of them; standing by her, defending her, insisting even upon respect and honor for her—and suffering absolute anguish, such as he had seen last night, when the veil was lifted for a moment from that mysterious darkness of intrigue and shame into which she had disappeared. If she only knew and could be convinced that Madam had been unworthy all the time, would not that deliver her? Roland thought that he was able to prove this; he had never wavered in his own judgment. All his admiration and regard for Mrs. Trevanion had been killed at a blow by the shock he had received, by what he had seen. He could not bear to think that such a woman should retain Rosalind’s affection. And he thought he had it in his power to convince Rosalind, to make her see everything in its true light. This conviction was not come to without pain. The idea of opening such a subject at all, of speaking of what was impure and vile in Rosalind’s hearing, of looking in her eyes, which knew no evil, and telling her such a tale, was terrible to the young man. But yet he thought it ought to be done. Certainly it ought to be done. Had she seen what he had seen, did she know what he knew, she would give up at once that championship which she had held so warmly. It had always been told him that though men might forgive a woman who had fallen, no woman ever did so; and how must an innocent girl, ignorant, incredulous of all evil, feel towards one who had thus sinned? What could she do but flee from her in terror, in horror, with a condemnation which would be all the more relentless, remorseless, from her own incapacity to understand either the sin or the temptation? But no doubt it would be a terrible shock to Rosalind. This was the only thing that held him back. It would be a blow which would shake the very foundations of her being: for she could not suspect, she could not even know of what Madam was suspected, or she would never stand by her so. Now, however, that her peace had been disturbed by this chance incident, there was a favorable opportunity for Roland. It was his duty now, he thought, to strike to the root of her fallacy. It was better for her that she should be entirely undeceived.
Thinking about this, turning it over and over in his mind, had cost him almost his night’s rest: not altogether. If the world itself had gone to pieces, Roland would still have got a few hours’ repose. He allowed to himself that he had got a few hours, but, as a matter of fact, he had been thinking of this the last thing when he went to sleep, and it was the first thing that occurred to him when he awoke. The frost had given way, but he said to himself that he would not hunt that day. He would go on to the Elms; he would manage somehow to see Rosalind by herself, and he would have it out. If in her pain her heart was softened, and she was disposed to turn to him for sympathy, then he could have it all out, and so get a little advantage out of his anxiety for her good. Indeed, she had snubbed him yesterday and made believe that she did not know who it was he wanted for his companion and guide; but that was nothing. Girls did so, he had often heard—staved off a proposal when they knew it was coming, even though they did not mean to reject it when it came. That was nothing. But when she was in trouble, when her heart was moved, who could say that she would not cling to him for sympathy? And there was nobody that could sympathize with her as he could. He pictured to himself how he would draw her close to him, and bid her cry as much as she liked on his faithful bosom. That faithful bosom heaved with a delicious throb. He would not mind her crying; she might cry us long as she pleased—there.
And, as it happened, by a chance which seemed to Roland providential, he found Rosalind alone when he entered the drawing-room at the Elms. Mrs. Lennox had taken Sophy with her in the carriage to the dentist at Clifton; Roland felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that Sophy, that little imp of mischief, was going to have a tooth drawn. The gentlemen were out, and Miss Rosalind was alone. Roland could have hugged Saunders for this information; he gave him a sovereign, which pleased the worthy man much better, and flew three steps at a time up-stairs. Rosalind was seated by her writing-table. It subdued him at once to see her attitude. She had been crying already. She had not waited for the faithful bosom. And he thought that when she was disturbed by the opening of the door, she had closed the little gates of that carved shrine in which Madam’s picture dwelt; otherwise she did not move when she saw who her visitor was, but nodded to him, with relief, he thought. “Is it you, Roland? I thought you were sure to be out to-day,” she said.
“No, I didn’t go out. I hadn’t the heart.” He came and sat down by her where she had made Rivers sit the previous night; she looked up at him with a little surprise.
“Hadn’t the heart! What is the matter, Roland? Have you had bad news—is there anything wrong at home?”
“No—nothing about my people. Rosalind, I haven’t slept a wink all night”—which was exaggeration, the reader knows—“thinking about you.”
“About me!” She smiled, then blushed a little, and then made an attempt to recover the composure with which yesterday she had so calmly ignored his attempts at love-making. “I don’t see why you should lose your sleep about me; was it a little toothache—perhaps neuralgia? I know you are sometimes subject to that.”
“Rosalind,” he said, solemnly, “you must not laugh at me to-day. It is nothing to laugh at. I could not help hearing what that fellow said last night.”
The color ebbed away out of Rosalind’s face, but not the courage. “Yes!” she said, half affirmation, half interrogation; “that he had met mamma abroad.”
“I can’t bear to hear you call her mamma. And it almost killed you to hear what he said.”
She did not make any attempt to defend herself, but grew whiter, as if she would faint, and her mouth quivered again. “Well,” she said, “I do not deny that—that I was startled. Her dear name, that alone is enough to agitate me, and to hear of her like that without warning, in a moment.”
The tears rose to her eyes, but she still looked him in the face, though she scarcely saw him through that mist.
“Well,” she said again—she took some time to master herself before she was able to speak—“if I did feel it very much, that was not wonderful. I was taken by surprise. For the first moment, just in the confusion, knowing what wickedness people think, I—I—lost heart altogether. It was too dreadful and miserable, but I was not very well, I suppose. I am not going to shirk it at all, Roland. She was travelling with a gentleman—well! and what then?”
“Oh, Rosalind!” he cried, with a sort of horror, “after that, can you stand up for her still?”
“I don’t know what there is to stand up for. My mother is not a girl like me. She is the best judge of what is right. When I had time to think, that became a matter of course, as plain as daylight.”
“And you don’t mind?” he said.
She turned upon him something of the same look which she had cast on Rivers, a look of anguish and pathos, reproachful, yet with a sort of tremulous smile.
“Oh, Rosalind,” he cried, “I can’t bear to look at you like that. I can’t bear to see you so deceived. I’ll tell you what I saw myself. Nobody was more fond of Madam than I. I’d have gone to the stake for her. But that night—that night, if you remember, when the thorn was hanging to her dress, I had gone away into the conservatory because I couldn’t bear to hear your father going on. Rosalind, just hear out what I have got to say. And there I saw—oh, saw! with my own eyes— I saw her standing—with a man— I saw them part, he going away into the shadow of the shrubbery, she—Rosalind!”
She had risen up, and stood towering (as he felt) over him, as if she had grown to double her height in a moment. “Do you tell me this,” she said, steadying herself with an effort, moistening her lips between her words to be able to speak—“do you tell me this to make me love you, or hate you?”
“Rosalind, to undeceive you, that you may know the truth.”
“Go away!” she said. She pointed with her arm to the door. “Go away! It is not the truth. If it were the truth, I should never forgive you, I should never speak to you again. But it is not the truth. Go away!”
“Rosalind!”
“Must I put you out,” she cried, in the passion which now and then overcame her, stamping her foot upon the floor, “with my own hands?”
Alas! he carried the faithful bosom which was of no use to her to cry upon, but which throbbed with pain and trouble all the same, out of doors. He was utterly cowed and subdued, not understanding her, nor himself, nor what had happened. It was the truth, she might deny it as she pleased; he had meant it for the best. But now he had done for himself, that was evident. And perhaps, after all, he was a cad to tell.