'Good morning, Fotheringhame,' said Sir Piers, as his guest entered the breakfast-room betimes, in shooting-costume, and ready for the preserves; 'I trust that Eaglescraig air and Eaglescraig claret and whisky brought you pleasant dreams.'
'There are other and better adjuncts here to suggest pleasant dreams,' replied Fotheringhame, as his eye rested for a moment on the two young ladies, and he gave his hand to Mrs. Garth, after which an animated discussion about sport ensued between him and the general, while Mary and Annabelle idled over their letters.
Leslie Fotheringhame was one of those kind of men of whom little is usually seen when staying in a country house; thus, short though his visit was to be, and important the object which brought it about, all the day subsequent to his arrival he was beating the covers, and after the partridges, with old Sandy Swanshot the keeper.
Was Annabelle disappointed in this? we are forced to admit that she was piqued by it, however.
Like many social monomaniacs, Mrs. Garth considered herself an able tactician, and thought to set matters right between these sundered twain; but in this instance she failed signally, especially with Annabelle; there seemed something mysterious in the quarrel, their relation to each other, and their mutual sentiments, which the old lady could not fathom.
Annabelle was very bitter on the subject.
'His presence here is an insult to me, Mary,' said she, after watching him cross the lawn, and disappear with the keeper and the dogs; 'and every time his eyes meet mine, they seem to be examining me, as if to learn how I bear his defection.'
'If I can read eyes aright, they wear a very different expression, Annabelle,' said Mary; 'but his presence here with you is indeed a singular coincidence.'
'After what happened in Perthshire, Mary, I made myself too cheap in Edinburgh, when we met again; and truth to tell you, darling, though I cannot hate—but love him still,' she continued, with her eyes flashing through unshed tears; 'I must hate myself for doing so—and despise myself for my infatuation. That my regard should be too lightly, too easily won, and re-won, by one who valued it not! But, if his majesty thinks he has but to throw the handkerchief, he is mightily mistaken,' she added haughtily.
'To me it seemed as if his eyes wore almost an imploring look as he bade his adieu to you and left the breakfast table,' urged Mary, in her gentle manner; but though the idea was pleasant and soothing to Annabelle's angry pride, she replied that she felt only astonishment and indignation at his hardiesse in looking at, or addressing her at all.
'Am I to be a fool like the fair Elaine, who wasted all her life in caring for one man? But then there are no Sir Launcelots of the Lake now.'
Yet Annabelle, while sedulously schooling her heart to be indifferent, felt to the full, as far as Leslie Fotheringhame was concerned, how, mind and manner apart, 'one human being is felt to be more attractive for mere bodily reasons than all the rest of the world besides.'
Though a little provoked that he had gone forth to shoot, and waste, as she deemed it, a precious day in the coverts, Mary was grateful to Fotheringhame for the object which brought him to Eaglescraig—-his interest in Cecil Falconer—or Montgomerie, as she had taught herself to call him now.
In her mind he was every way associated with the days when life became to her an Eden—when loverlike she discovered that secresy and silence were sweet to cultivate; when the garden, the woods and fields, the moon, the stars, the sky, had all new charms, beauty, and brightness they had never possessed before, and her intercourse with Cecil became a system of emblems, metaphors, parables, whispers, and pressures of the hand.
How far away that delicious period of her life seemed now; and he—where was he? In a land to her less than half known, wholly barbarous, and where he was hourly menaced by a violent death.
'How large your ring seems for you now!' said Annabelle, as she toyed with Mary's hand.
'How much smaller my finger has become since Cecil placed it there!' replied Mary, turning the diamond engagement hoop wistfully; 'I am so afraid of losing it, that I wear mamma's wedding-ring as a guard—many have done that.'
Fotheringhame returned late from the coverts, and long after the keeper had brought in his bag.
'Did you lose your way?' asked Mary.
'No, Miss Montgomerie; but I lost a locket from my chain—a locket that I would not lose for any sum of money.'
'And you found it, I hope?'
'Yes—here it is—but after a long hunt among the gorse and brake.'
'Is it so valuable, then?'
'To me it is.'
'May I ask what it contains?' asked Mary, laughingly, as she saw it dangling from his watch-chain.
'Well—a lock of hair—and——'
'What more?' she continued, archly.
'If you insist on knowing, the likeness of my—future wife,' said he in a whisper, yet not so low but that it reached the ears of the startled Annabelle; and Mary was so shocked, so pained and full of pity for her, that she grew very pale indeed, and questioned him no more, and he laughingly retired to dress for dinner.
'So—so,' thought Annabelle; 'the locket I gave him actually contains the portrait of a woman—doubtless, she of the hazel eyes!'
Fotheringhame felt that he loved, or had loved, this proud girl earnestly and deeply; and that she with equal earnestness and depth resented something on his part which had, perhaps, driven her to loving some one else; thus the new emotion of jealousy was infused in his mind, imparting a constraint to his manner, while Annabelle felt that she had been merely the plaything of his idle hours. Thus each shut up their real feelings; and to a greater extent than either knew, they were at cross purposes.
Annabelle thought that she had overheard and discovered enough to cure her even of regret, and to steel her heart and make her seem what she wished to be, studiedly calm and indifferent to all appearance; but this resolution was rather severely tested when after dinner, instead of joining Sir Piers in the smoking-room, Fotheringhame came lounging deliberately out to the terrace before the house, where she was lingering alone, with a Shetland shawl thrown over her head, and when he joined her, and—as she thought with singular coolness and effrontery—made some commonplace remarks upon the warmth and beauty of the autumnal evening, to which she assented coldly and briefly.
'Chance has thrown us together again—a chance for which I had ceased to hope,' said he, in a low and earnest voice; 'and, Annabelle—if you will once more permit me to call you so—I would wish to talk with you calmly and dispassionately over that estrangement which has been a source of great bewilderment and the keenest sorrow to me.'
She was amazed at his hardihood; but said, quietly and gently, while keeping her face averted, as he continued to walk by her side:
'If you are disposed to take a philosophical view of what has certainly crushed my pride—if I ever had any—and sorely wounded my self-esteem—nay more, has caused, I am willing to own, a great pang to my heart—so am I, Captain Fotheringhame. Our acquaintance, to call it by its least name, has been a most unfortunate one; so, if we talk at all, perhaps we may find another subject.'
And she continued to look straight before her, with her face half averted, and thankful that she had a veil—at least the Shetland screen—to conceal the proud and passionate tears that welled up in her blue and handsome eyes.
Meanwhile Mary, remembering Fotheringhame's awkward revelation so recently, was watching the pair with more anxiety than hope or exultation, and was perhaps a little surprised to see them gradually quit the terrace and descend to the shrubbery walk in the garden below.
'When will our consultation about Cecil begin!' she thought, a little petulantly and impatiently. 'If a separation from one we love, though short, is hard to bear, what must such as mine from Cecil be?'
He might die in that distant land—how dreadful to consider such a contingency!—and in dying, never know of the good fortune that awaited him at home, of who his family were, and the bright hope that now smiled upon his love for her!
Meanwhile those she had been watching were now in a sequestered walk.
'You have suffered, Annabelle,' said Fotheringhame, in an agitated voice, as he turned and confronted her; 'I can read it in your face.'
'If I have suffered, sir, it has been through you.'
'Oh, say not so,' he exclaimed in a prayerful way.
'Sir—your manner—your mode of conduct, bewilder me!' she exclaimed, as she was about to sweep away, when he strove to take her hand, but she withdrew, it sharply and defiantly.
'Annabelle!' he said reproachfully.
'How dare you—how can you be so persistently cruel?' she cried haughtily, while cresting up her head. There were no tears in her eyes or voice now.
'Cruel, Annabelle?'
There was the old charm in his voice, and she could not resist it.
'Why was that letter—my last to you—returned to me unopened?'
'Because, Captain Fotheringhame, I thought it right to do so.'
She was gazing at him now steadily and defiantly.
'Had you read that letter it would have explained all.'
'Who the mysterious "F.F." is, or was.'
'Yes,' said he sadly, with a peculiar inflection of voice.
'Enough of this,' said Annabelle, haughtily; 'I leave you and all your interests to the—the lady whose likeness is in your valued locket.'
'You do? If I have been guilty of aught, in your eyes, you will certainly forgive me when you look upon her face.'
'Your intended! permit me to pass, Captain Fotheringhame—surely I have been subjected to mockery and insult enough to satisfy even you!'
With tender and observant eyes, Leslie Fotheringhame was watching her soft features, and saw them all quiver over, as if with a sudden pang, and his heart was moved, for a lovely face was hers. With much of reverential tenderness he detached the locket from his chain, opened it, and then Annabelle beheld a likeness of herself—simply a finely coloured photo, forgotten by her, but evidently treasured by him.
Annabelle was startled on seeing this, but not disconcerted.
'And so, sir,' said she, 'while loving another woman, you have in mockery, and perhaps for the amusement of your mess-room friends, dared to carry my likeness about with you!'
She spoke firmly, and with difficulty restrained a passionate fit of tears—of wild weeping, in fact.
'I never loved another woman—or any one but you, and you alone, Annabelle, as I can swear to you with truth,' said he, earnestly and tenderly.
'And who, then, was the woman whose initials were the same as your own, or nearly so, with whom you had mysterious meetings—correspondence, and all that appeared to be part and parcel of a deep and concerted intrigue! But it is beneath me now to inquire!' she added bitterly.
'Annabelle, the returned letter would have told you all—my sister.'
'Your sister!' repeated Annabelle, in a breathless voice, and with some incredulity of manner.
'My only sister Fanny—the runaway wife of a husband who is now in India, and to pay whose debts I sold my troop in the Lancers. You have surely heard of your cousin Fanny Fleming. She had no friend in the world but me. I thought to conceal her existence from you and others; but you have wrung the secret from me. A false wife—a helpless, hopeless creature; but her sorrows, her repentances and all are ended now, and she is in her grave. God rest her!'
There was a silent pause, during which, he could see how the bosom of Annabelle heaved with every respiration.
'And this was all your mystery?' said she, looking up with her eyes full of tears, and her lips quivering.
'All! and more than enough. It was to me a source of great horror, shame, and sorrow, to find my beloved sister—one whom many women loved, and all men admired; whose breast was the mansion of goodness and purity once—she, my gentle and loving sister, the child of the same father, nurtured by the same mother! and could I forsake her because she was in adversity, in sorrow, and repentant, and from whom all else in the world turned?'
'Oh, Leslie!' she exclaimed, as she frankly placed both her hands in his, and he drew her towards him, saying tenderly:
'Annabelle, let me prove my faith to you—forgive me——'
'I have nothing to forgive.'
'Then let us forget the miserable past.'
She felt his breath upon her half-averted cheeks, and his low and earnest whisper in her little white ear; and then, while weeping heavily, she fell on his breast.
'My darling,' she said in a broken voice, 'if I had only known of this—how different all would have been—how much spared us! Why did you not tell me—your sister——'
'I was not aware how much appearances were against me; and with you, I became jealous of some imaginary person. I shrunk from the task at first, and you—you returned, unread, the letter which would have explained all. But you are glad now, dearest?'
'Glad! O Leslie, to any other than you, I might refrain from admitting that I have never—since the day we parted—ceased to love you; and have now learned to love you more than ever.'
'And I love you, Annabelle, with the passion that comes only once in a man's life-time!'
And so, for a time, it may be inferred that this pair were pretty oblivious of the absent Cecil in Servia, and his interests at home.