She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for," she said, "to deceive _him._" After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?"The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror.
"What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_way?"
She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs.
Oldershaw.
"I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them."She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room.
Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!"The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and, walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders.
"Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber.
"I don't believe in his name, to begin with!"The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house.
Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place.
The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night.
Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master.
"I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighborhood before another week is over his head," said the first footman.
"Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think.""Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess watched."At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voic e of public scandal is a force which acts. in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since.
"It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back.""It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you won't disturb him."The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them.