Trevlyn Hold. Henry Wood
of the four anticipated. Emily, you'll fall backwards if you don't mind."
"No, I sha'n't," said Emily. "Why did you not stay longer?"
"I found Treve away when I reached Oxford, so I came back again, and got home last night—to Nora's discomfiture."
Maude looked into his face with a questioning glance. She had quite recovered her self-possession. "Why?" she asked.
George Ryle laughed. "Nora had turned my bedroom inside out, and accused me, in her vexation, of coming back on purpose."
"Where did you sleep?" asked Emily.
"In Treve's room. Take care, Edith!"
Maude hastily drew back Edith Chattaway, who had gone too near the horse. "How is Mrs. Ryle?" asked Maude. "We heard yesterday she was not well."
"She is suffering from a cold. I have scarcely seen her. Maude," leaning down and whispering, "are things any brighter than they were?"
Again the soft colour came into her face, and she threw him a glance from her dark blue eyes. If ever glance spoke of indignation, hers did. "What change can there be?" she breathed. "Rupert is ill again," she added in louder tones.
"Rupert!"
"At least, he is not well, and is at home to-day. But he is better than he was yesterday–"
"Here comes Octave," interrupted Emily.
George Ryle gathered up his reins. Shaking hands with Maude, he said a hasty good-bye to the other two, and cantered down the lane, lifting his hat to Miss Chattaway, who was coming up from a distance.
She was advancing quickly across the common, behind the fence on the other side of the lane. A tall, thin young woman, looking her full age of four or five-and-twenty, with the same leaden complexion as of yore, and the disagreeably sly grey eyes. She wore a puce silk paletot, and a brown hat trimmed with black lace; an unbecoming costume for one so tall.
"That was George Ryle!" she exclaimed, as she came up. "What brings him back already?"
"He found his brother away when he reached Oxford," was Maude's reply.
"I think he was very rude not to stop and speak to you, Octave," observed Emily Chattaway. "He saw you coming."
Octave made no reply. She mounted the stile and gazed after the horseman, apparently to see what direction he would take on reaching the end of the lane. Patiently watching, she saw him turn into another lane, which branched off to the left. Octave Chattaway jumped over the stile, and went swiftly across the field.
"She's gone to meet him," was Emily's comment.
It was precisely what Miss Chattaway had gone to do. Passing through a copse after quitting the field, she emerged from it just as George was riding quietly past. He halted and stopped to shake hands, as he had done with Maude.
"You are out of breath, Octave. Have you been hastening to catch me?"
"I need not have done so but for your gallantry in riding off the moment you saw me," she answered, resentfully.
"I beg your pardon. I did not know you wanted me. And I am in a hurry."
"It seems so—stopping to speak so long to the children and Maude," she returned, with irony. And George Ryle's laugh was a conscious one.
Latent antagonism was seated in the minds of both, and a latent consciousness of it running through their hearts. When George Ryle saw Octave hastening across the common, he knew she was speeding to reach him ere he should be gone; when Octave saw him ride away, a voice whispered that he did so to avoid meeting her; and each felt that their secret thoughts and motives were known to the other. Yes, there was constant antagonism between them; if the word may be applied to Octave Chattaway, who had learnt to value the society of George Ryle more highly than was good for her. Did he so value hers? Octave wore out her heart, hoping for it. But in the midst of her unwise love for him, her never-ceasing efforts to be in his presence, near to him, there constantly arose the bitter conviction that he did not care for her.
"I wished to ask you about the book you promised to get me," she said. "Have you procured it?"
"No; and I am sorry to say that I cannot meet with it," replied George. "I thought of it at Oxford, and went into nearly every bookseller's shop in the place, unsuccessfully. I told you it was difficult to find. I must get them to write to London for it from Barmester."
"Will you come to the Hold this evening?" she asked, as he was riding away.
"Thank you. I am not sure that I can. My day or two's absence has made me busy."
Octave Chattaway drew back under cover of the trees and halted: never retreating until every trace of that fine young horseman had passed out of sight.
CHAPTER XII
UNANSWERED
It is singular to observe how lightly the marks of Time occasionally pass over the human form and face. An instance of this might be seen in Mrs. Chattaway. It was strange that it should be so in her case. Her health was not good, and she certainly was not a happy woman. Illness was frequently her portion; care ever seemed to follow her; and it is upon these sufferers in mind and body that Time is fond of leaving his traces. He had not left them on Mrs. Chattaway; her face was fair and fresh as it had been eight years ago; her hair fell in its mass of curls; her eyes were still blue, and clear, and bright.
And yet anxiety was her constant companion. It may be said that remorse never left her. She would sit at the window of her room upstairs—Madam's room—for hours, apparently contemplating the outer world; in reality seeing nothing.
As she was sitting now. The glories of the bright day had faded into twilight; the sun no longer lit up the many hues of the autumn foliage; all the familiar points in the landscape had faded to indistinctness; old Canham's lodge chimneys were becoming obscure, and the red light from the mines and works was beginning to show out on the right in the extreme distance. Mrs. Chattaway leaned her elbow on the old-fashioned armchair, and rested her cheek upon her hand. Had you looked at her eyes, gazing out so upon the fading landscape, you might have seen that they were deep in the world of thought.
That constitutional timidity of hers had been nothing but a blight to her throughout life. Reticence in a woman is good; but not that timid, shrinking reticence which is the result of fear; which dare not speak up for itself, even to oppose a wrong. Every wrong inflicted upon Rupert Trevlyn—every unkindness shown him—every pang, whether of mind or body, which happier circumstances might have spared him, was avenged over and over again in the person of Mrs. Chattaway. It may be said that she lived only in pain; her life was one never-ending sorrow—sorrow for Rupert.
In the old days, when her husband had chosen to deceive Squire Trevlyn as to the existence of Rupert, she had not dared to avow the truth, and say to her father, "There is an heir born." She dared not fly in the face of her husband, and say it; and, it may be, that she was too willingly silent for her husband's sake. It would seem strange, but that we know what fantastic tricks our passions play us, that pretty, gentle Edith Trevlyn should have loved that essentially disagreeable man, James Chattaway. But so it was. And, while deploring the fact of the wrong dealt out to Rupert—it may almost be said expiating it—Mrs. Chattaway never visited that wrong upon her husband, even in thought, as it ought to have been visited. None could realise more intensely its consequences than she realised them in her secret heart. Expiate it? Ay, she expiated it again and again, if her sufferings could only have been reckoned as atonement.
But they could not. They were enjoying Trevlyn Hold and its advantages, and Rupert was little better than an outcast on the face of the earth. Every dinner put upon their table, every article of attire bought for their children, every honour or comfort their position brought them, seemed to rise up reproachfully before the face of Mrs. Chattaway, and say, "The money to procure all this is not yours and your husband's; it is stolen from Rupert." And she could do nothing to remedy it; could only wage ever-constant battle with the knowledge, and the sting it brought. No remedy existed. They had not come into the inheritance by legal fraud; had succeeded to it fairly and openly, according to the will of Squire Trevlyn. If the whole world ranged itself on