A Life Sentence. Sergeant Adeline
the masterful way which she was beginning to recognise as one of his characteristics. "It is all over and done with; nothing we can say or do will make any difference. The man is gone, and we are here. We can begin a new life if we choose."
His sister watched him with eyes which expressed a greater gloom than he was able to understand. Her hands began to tremble as he said the last few words.
"You can—you can!" she cried, almost with vehemence. "But for me—there is no new life for me!"—and covering her face with her hands, she began to weep, not violently, but so that he saw the tears oozing from between her slender fingers.
Hubert stood aghast. Was this trembling woman the cold imperturbable sister whom he had known of old? He had seldom seen Florence shed tears, even in her youthful days. Was it the consciousness of her past guilt that had changed her thus?
He reflected that, according to all tradition, a woman's nature was more sensitive and delicate than that of a man. Florence was weighed down perhaps by that sense of remorse which he had well-nigh forgotten. He had, as he had said, resolved to put the past behind him and to lead a new life. She, a woman, with all a woman's weakness, found it a difficult task to forgive herself the misery that she had caused; and he, the only person who could understand and sympathise with her, who might have strengthened her in her struggle against evil—for such he considered must be the cause of her distress—he had neglected her, and been perhaps a source of pain instead of encouragement. He should have remembered that her guilt was surely not greater than his own.
Softened by these thoughts, he bent down to place his hand on her shoulder and to kiss her forehead.
"My poor Flossy," he said, using the old pet name as he had used it for many weary years, "you must not grieve now! Forget the past—we can but leave it to Heaven. There is nothing—absolutely nothing now—that we can do."
"No," she said, letting her hands fall upon her lap and wearily submitting to his kiss—"nothing for you—nothing at all for you—now."
There was a deep meaning in her words to which he had not the slightest clue.
CHAPTER XI.
Hubert Lepel had accepted his sister's invitation to Beechfield Hall for two nights only; but, as he had given her to understand, he was quite ready to come again, supposing of course that she made his visit agreeable to him. So far—an hour and a half after his first arrival—it had not been very agreeable. He had been obliged to allude to a matter which was highly unpleasant to him, and he had had to stand by while his sister burst into quite unnecessary and incomprehensible tears. He was not so soft-hearted a man as he had been eight years ago, and he told himself impatiently that he could not stand much more of this kind of thing.
For the last three years he had been, as Florence had said, almost always out of England. When his search for Jane Wood proved a failure, he had taken a strong dislike for a time to London life and London ways. He had been making money by his literary work, and was well able to afford himself a little recreation. He went to Egypt therefore, and to India, took a look at China and Japan, and came home by way of South America. He did not care to go too much in beaten tracks; and during his absence he wrote a book or two which were fairly successful, and a play which made a great sensation. He had come back to London now, and was at work upon another play, on which great hopes had been founded. If it were as successful as the first, there was every likelihood of his becoming a rich man. He had got his head fairly above water, and meant to keep it there; he conceived that he had brooded too long over the past.
He had seen little Dick Vane when he first arrived, and he had spent nearly two hours with Florence; but he had not yet encountered the General or the General's niece and adopted daughter, Enid Vane. The two had gone out riding, and did not return until after five o'clock.
"Just in time for tea!" said the General, in a tone of profound satisfaction. "I thought that we were later. And how do you find yourself, Hubert, my dear boy? Why, I declare I shouldn't have known you! Should you, Enid? He is as brown as a Hindoo."
"Would you have known me?" said Hubert, with a smile at the girl who had followed her uncle into the room, and now gave him her hand by way of greeting. The smile was forced in order to conceal a momentary twitch of his features, which he could not quite control at the first sight of Sydney Vane's daughter; but it looked natural enough.
The girl raised her eyes to his face with a shy sweet smile.
"I am afraid that I don't remember very well," she said; and Hubert thought that he had never seen anything much prettier than her smile.
She was seventeen, and looked so fair, so delicate, in her almost childish loveliness of outline and expression, that Florence's white skin became haggard and hard in comparison. Her slight figure was displayed to full advantage by a well-made riding-habit, and under her correct little high hat her golden hair shone like sunshine. There was a soft color in her cheeks, a freshness on her smiling lips, that made the observer long to kiss them, as if they belonged to some simple child. Her manner too was almost that of a child—frank, naive, direct, and unembarrassed; but in her eyes there lurked a shadow which contradicted the innocent simplicity of her expressive countenance. If was not a shadow of evil, but of sadness, of a subdued melancholy—the sadness of a girl whose life had been darkened in early life by some undeserved calamity. It was a look that redeemed her face from the charge of inanimateness that might otherwise have been brought against it, and gave it that faintly sombre touch which was especially fascinating to a man like Hubert Lepel.
He continued to talk to the General, who had questions to ask him concerning his travels and his friends; but his eyes followed the movements of the girl as she stepped quietly about the room, pouring out tea for one, carrying cake and biscuits to another. Twice he sprang up to assist her, but was met with a smile and a shake of the head from her, and the assurance from her uncle that Enid liked waiting on people—he need not try to take her vocation from her. He had to sit down again, and thought, half against his will, of that other Enid—Tennyson's Enid, in her faded gown—and of Prince Geraint's desire to kiss the dainty thumb "that crossed the trencher as she set it down." He at least was no Geraint, he said to himself, to win this gentle maiden's heart. But he watched her nevertheless, with a growing admiration which was not a little dangerous.
With a faint cynical smile Florence noted the direction of his eyes. As soon as her husband and his niece entered the room, she had lapsed into the graceful indolent silence which seemed habitual to her. Enid brought her a cup of tea, and ministered to her wants with assiduity and gentleness of manner, though, as Hubert thought, with no great show of affection; and Florence accepted the girl's attentions with perfect equanimity and a caressing word of two of thanks. And yet Hubert fancied—he knew not why—that there was no look of love in Flossy's drooping eyes.
"Please may I come in?" said Master Dick's small treble at the door. He was a fair, blue-eyed little fellow, but not much like either his father or his mother, thought Hubert, as the child stood in the doorway and looked rather doubtfully into the room.
Florence's brow contracted for a moment.
"Why are you not having your nursery-tea?" she said. "We do not want you here unless we send for you."
"I want to see uncle Hubert," persisted the boy stolidly.
Hubert held out his hand to him with a smile that children still found winning.
"Come in, little man," he said. "I want to see you too."
Dick marched in at once, still, however, keeping an eye fixed upon his mother. There was something almost like fear in the look; and it was noticeable that neither the General nor Enid spoke to invite him into the room.
"You may come in," Florence said at last, very coldly—almost as one might speak to a grown person whom one had strong reason to dislike—"but you cannot stay more than five minutes. You are not wanted here."
"Oh,