"Now, my dear!" Mrs. Crayford began, "what does this mean?"
"Nothing."
"That won't do, Clara. Try again."
"The heat of the room--"
"That won't do, either. Say that you choose to keep your own secrets, and I shall understand what you mean."
Clara's sad, clear gray eyes looked up for the first time in Mrs.
Crayford's face, and suddenly became dimmed with tears.
"If I only dared tell you!" she murmured. "I hold so to your good opinion of me, Lucy--and I am so afraid of losing it."
Mrs. Crayford's manner changed. Her eyes rested gravely and anxiously on Clara's face.
"You know as well as I do that nothing can shake my affection for you," she said. "Do justice, my child, to your old friend. There is nobody here to listen to what we say. Open your heart, Clara.
I see you are in trouble, and I want to comfort you."
Clara began to yield. In other words, she began to make conditions.
"Will you promise to keep what I tell you a secret from every living creature?" she began.
Mrs. Crayford met that question, by putting a question on her side.
"Does 'every living creature' include my husband?"
"Your husband more than anybody! I love him, I revere him. He is so noble; he is so good! If I told him what I am going to tell you, he would despise me. Own it plainly, Lucy, if I am asking too much in asking you to keep a secret from your husband."
"Nonsense, child! When you are married, you will know that the easiest of all secrets to keep is a secret from your husband. I give you my promise. Now begin!"
Clara hesitated painfully.
"I don't know how to begin!" she exclaimed, with a burst of despair. "The words won't come to me."
"Then I must help you. Do you feel ill tonight? Do you feel as you felt that day when you were with my sister and me in the garden?"
"Oh no."
"You are not ill, you are not really affected by the heat--and yet you turn as pale as ashes, and you are obliged to leave the quadrille! There must be some reason for this."
"There is a reason. Captain Helding--"
"Captain Helding! What in the name of wonder has the captain to do with it?"
"He told you something about the _Atalanta_. He said the _Atalanta_ was expected back from Africa immediately."
"Well, and what of that? Is there anybody in whom you are interested coming home in the ship?"
"Somebody whom I am afraid of is coming home in the ship."
Mrs. Crayford's magnificent black eyes opened wide in amazement.
"My dear Clara! do you really mean what you say?"
"Wait a little, Lucy, and you shall judge for yourself. We must go back--if I am to make you understand me--to the year before we knew each other--to the last year of my father's life. Did I ever tell you that my father moved southward, for the sake of his health, to a house in Kent that was lent to him by a friend?"
"No, my dear; I don't remember ever hearing of the house in Kent.
Tell me about it."
"There is nothing to tell, except this: the new house was near a fine country-seat standing in its own park. The owner of the place was a gentleman named Wardour. He, too, was one of my father's Kentish friends. He had an only son."
She paused, and played nervously with her fan. Mrs. Crayford looked at her attentively. Clara's eyes remained fixed on her fan--Clara said no more. "What was the son's name?" asked Mrs.
Crayford, quietly.
"Richard."
"Am I right, Clara, in suspecting that Mr. Richard Wardour admired you?"
The question produced its intended effect. The question helped Clara to go on.
"I hardly knew at first," she said, "whether he admired me or not. He was very strange in his ways--headstrong, terribly headstrong and passionate; but generous and affectionate in spite of his faults of temper. Can you understand such a character?"
"Such characters exist by thousands. I have my faults of temper.
I begin to like Richard already. Go on."
"The days went by, Lucy, and the weeks went by. We were thrown very much together. I began, little by little, to have some suspicion of the truth."
"And Richard helped to confirm your suspicions, of course?
"No. He was not--unhappily for me--he was not that sort of man.
He never spoke of the feeling with which he regarded me. It was I who saw it. I couldn't help seeing it. I did all I could to show that I was willing to be a sister to him, and that I could never be anything else. He did not understand me, or he would not, I can't say which."
"'Would not,' is the most likely, my dear. Go on."
"It might have been as you say. There was a strange, rough bashfulness about him. He confused and puzzled me. He never spoke out. He seemed to treat me as if our future lives had been provided for while we were children. What could I do, Lucy?"
"Do? You could have asked your father to end the difficulty for you."
"Impossible! You forget what I have just told you. My father was suffering at that time under the illness which afterward caused his death. He was quite unfit to interfere."
"Was there no one else who could help you?"
"No one."
"No lady in whom you could confide?"
"I had acquaintances among the ladies in the neighborhood. I had no friends."
"What did you do, then?"
"Nothing. I hesitated; I put off coming to an explanation with him, unfortunately, until it was too late."
"What do you mean by too late?"
"You shall hear. I ought to have told you that Richard Wardour is in the navy--"