University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

Ernest de Vaux gazed on her for a moment
or two, with a well satisfied and scrutinizing
eye, and then crept with a noiseless
foot to her side; knelt down on the turf at
her feet, before the paroxysm had, in any
wise, abated, and gained possession of
her hand, after a moment of faint and ill-feigned
resistance.

“Oh! my God!” she exclaimed, “what
does this mean, De Vaux?”

“It means,” he answered, with a voice
admirably modulated to suit his object,
“it means that I adore you, that I have
adored you ever, that, save you, I never
loved a woman.”

“How dare you?” she replied, anger
again, for a moment, gaining the ascendency—“How
dare you mock me thus—
and your addresses to my sister—what did
they mean, my lord?”

“Hear me,” he said; “however it may
please you to deny that you perceived my
attentions, that you remember where we
first met, you cannot, I think, have forgotten
the morning, the accursed morning,
when I came to take leave of you before
setting forth to your father's house. That
morning, Marian, I came with an ingenuous
heart upon my lips, a heart to cast before
your feet, had you been willing to
receive it. But on that morning, I know
not wherefore, you were a different creature;
petulant, wilful, wild, repulsive; for
at this moment, I must speak the truth—
you checked my speech, you jeered and
mocked at me, you spoke strange, whirling
words against the truth, and honesty,
and honor of human kind at large, and of
men in particular—you said strange things
about your beautiful and charming sister;
till you convinced me quite, though, up to
that time, I had believed that you loved
me, that from the beginning you had
merely been coquetting with me—that you
were a vain, heartless girl, eager for admiration
only, and careless of the agonies
which your caprice occasioned.”

“Ernest De Vaux!”

“Marian Hawkwood!”

“You had no right—no cause—no shadow
of a reason so to surmise!”

“Pardon me, lady, your conduct left no
possible interpretation else. Even at this
moment, when I know that it was not
what I deemed it, I still am at a loss utterly
to conceive your motives or your
meaning. You never hinted to me even
that your father was dead long ago,
though I spoke to you of visiting his
house. You called on me to promise that
I would never whisper to your family that
I had seen or known you. What could I
think? what do? I went my way conceiving
myself a man scorned, slighted,
outraged in the tenderest and nicest point;
I went my way with a heart crushed, and
yet embittered—humiliated, and yet maddened.”

“You had no right, I say it again; you
had no right to think so; you had never
spoken to me of love—never so much as
hinted it; ladies do not believe that men
love them, because they are civil at a
morning visit—attentive at an evening
ball. Oh! had you spoken to me; had
you spoken to me on that fatal morning,
Ernest De Vaux, all might—”

“All might what, Marian, all might
what?” he interrupted her, very eagerly.

“All might have been understood between
us,” she replied, coldly, bridling her
impetuosity of speech.

“But, Marian Hawkwood,” he made
answer to her, “if ladies do not believe
they are loved till they are told so in plain
words, neither will gentlemen, unless they
be consummate fools, speak those plain
words until, at least, they have some little
cause for believing that those words, when
spoken, will be acceptable. Now, on the
morning when I sought you, I fancied that
I had such cause—and I did so believe—
and I came to speak those plain words;
but by your own changed tone, and altered
manner—”

“True! true!” she replied, at length, in
sad and faltering tones, quite overcome by
the intensity of her feelings; for, strange
to say, De Vaux had, perhaps, struck on
the only chord which would have at all
responded to his touch; certainly on that
which thrilled the most powerfully in her
soul. Had he, indeed, read her mind, had
he heard the thoughts expressed aloud,
which had been nourished secretly within
her for so long a time, he could not more
skilfully have ministered to her vanity,
have gratified her curiosity, have appeased
her wounded self-respect, have re-awakened
her half dormant passion than he did

now by the course which he adopted.
“True! true!” she murmured, suffering
her head to fall upon her bosom in calm,
sad despondency, “it is all true—too true!
too true!”

Her dream was then realized, she
thought within herself; it was as she had
fancied—hoped! He had loved her from
the beginning, and her only; it was her
own fault, and he! he the idol of her soul,
was guiltless—alas! how prompt are we
to deceive ourselves, when the deception
pampers our desires!

“And why,” he whispered in her ear,
tenderly, “why was it so, Marian?”

“You have no right to ask me, sir; and
after all, your defence is faulty, is vain;
nothing worth! If you loved me, even if
I did misuse you, how does that palliate
your treason to my sister? for shame, my
lord, for shame! How dare you challenge
me, or question my deeds, when
your own crime glares in the eye of Heaven!”

“You wrong me. Marian, and deceive
yourself; I am no traitor, nor have I ever,
wilfully, ever at all, wronged your sister.
There is, at all times, a reaction of the
heart after strong passion, checked and
cast back upon itself. Outraged and
wronged by one, it is natural, it is almost
a necessary consequence, that we fly for
consolation, for love to another. Pride,
too—wounded and lacerated pride—urges
us to win, where we have lost our all, in
the love of woman. And so it was with
me. To my own soul's deepest belief, in
my most holy and most sacred conscience.
I believed that I loved Annabel, as I had
never loved even you. The strange similitude,
blended with as strange dissimilitude,
between your styles of beauty, between
your tones of thought, between
your characters of mind, yet more enthralled
and enchained me. Then I perceived,
as I thought, that Annabel did love
me as truly—as you had sported with me
falsely—and there, too was I mistaken!
and then for the sweetest drop, the most
powerful ingredient in the love philtre,
arose the thought that I should be avenged
on you, whom then I hated, as I had loved
you once, more than all womankind united.
I was happy, quiet, contented, conscious
of honor—yes! Marian, I was happy! till
you returned; and at the first momentary
glance, the scales fell from my eyes, and
I saw that you loved me, the darkness
vanished from my heart, and I found that
I loved you yet—as I had loved you before,
madly—devotedly—for ever!”

“My God! my God!” exclaimed the
wretched girl, wringing her hands in the
excess of mental anguish, “what have I
done, that I should be so wretched?”

“Why, why should you be miserable?”
replied the tempter; “if it be true, as you
say it is, that you did not perceive or suspect
my love—that you have never cared
for me—that you now hate me? Why,
Marian, why should you be miserable?”

“Ernest De Vaux,” answered the hapless
girl, raising her pale face, and fixing
her large azure eyes full on his features—
“Why trouble you me any further? Between
you and me there is a great gulf
fixed. If you did love me, as you say,
and were prevented by any girlish fears
or girlish folly on my part, from speaking
your love honestly—if you did as you aver,
fall innocently into love for Annabel, and
awake from that fancied love again at
sight of me—what does it avail me now
to hear this? Why do you tell it to me?
unless it be to make me utterly and hopelessly
wretched, by contemplating the
happiness which might have been mine
once, but from which I am now debarred
for ever.”

“It may be yours yet, Marian—if you
still deem it happiness to be mine—my
own—my own wife, Marian?”

“How, my lord, how?” she asked with
a sort of cool and concentrated indignation.
“How, without utter infamy? You
mistake the girl you address, my lord.
You little know the heart of Marian Hawkwood,
if you believe that she would break
a sister's heart, or lose her own good fame,
by wedding with her traitorous and rejected
lover.”

“Marian—she never loved me! Her
calm and placid temper, her equable and
quiet spirit, was not made for so violent
affections, so hot passions, as true love.
Even to-day”—

“Hold! my lord—hold;” Marian almost
fiercely interrupted him,—“not a word
more; even to-day, you told that angel,
whom in your wickedness you dare to
slander, even to-day you told Annabel,
that if I felt any passion towards you, it
was a rash, unsought, and unjustifiable
passion! Those were your very words—
your very words to-day, when she would
have resigned herself, and brought us
honorably wedded. Oh! man, to lie so
plansibly, and with so fair a grace, you
are but too forgetful. Begone, my lord,
begone! you stand self-convicted!”

“Marian,” he replied solemnly, and
lifting his right hand up impressively to
Heaven. “This is almost too painful, but
I cannot, no, I cannot permit innocence
such as yours to be thus played upon by
jealousy and envious selfishness; I swear

to you by the honor of my father, by my
mother's virtue, by Him who made, and
who now listens to us both! such words
as those never passed lip of mine—such
thoughts were never conceived in my
brain.”

And it did not thunder:—

“You did not tell her that—you did not!”
cried Marian, wildly, as she sprang to her
feet, “deceive me not, I adjure you, as
you love me, as you hope for salvation!
deceive me not, now, Ernest de Vaux!
You did not tell her that?”

“As I hope for salvation, I did not!” and
his voice did not falter, nor his cheek
blauch nor his lip quiver, as he swore, by
the holiest and the highest thing that shall
be, to that consummate lie! “Nay, I confessed
to her the whole truth; I told her
all, and all as I have told it now to you; I
conjured her to pardon any wrong I might
have most anintentionally wrought her—
for she had told me before that, with a
mien and voice as firm as mine are now.
that from the moment when she knew my
love for you, she had ceased entirely to regard
or love me: and I implored her to
reconcile us two, that together we might
yet be happy?”

“Can these things be?” replied Marian,
gazing into his eyes as she would read his
soul. “Oh! Ernest, Ernest, if you say
these words from the hope of winning me,
I do beseech von, I do adjure you once
more, on my knees, Ernest, dear, dear
Ernest—unsay, unsay it—do not, for God's
sake, sow the seeds of distrust and enmity
and hatred between two orphan sisters.
Oh! spare me, Ernest de Vaux, spare
me!”

“I would to God that I could!” he
answered with the most perfect and unmoved
hypocrisy, “I would to God that
being so adjured, I dared unsay them
But for my sool, I dare not; what did she
tell you, Marian?”

“That you denied me—that you pronounced
my love for you, rash, unsought,
unjustifiable; can it be? God! God;
I shall go mad; can it be, Annabel, that
you so dealt with me”'

“And she came back to me, and told
me with calm air and pensive look, and
her eyes full of hypocritical tears, `that
you were so much set against me, that
you would not so much as hear me—that
you had sent me a fierce, scomful, passionate
message, which she would not do you
the wrong to deliver!”

“Oh! Annabel! Sister, sister Annabel!
Heaven is my judge, I would not so have
done by you to win an eternity of blessings!”

“And me,” whispered De Vaux softly in
her ears, “can you pardon me now, my
sweet Marian?”

“Nay! my Lord, I have naught to pardon;
we have both been deceived, first by
our own misconceptions, and then, alas!
alas! that it should be so! by my own
sister's treason. If there be any pardon to
be asked, it is I that should ask yours, De
Vanx.”

“It would be granted, ere it would be
asked, Marian,” he replied, “but now,
will you not hear me? will you not let me
pray you on”—

“Oh! no no, Ernest, how can it be?
What, my God! what would you ask of
me?”

“To be mine, mine for ever—my wife,
my own wife, Marian!” And he glided
his haud around her waist, and drew her
to his bosom; and she no longer shunned
him, nor resisted, and their lips were mingled
in a first kiss, as she sighed out that
irrevocable yes! Alas! for Marian!

“But how?” she whispered, as she extricated
herself, blushing and trembling
from his arms, “how can it be?”

“You must fly with me, ere dawn, my
love. I have a friend at Ripon, the worthy
Dean, we can frame easily a tale to
win him to our purpose, who will unite us!
We will set forward presently, my horses
are equipped even now—your palfrey shall
be made ready—at the next village, we
can get some country maiden, who will
accompany you; at Ripon we shall overtake
my brothers with the troops, and all
will go happily!”

At first she refused positively, then faintly
and more faintly, as that false, wily man
plied her with prayers and protestations—
nay, tears even, and at last—oh! that we
should be so weak to resist deception,
when our own hearts conspire with the
deceiver—at last, amid tears, and sobs,
and kisses, “while saying I will ne'er
consent, consented.”