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.

“O 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 can not, 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 had 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 reawakened 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 curselves, 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 believe 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 with Annabel, and awake from that fancied
love again at sight from 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 toward 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 plausibly, 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
can not, no, I can not 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 blanch, 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 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 unintentionally 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 you,
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 soul, 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, scornful, passionate
message, which she would not do you the wrong to deliver!”'

“O 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 Vaux.”

“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 hand around her waist, and drew
her to his bosom; and she no longer shunned him, nor resisted,
and their lips 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.”'