University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

That afternoon Old Jude, who had contrived to have his
niece take a seat with him in the parlor, sat for hours at the
window, anxiously gazing down the road, as if on the watch
for some expected visitor. At length his countenance brightened.
A person, who was evidently the object of his solicitude,
was seen approaching; when, after watching him till he turned
in towards the house, the old man, without apprising his companion
of the fact, rose and quietly stole out of the room. The
next moment Lucy looked up, and Lot Fisher stood on the
threshhold before her. Surprise and embarrassment kept her
mute till the other spoke.

“I hardly know whether I was expected by you, Miss Hosmer,
to-day, or not,” he said, with some hesitation.

“You were not, Sir,” she replied, with reserve.

“It may be right, then, to show you my warrant for appearing
before you,” he rejoined, approaching and handing her Old
Jude's letter.

With a tremulous hand she took the letter, and though she
evidently read its contents with the deepest surprise, yet she
merely remarked,—

“This, as regards my uncle, is certainly sufficient; and I will
go and apprise him, Sir, that you have called.”

“Miss Hosmer!”

“Sir!”

“Both the discontinuance of your letters and your present
manner, make it evident, that you have heard some thing to affect
the position which I supposed I occupied in your esteem.
In mercy, and in justice to me, will you not tell me what it
is?”

The same delicacy, which had before prevented Miss Hosmer
from communicating to her lover the reasons that had decided

her to drop her correspondence and reject him, still strongly
revolted against the solicited explanation. But her sense of
justice, under his renewed and earnest entreaties, at length prevailed;
and she reluctantly related all the essential circumstances
connected with the vagrant woman's call at the house, as
they took place, simply adding that no one could be at loss in
drawing the inference, which so obviously followed.

Lot was thunderstruck at a disclosure so strange and unexpected;
but soon rallying from his surprise, he asked if it was
known where the woman could then be found, and being answered
in the negative, he, with an air of disappointment, resumed,—

“Oh, why could you not have communicated this to me immediately,
that I might have had the chance, which is probably
now lost, of refuting the insinuation from the woman's own
lips?”

“Perhaps I ought to have done so as a matter of form,” replied
she, greatly embarrassed—“perhaps I should have done
so, or have concluded my construction a wrong one, and let the
affair pass unnoticed, had not my impression been confirmed by
the same story or those of a similar character coming from several
other sources.”

“If Miss Hosmer's confidence in my character was so small
as to permit her to condemn me unheard on such evidence,” rejoined
Lot, with an air of deep mortification not unmingled with
offended pride, “I know not, that it would now avail me, if I
felt myself called to the humiliating task, to trace out the slanders,
which this worthless vagrant or others may have disseminated
concerning me. I had hoped I had a standing in her
opinion not so easily to be shaken. As it is, it only remains for
me to bid her farewell.”

Before the confused, and now relenting girl, could find words
to delay her impetuous lover, or qualify the sentence he had so
hastily assumed against himself, he had bowed and was gone.
Feeling herself justly obnoxious to her lover's charge of precipitancy
in condemning him unheard, and half convinced of his
innocence, though he had scarcely affirmed it, she rose in great
agitation and went to the window. With sensations, which it
would be difficult to analyze, she saw him hurriedly mount his

horse at the gate, and depart without one backward glance towards
her. Her riveted eyes followed him, as avoiding the village,
he rode with desperate speed towards home, till his receding
form was lost to view; when she turned, and murmuring,
with a sigh “O, why could he have not said he was innocent,”
burst into tears and hurried to her appartment.

Old Jude, who had witnessed Lot's hasty departure, from
which he argued that no reconciliation could have taken place,
watched anxiously, but in vain, during the remainder of evening,
for Lucy's appearance, that he might question her respecting
the result of the interview. And, after a night made restless
by his growing anxieties on the subject, he seized the first
opportunity, the next morning, for a private conversation with
her. Female pride, by this time, had come to the perplexed and
wretched girl's aid; and it was with feelings bordering on resentment
towards her lover, for not longer persevering in clearing
himself and reconciling her, that she replied to her uncle's
enquiries. And this wayward mood, partly felt, but more assumed
to conceal the deep and troubled feelings of her heart,
caused her so to color her representations and to make the case
so hopeless of reconciliation, on her part, that the old man become
greatly alarmed for the eventual result. Indeed he actually
shed childish tears of vexation and disappointment, and
accused her of perverseness. Disturbed, and astonished beyond
measure, at her uncle's conduct, which had all along appeared
to her very extraordinary, and which had now become wholly
inexplicable, Lucy, in her turn, was aroused to expostulation at
his inconsistency; while she defended herself by intimating the
stories she had heard. The old man admitted the existence of
such rumors, and falsely attributed his former opposition to his
belief in them, but asserted that he now knew them to be without
foundation. Growing more and more excited and earnest
the maiden bent a searching look on the other, and demanded
of him whether he knew the origin of those stories, and by
what means he had discovered them to be false, at the same
time declaring, that she would not marry a prince, whose character
stood under such imputations. The other made several
attempts to evade those questions; but she constantly brought
him back to the point, and persisted with so much determination
that the conversation was at length brought to a dead stand.

Conscious that he had gone too far to recede without arousing
her suspicions, and perceiving he could not even stop where he
was and gain any credit for his assertions, the humbled old man,
impelled by his fears and anxieties for the event, reluctantly admitted
himself to have been the cause of all the trouble, though
not without much prevarication, and concealment of the motives
which had actuated him.

For the first time, the mind of the disabused girl began to
catch glimpses of the secret history of the old man's heart, in all
the recent transactions in which her different interests had been
involved; and her grieved soul revolted at the dark picture she
there saw delineated. That part of it only, however, which lay
nearest her heart, called forth the exclamation—

“Oh, Uncle, Uncle, what wretchedness you have made me!—
what injustice you have caused me to do towards another!”

The conversation, which now ensued, was brief and mutually
embarrassing. But where all parties are equally anxious to
bring about an object, their purposes are soon accomplished. In
the course of the forenoon, Shack, mounted on Old Jude's fleetest
horse, rode up to the door, and, taking a letter from the hand of
his respected young mistress, bore it off rapidly towards its destination.

Lot, who in the mean time had condemned himself for the
manner in which he had terminated his last interview, which,
if prolonged, he felt, might have resulted more auspiciously, and
who now, on the receipt of Miss Hosmer's letter, was overjoyed
to learn that her mind was completely disabused. Lot, we say,
was not slow to respond to the frank invitation she had conveyed
him to renew their intimacy; and another day brought him
to her side.

So great was Old Jude's delight to see the man, whom, one
month before, he had driven from his house with insults and
scorn, now again there, and there, too, successfully prosecuting
the very object he had taken so much pains to defeat, that it
would have been difficult, perhaps, to decide, whether he, or the
reunited lovers, were the most gratified party on the occasion.
But the old man had construed the supernatural behest to extend,
not only to the undoing of the mischief he had done in
separating the lovers, but to the perfecting of their union, which,
to avail him in purchasing his immunity from the threatened

doom, he felt he must see accomplished within the allotted time
of his probation. It was no wonder, therefore, that while that
awful warning was constantly sounding in his ears, and while
the days of that fearful probation were rapidly rolling away, that
he was filled with anxiety to have the happy event consummated
with the least possible delay. And no sooner had the
long and happy interview been brought to a close, and Lot seen
to depart, than the disquieted old man again sought out his niece
alone, and eagerly asked her if they had fixed on a day for the
wedding? And being told they had not, nor even agitated the
question of the time, he appeared much disappointed, and earnestly
proposed to the wondering girl, that the union should be
consummated immediately, or within a week or two, at the farthest;
and, having drawn from her the day on which she expected
Lot to repeat his visit, he expressed great solicitude that
the time should then be appointed, and that too on as early a
day as would be consistent with the ordinary arrangements of
such occasions. But Lucy's delicacy shrunk at the thought of
such indecent haste, and such a business-like manner of disposing
of her, even to the man of her choice; and, knowing nothing
of the secret motives that urged her uncle, whose conduct,
in the affair, grew more and more inscrutable to her mind, she
inwardly resolved, she would not consent to so immediate an
union, and least of all would she be the first to hint the matter
in the future meetings which were expected to occur.

Another interview between the lovers soon came and passed
off as the former one; and again was the now almost persecuted
girl instantly beset and importuned by her uncle to tell him
what had been done in compliance with his wishes. When he
was informed of the fruitless result, he absolutely groaned with
anguish, and seemed so distressed at the disappointment, that
the other, touched and disturbed at his obvious concern, and beginning
to suspect he must have something of moment depending
on the event, at length promised she would not resist any
proposal on the subject which should come from her lover.

Lot's visits now became frequent; and cordially meeting the
advances which he perceived Old Jude timidly attempting to
make towards him, he soon, and with a delighted heart, learned
the wishes of the former for an immediate union, which he himself,
through delicacy had foreborne to urge. The ardent lover,

as will readily be imagined, was not backward to act on the hint
thus unexpectedly received; and he united his entreaties with
those of his new found coadjutor with such effect, that the fair
girl was compelled to yield, and agree, as, with blushful hesitation,
she at last did, to the great relief of the old man, on a day
for the nuptial ceremony—the very day, as it ominously happened,
which closed the mysterious period, within which the
wronged were to be righted, or the wrong doer called to meet
his doom.

It was a new thing to the wondering inhabitants of the village
to witness, at this hitherto dull and unsocial mansion, the lively
bustle of preparation that now ensued—the liberal outlays, that
were made for dresses and ornaments to be worn on the coming
occasion, and for luxuries for the entertainment of company—
the repairs and garnishing of rooms, that took place, and the
purchasing of costly articles to take the place of the former meagre
and niggardly furnishing of the house—in all which the different
inmates, with animated movements and smiling faces,
were seen to engage, and none with more alacrity and obviously
gratified feeling than the lately cold and churlish, but now transformed
master and still accounted owner of the establishment.
We must linger no longer, however, to give a detailed description
of all that was said and done in anticipation of the happy
event, but hasten on to the catastrophe of our story, which was
now close at hand.