University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
THE EIDOLON.

Thus passed the afternoon, until the evening meal was announced,
and Jasper was left alone, with nothing but his own
wild and whirling thoughts to entertain him. He was ill at
ease in his own mind, ill at ease with himself and with all
around him. Vexed with Denzil Bras-de-fer, for offering in
the first instance to take him as a partner in his adventure, and
then for failing at the pinch to back his offer by his stout opinion;
vexed with his father for thwarting his will, and yet more
for rebuking him publicly, and in the presence of Theresa, too,
before whom, boylike, he would fain have figured as a hero;
and lastly, vexed with Theresa herself, because, though kind
and gentle, she had not sat by his bedside all day, as she did
yesterday, or devoted all her attention to himself alone, he was

in the very mood to torment himself, and every one else, to the
extent of his powers.

Then, as his thoughts wandered from one to another of those
whom he thought fit to look upon as having wronged him, they
settled on the most innocent of all, Theresa; and, at the same
moment, the wild words, which he had uttered without any ulterior
meaning at the time, and with no other intent than that
of annoying his father, recurred to his mind, concerning village-maidens.

He started, as the idea occurred to him, and at first he wondered
what train of thought could have brought back those
words in connection with Theresa's image. But, as he grew
accustomed to his own thought, it became, as it were, the father
to the wish; and he began to consider how pretty and gentle
she was, and how delicate her slight, rounded figure, and
how soft and low her voice. Then he remembered that she
had looked at him twice or thrice during the day, with an expression
which he had never seen in a woman's eyes before,
and which, though he understood it not, did not bode ill to his
success; and lastly, the worst, bitterest thought of all arose in
his mind, and retained possession of it. “I will spite them
all,” he thought, “that proud, insolent, young sailor, who, because
he is a few years older than I, and has seen swords
drawn once or twice — for all, I doubt if he can fence or shoot
any better than I, or if he be a whit more active — affects to
look down upon me as a stripling. His `young friend,' truly!
let him look out, whether he have not cause to term me something
else ere he die. By God! I believe he loves the girl, too!
he looked black as a thunder-cloud over Dartmoor, when she
smiled on me! And my father — by my soul! I think he 's
doting; and her dainty ladyship, too! I 'll see if I can not have
her more eager to hear me, than she has shown herself to-day.

I will do it — I will, by all that's holy! Heaven! how it will
spite them!”

Then he laid his head down on the pillow, and began to reflect
how he should act, and what were his chances of success
in the villany which he meditated; and he even asked himself,
with something of the boy's diffidence in his first encounter
with woman, “But can I, can I win her affection?” and vanity
and the peculiar audacity of his race, of his own character,
made answer instantly, “Ay, can I. Am I not handsomer,
and cleverer, and more courtly? am I not higher born, and
higher bred, and higher mannered, not only than that seafaring
lout, but than any one she has ever met withal? Ay, can I,
and ay, will I!”

And in obedience to this last and base resolve, the worst and
basest that ever had crossed the boy's mind, no sooner had they
returned from the adjoining room, after the conclusion of the
evening meal, than he contrived entirely to monopolize Theresa.

First, he asked her to play at chess with him; and then, after
spending a couple of hours, under the pretence of playing,
but in reality gazing into her blue eyes, and talking all sorts of
wild, enthusiastical, poetical romance, half-earnest and half-affected,
he declared that his head ached, and asked her to read
aloud to him; and when she did so, sitting without a thought
of ill beside his pillow, while their fathers were conversing in
a low tone over the hearth, and Denzil was absent making his
preparations for the next day's journey, he let his hand fall, as
if unconsciously, on hers, and after a little while, emboldened
by her unsuspicious calmness, imprisoned it between his fingers.

It might have been that she was so much engrossed in reading,
for it was Shakspere's sweet Rosalind that the boy had
chosen for her subject, that she was not aware that her hand
was clasped in his. It might have been, that, accustomed to its
pressure, from his involuntary retention of it during his lethargic

sleep on the preceding day, she let it pass as a matter of
no consequence. It might have been, that almost unsuspected
by herself, a feeling of interest and affection, which might easily
be ripened into love, was already awakened in her bosom,
for the high-spirited, handsome, fearless boy, who, in some
measure, owed his life to her assistance.

At all events, she made no effort to withdraw it, but let it lie
in his, passive, indeed, and motionless, save for its quivering pulse,
but warm, and soft, and sensitive. And the boy waxing bolder,
and moved into earnestness by the charms of the position,
ventured to press it once or twice, as she read some moving
line, and murmured praises of the author's beauties, and of the
sweet, low voice that lent to those beauties a more thrilling
loveliness, and still the fairy fingers were not withdrawn from
his hold, though her eye met not his, nor any word of hers answered
his whispered praises.

At length a quick, strong step came suddenly to the door of
the room, and almost before there was time for thought, the
door was thrown open, and Denzil Olifaunt entered.

Instantly Theresa started at the sound, and strove to withdraw
her hand, while a deep blush of shame and agitation crimsoned
her cheeks and brow, and even overspread her snowy
neck and bosom.

It was not, as that bold boy fancied at the time, in the vanity
and insolence of his uncorrected heart, that she knew all the
time, that she was allowing what it was wrong, and immodest,
and unmaidenly, to endure, and that now she was afraid and
ashamed, not of the error, but of the detection.

No. In the purity of her heart, in the half-pitiful, half-protecting
spirit which she felt toward Jasper, first as an invalid,
and then as a mere boy — for although he was, perhaps, a year
her senior, who does not know that boys in their eighteenth
year are a full lustre younger than girls of the same age — she

had thought nothing, dreamed nothing of impropriety in yielding
her hand to the boy's affectionate grasp, until the step of
the man, whose proffered love she had that very day declined,
led her to think intuitively what would be his feelings, and
thence what must be Jasper's, concerning that permitted license.

But the wily boy, for, so young as he was, he lacked neither
sagacity to perceive, nor audacity to profit by occasion, saw
his advantage, and holding his prize with a gentle yet firm
pressure, without so much as turning his eyes to Denzil, or
letting it be known that he was aware of his presence, raised it
to his lips, and kissed it, saying, in a low, earnest tone: —

“I thank you, from my very soul, for your gentleness and
kind attention, dearest lady; your sweet voice has soothed me
more than words can express; there must be a magic in it, for
it has charmed my headache quite away, and divested me,
moreover, from the least desire to seek glory, or the gallows,
with your bold cousin.”

The eyes of Denzil Bras-de-fer flashed fire, as he saw, as he
heard what was passing; and he made two or three strides forward,
with a good deal of his old impetuosity, of both look and
gesture. His brow was knitted, his hands clinched, and his
lip compressed over his teeth, so closely that it was white and
bloodless.

But happily — or perhaps, unhappily — before he had time to
commit himself, he saw Theresa withdraw her hand so decidedly,
and with so perfect a majesty of gentle yet indignant
womanhood, gazing upon the audacious offender, as she did so,
with eyes so full of wonder and rebuke, that he could not doubt
the sincerity or genuineness of her anger.

Acquitting her, therefore, of all blame or coquetry, and looking
upon Jasper as a mere boy, and worthy to be treated as
such only, reflecting, moreover, that he was, for the time being,
shielded by his infirmity, he controlled himself, though not

without an effort, and with a lip now curling scornfully, and an
eye rather contemptuous than angry, advanced to the fireside,
and took his seat beside his uncle and Sir Miles, without taking
the slightest notice of the others.

In the meantime, Theresa, after she had disengaged her
hand from Jasper, and cast upon him that one look of serene indignation,
turned her back on him quietly, in spite of some attempt
at apology or explanation which he began to utter.
Walking slowly and composedly to the table, she laid down on
it the volume of Shakspere which she had been reading to
him, and selecting some implements of feminine industry,
moved over to the group assembled round the hearth, and sat
down on a low footstool, between Denzil and her father.

No one but the two young men and herself were aware what
had passed; and she, though annoyed by Jasper's forwardness,
having, as she thought, effectually repelled it, had already dismissed
it from her mind as a thing worth no further consideration.
Denzil, on the other hand, though attaching far more
importance to his action, saw plainly that this was not the time
or the place for making any comment on it, even if he had been
capable of adding to Theresa's embarrassment; while Jasper,
mortified and frustrated by the lady's scornful self-possession,
and the free-trader's manifest self-contempt, had no better mode
of concealing his disappointment, than by sinking back upon
his pillow, as if fatigued or in pain, and feigning to fall gradually
asleep — a feint which, as is oftentimes the case, terminated
at last in reality.

Meanwhile, the two old men continued to talk quietly, in
rather a subdued tone, of old times and the events of their
youth, and thence of the varied incidents which had checkered
their lives, during the long space of time since they had been
friends and comrades, with many a light and shadow. And as
they, garrulous, as is the wont of the aged and infirm, and

“laudatores temporis acti,” found pleasure even, in the retrospect
on things which in their day were painful, the young man
sat beside them silent, oppressed with the burden of present
pain, and yet more by the anticipation of worse suffering to be
endured thereafter.

Nearly an hour passed thus, without a single word being exchanged
between Denzil and Theresa; he musing deeply, with
his head buried in his hands, as he bent over the embers of the
wood fire, which the vicinity of the cottage to the water's edge
rendered agreeable even on summer evenings, and she plying
her needle as assiduously as if she were dependent on its exercise
for her support.

Several times, indeed, she looked up at him with her candid,
innocent face, and her beautiful blue eye clear and unclouded,
as if she wished to catch his attention. But he was all unconscious
of her movement, and continued to ponder gloomily on
many things that had, and yet more that had not, any existence
beyond the limits of his own fitful fancy.

At length tired of waiting for his notice, the rather that the
night was wearing onward, she arose from her seat, folding up
her work as she did so, and laid her hand lightly on her cousin's
shoulder —

“And are you really going to leave us to-morrow, Denzil?”
she said, softly.

“For a few days only,” he answered, raising his head, and
meeting her earnest eye with a cold, sad smile. “I am going
to ride down to-morrow afternoon as far as Hexworthy, where I
will sleep, and so get into Plymouth betimes the following day.”

“And when shall you come back to us?”

“I shall not stay an hour longer than I can avoid, Theresa;
and I think that in three days I may be able to arrange all that
I have to do; if so, you may look for me within the week — at
furthest, I shall be here in ten days.”

“And how long may we count on keeping you here, then?
It will be long, I fear, before we shall meet again.”

“The ship can not be fit for sea within three weeks, Theresa,
or it may be a month; and I shall stay here, be sure, until
the last moment. But as all mortal matters are uncertain to a
proverb, and as none of us can say when, or if ever, we shall
meet again, and as I have much to say to you before I go to sea
this time, will you not walk in the garden with me for an hour
before breakfast to-morrow?”

“Surely I will. How can you doubt it, Denzil?”

“I do not doubt it. And then I can give you my opinion about
the young nightingales, which we forgot, after all, this morning.
I dare say they will turn out to be hedge-sparrows.”

“I will be there soon after the sun is up, Denzil, and that I
may be so, good night, all,” and with the word, kissing her
father's brow, and giving her hand affectionately to Denzil, she
courtesied to the old cavalier, and left the room without so much
as looking toward Jasper, who was, however, already fast
asleep, and unconscious of all sublunary matters.

Her rising, though she had not joined in the conversation for
the last hour or more, broke up the company, and in a few minutes
they had all withdrawn, each to his own apartment; and
Jasper was left alone, with the brands dying out one by one on
the hearth-stone, and an old tabby cat dozing near the andirons;
this night he had no other watchers, and none were there
to hear or see what befell him during the hours of darkness.

But had there been any one present in that old apartment, he
would have seen that the sleep of the young man was strangely
restless and perturbed, that the sweat-drops stood in large cold
beads upon his brow, that his features were from time to time
fearfully distorted, as if by pain and horror, and that he tossed
his arms to and fro, as if he were wrestling with some powerful
but intangible oppressor.

From time to time, moreover, he uttered groans and strangely
murmured sounds, and a few articulate words; but these so unconnected,
and at so long intervals asunder, that no human
skill could have combined them into anything like intelligible
sentences. At length with a wild, shrill cry, he started up
erect in his bed, his hair bristling with terror, and the cold
sweat flowing off his face like rain-drops.

“O, God!” he cried, “avert — defend! Horror! horror!”
Then raising his hands slowly to his brow, he felt himself,
grasped his arm, and sought for the pulsations of his heart, as
if he were laboring to satisfy himself that he was awake.

At length, he murmured, “It was a dream! The Lord be
praised! it was but a dream! and yet, how terrible, how vivid!
Even now I can scarce believe that I was not awake and saw it.”

But as his eye ran over the objects to which it had become
accustomed during the last days, and which were now indistinctly
visible in the glimmering darkness of a fine summer
night, he became fully satisfied that he had been indeed asleep;
and with a muttered prayer, he settled himself down again on
the pillow, and composed himself to sleep once more.

He had not slept, however, above half an hour before the
same painful symptoms recurred; and after even a longer and
more agonizing struggle than the first, he again woke, panting,
horror-stricken, pale and almost paralyzed with superstitious
terror.

“It was!” he gasped, “it was — it must have been in reality.
I saw her, as I did last night, tangible, face to face; but, O
God! what a glare of horror in those beautiful blue eyes — what
a gory spot on that smooth, white brow — what agony — what
supplication in every lovely feature. And he, he who dealt
the blow — I could not see the face, but the dress, the figure,
nay, the seat on horseback — great God! they were all mine
own!”

He paused for a long time, meditating deeply, and casting
furtive glances around the large old-fashioned room, as though
he expected to see some of the great heavy shadows which
brooded in the dim angles and irregular recesses of the walls,
detach themselves from their lurking-places, in the guise of
human forms disembodied, and come forth to confront him.

After a while, however, his naturally strong intellect and
characteristic audacity led him to discard the idea of supernatural
influence in the appalling vision, which had now twice so
cruelly disturbed him. Still, so great had been the suffering
and torture of his mind during the conflict of the sleeping body
and the sleepless intellect, that he actually dreaded the return
of slumber, lest that dread phantom should return with it; and
he therefore exerted himself to keep awake, and to arm his
mind against the insidious stealing on of sleep, from very fear
of what should follow.

But the very efforts which he made to banish the inclination,
wearied the mind, and induced what he would most avoid; and
within an hour he was again unconscious of all external sights
and sounds, again terribly alive to those inward sensations
which had already terrified him almost beyond endurance.

This time the trance was shorter, but from the symptoms
which appeared on his features, fiercer and stronger than before;
nor, as before, when he awoke, did the impression pass
away which had been made on him before his eyes were
opened. No; as he started up erect, and gazed wildly, scarce
as yet half awake, around him, the first thing that met, or
seemed to meet his staring eyes, was a gray, misty shadow,
standing relieved by a dark mass of gloom in the farthest angle
of the chamber. Gradually, as he stared at it with a fascinated
gaze, which, had it been to save his life, he could not have
withdrawn, the shape, if shape it were, drew nearer, nearer,
with a slow, gliding, ghastly motion.

The moon had by this time arisen, and cast a feeble, ineffectual
light through the mass of tangled foliage which curtained
the large diamond-paned casements of the cottage, streaming
in a dim, misty ray across the centre of the chamber. Directly
in the middle of this pallid halo, as if it had been a silver
glory, paused, or appeared to pause, that thin, transparent form
— so bodiless, indeed, it seemed, that the outlines of the things
which stood beyond it, were visible, as if seen through a gauzy
curtain. A cloud passed over the moon's face, and all was
gloom; yet still the boy's eyes felt the presence of that disembodied
visitant, which they could now no longer distinguish in
the darkness.

At this moment, as if to add a real terror to that which, even
if unreal, needed no addition, the cat, which hitherto had been
sleeping undisturbedly by the warm ashes on the earth, uttered
an unusual plaintive cry, most unlike to the natural note of her
species, whether of pleasure or of anger, and rushed at two or
three long bounds, to the bed on which the boy was sitting up
in voiceless horror. Her eyes glared in the darkness, like coals
of livid fire, her bristles were set up like the quills of the porcupine,
her tail was outspread, till it almost resembled a fox's
brush.

The cloud drifted onward, and the moon shone out brighter
than before; and there he still saw that tall, white shape, clearer,
distincter, stronger, than when he first beheld it. The cat
cowered down upon the pillow by his side, with a low, wailing
cry of terror, her back, bristling in wrath but now, was humbly
lowered, dread of something unnatural had quelled all her savage
instincts.

Clearer and clearer waxed the vision, and now he might mark
the delicate symmetrical proportions of the figure, and now the
pale, white outlines of the lovely face. It was Theresa Allan.
Yet the fair features were set in a sort of rigid cataleptic horror,

full of dread, full of agony and consternation; and the blue
eyes glared, fixed and glassy, without speculation; and right
in the centre of the brow there glowed, like a sanguine star, a
great spot of gore.

The thing seemed to raise its arm, and point with a gesture
of majestic menace, right toward the terrified beholder. Then
the white lips were parted with a slow, circular distortion, showing
the pearly teeth within, and — if a voice came forth from
those ghastly lips, Jasper St. Aubyn knew it not, for he had sunk
back on his pillow — if, indeed, he had ever, as he believed to
the day of his death, raised himself up from it — in a deep
trance, from which he passed into a dead, heavy, dreamless stupor,
which continued undisturbed until the sun was high in the
heavens, and the whole household were afoot, and busied about
their usual avocations.

In the meantime, she whose image, whether in truth it was
an eidolon, or merely the idea of a diseased mind and preoccupied
spirit had been so busy during the hours of darkness, had
awakened all refreshed by light and innocent slumbers, with
the first peep of day, and arising from her couch had descended
into the garden, still half enveloped in the dewy vapors of the
summer night, half-glimmering in the slant radiance of the new-risen
sun.

She was the first at her appointment, for Denzil had not yet
made his appearance, and she walked to and fro awaiting him,
among the flowery thickets and sweet-scented shrubberies, all
bathed in the copious night-dews, half-wondering, half-guessing,
what it could be that he should so earnestly desire to communicate.
And as she walked, she considered with herself all
that had occurred during the last three days, and the more she
considered, the less was she able to comprehend the workings
of her own mind, or to explain to herself wherefore it was that

she could not divest herself of the idea that the crisis of her
life, the fate of her heart was at hand.

That she had rejected Denzil's proffered love, his honest,
manly love, she knew that she ought not to regret, for she felt
surely that she could not love him in return as he ought, as he
deserved to be loved; and yet she did almost regret it. Then
she began to ask herself why she did not, why she could not
love him, endowed eminently as he was with many high and
noble qualities; and she was soon answered, when she considered
how far he fell short of her standard, in mental and intellectual
culture, in all that pertained to the secret sympathies of
the heart, to the kindred tastes and sentiments, to that community
of hopes and wishes, which, under the head of eadem velle
atque nolle, the Roman philosophical historian had declared to
be the sole base of true friendship — might he not better have
said of true love?

Thence by an easy and natural transition the girl's thoughts
turned to the young stranger — to his magnificent person and
striking intellectual beauty — to his singular and original character,
so audacious, so full of fiery and rebellious self-will, so
confident in his own powers, so daring, almost insolent toward
man, and yet, at the same time, so fraught with gentle and sensitive
fancies, so rapt by romance or poetry, so liable to all
swift impressions of the senses, so humble, yet with so proud
and self-arrogating a humility, toward woman.

She thought of the tones of his beautifully-modulated voice,
of the expression of his deep, clear, gray eye; she remembered
how the one had melted, as it were, almost timorously in
her ear, how the other had dwelt almost boldly on her face, yet
with a boldness which seemed meant almost as homage.

She mused on these things; and then paused to reflect how
helplessly and deathfully he had lain at her feet, when he was
drawn forth from that deep, red whirlpool; and how sickly

those fine eyes swam when she first beheld them. How small
a thing would have extinguished, and for ever, the faint spark
of life which then feebly fluttered in his bosom; how childlike
he had yielded himself to her ministration, and with how piteous
yet grateful an expression he had acknowledged, when he
awoke from his first trance-like stupor, midway as it were between
life and death, the gentleness of her protection.

Most true it is, that pity is akin to love; where pity, as is
seldom the case from woman toward man, can exist apart from
something approaching to contempt; where it is called forth by
the consequences of neither physical nor mental weakness.
Still more is it the province and the part of woman to love
whom she has protected.

With both sexes, I believe that to have conferred, rather than
to have received kindness — to be owed rather than to owe gratitude
— is conductive to the growth of kindly feeling, of friendship,
of affection, love! But with a true woman, to have been
dependent on her for support, to have looked up into her eyes
for aid on the sick bed, for sympathy in mortal sorrow, to have
revived by her nursing, to have been consoled by her comforting
— these are the truest and most direct key to her affection.

Theresa thought of all these things, and as she did so, her
bosom heaved almost unconsciously with a sigh, and a tear rose
unbidden to her eye. She almost loved Jasper St. Aubyn.

Again, to the recollection of his boldness on the previous
evening, of his half-forcible seizure of her hand, of the kiss
he had so daringly imprinted on her soft fingers, of the too-meaning
words which he had addressed to her, and of the tone,
which conveyed even more of consciousness and confidence
than the words themselves, all rushed at once upon her mind;
and, though she was alone, she started, and her face crimsoned
at the mere memory of what she half felt as an indignity.

“And could he think me,” she murmured to herself, “so

light, so vain, so easy to be won, that he dare treat me thus at
almost a first interview? or was it but the rashness, the imprudence,
the buoyancy of extreme youth, inspired by sudden love,
and encouraged by his own headstrong character?” She
paused a moment, and then said almost aloud, “Oh, no, no, I
will not believe it.”

“And what will you not believe, Theresa?” said a clear, firm
voice, close behind her; “what is it that you are so energetically
determined not to believe, my pretty cousin?”

She started, not well pleased that even Denzil should have
thus, as it were, stolen upon her privacy, and overheard what
was intended for no mortal ear. Theresa was as guileless as
any being of mortal mould may be; but even the most artless
woman can not be altogether free from some touch of instinctive
artifice — that innocent and gentle guile is to woman what
nature has bestowed on all, even the humblest of its creatures,
her true weapon of defence, her shield against the brute tyranny
of man. And Theresa was a woman. She replied, therefore,
without an instant's hesitation, although her voice did falter
somewhat, and her cheeks burn, as she spoke: —

“That you are angry with me, Cousin Denzil.” But then,
as she felt his cold, clear, dark eye — how piercingly it dwelt upon
her features — reading, or striving to read, her very soul, she
continued, seeing at once the necessity of placing him on the
defensive, so as to turn the tide of aggressive warfare, “but I
am angry with you, I assure you; nor do I think it at all like
you, Denzil, or at all like a true cavalier, as you pretend to be,
first, to keep a lady waiting for you, I don't know how long,
here alone, and then to creep upon her, like an Indian or a spy,
and surprise what little secrets she might be turning over in
her own mind. You must have trodden lightly on purpose, or
I should have heard your step. I did not look for this at your
hand, Cousin Denzil.”

He still gazed at her with the same dark, fixed, piercing
glance, without answering her a word! and, although conscious
of no wrong, she met his gaze with her calm, candid, truthful
eye, she could not endure his suspicious look, but was fluttered,
and blushed deeply, and was so much embarrassed, that had
not pride and anger come to her aid, she would have burst into
tears. But they did come to her aid, and she cried with a quivering
voice and a flashing eye: —

“For what do you look at me so, Denzil? I do not like it
— I will not bear it! You have no right to treat me thus! it is
not kind, nor courteous, nor even manly! If it be to browbeat
me, and tyrannize over me, that you asked me to meet you
here, I could have thanked you to spare me the request. But
I shall leave you to yourself, and return home; and so, good-morrow
to you, and better breeding, and a better heart, too,
Cousin Denzil!”

But though she said she was going, she made no movement
to do so, but hesitated, waiting for his answer.

“You must be greatly changed, Theresa,” he said bitterly,
“to take offence at so slight a cause, or to speak to me in such
a tone. But you are greatly changed, and there 's an end of it.”

“I am not changed at all,” replied the girl, still chafing at the
recollection of that scrutinizing eye, which she perhaps felt the
more, because conscious that her own reply had not been perfectly
sincere. “But I do not allow your right to pry meanly
into my secret thoughts, or to catechize me concerning my words,
or to accuse me of falsehood, when I answer you.”

“Accuse you of falsehood, Theresa! who ever dreamed of
doing so?”

“Your eye did so, sir,” she replied. “When I told you that
I was determined `not to believe that you were angry with me,'
you fixed your glance upon me with the expression of a pedagogue,
who, having caught a child lying, would terrify it into

truth. I am no child, I assure you, Denzil, nor are you yet my
master. Think as you may about it.”

It was now Denzil's turn to be confused, for he could not deny
that she had construed the meaning of his look aright; and
would not, so proud was he and so resolute, either deny or
apologize for what was certainly an act of rudeness.

After a moment's pause, however, he looked up at her from
under downcast eyelids, with a look of defiance mingled with
distrust, and answered bluntly:—

“I do not believe that was your meaning, or that you were
thinking about me at all.”

“And what if it were not? Am I bound, I pray you, to be
thinking of nothing but you? I must have little enough to
think of, if it were so.”

“You might at least have told me so much, frankly.”

“I thank you, Cousin Denzil,” she made answer, more
proudly, more firmly than ever he had heard her speak before.
“I thank you, for teaching me a lesson, though neither very
kindly, nor exactly as a generous gentleman should teach a
lady. But you are perfectly correct in your surmises, sir. I
was not thinking of you at all; no more, sir, than if you were
not in existence, and if I answered you, as I did, sir, falsely —
yes! falsely is the word! — it is because, in the first place, you
had no right to ask me the question you did, and, in the second,
because I did not choose to answer it! Now, cousin, allow me
to teach you something — for you have something yet to learn,
wise as you are, about us women. If you ask a lady unmannerly
questions, hereafter, and she turn them off by a flippant
joke, or an unmeaning falsehood, understand that you have been
very rude, and that she does not wish to be so likewise, by rebuking
your impertinence. Now, do you comprehend me?”

“Perfectly, madam, perfectly. You have made marvellous
strides of late, upon my honor! Yesterday morning an unsophisticated

country-maiden — this morning a courtly, quick-witted,
manœuvring, fine lady! God send you, much good of
the change, though I doubt it. I can see all, read all, plainly
enough now — poor Denzil Bras-de-fer is not high enough, I
trow, for my dainty lady! Perchance, when he is farther off,
he may be better liked, and more needed. At all events, I did
not look for this at your hands, Theresa, on the last morning,
too, that we shall spend together for so long a time.”

Angry as she was, and indignant at the dictatorial manner he
had assumed toward her, these last words disarmed her in a
moment. A tear rose to her eyes, and she held out her hand
to him kindly.

“You are right, Denzil,” she said, “and I was wrong to be
so angry. But you vexed me, and wounded me by your manner.
I am sorry; I ought to have remembered that you were
going to leave us, and that you have some cause to be grieved
and irritable. Pardon me, Denzil, and forget what I said hastily.
We must not quarrel, for we have no friends save one another,
and my dear old father.”

But Denzil's was no placable mind, nor one that could divest
itself readily of a preconceived idea. “Oh!” he replied, “for
that, fair young ladies never lack friends. For every old one
they cast off they win two new ones. See, if it be not so,
Theresa. Is it not so with you?”

She looked at him reproachfully, but softly, and then burst
into tears. “You are ungenerous,” she said, “ungenerous.
But all men, I suppose, are alike in this — that they can feel no
friendship for a woman. So long as they hope for her love, all
is submission on their part, and humility, and gentleness, and
lip-service — once they can not win that, all is bitterness and
persecution. I did not look for this at your hand! But I will
not quarrel with you, Denzil. I dealt frankly with you yester
morning; I have dealt affectionately with you ever; I will deal

tenderly and forgivingly with you now. I only wish that you
had not sought this interview with me, the only object of which
appears to have been the embittering the last hours of our intercourse,
and the endeavoring to wring and wound my heart.
But I —”

“If you had dealt frankly with me,” he interrupted her, very
angrily, “you would have told me honestly that you loved another.”

“Loved another! What do you mean? What other?”

So evident was the truth, the sincerity of her astonishment,
that jealousy itself was rebuked and put to silence in the young
man's bosom; and he endeavored to avoid or change the subject.
But the womanly indignation of the fair girl was now
awakened; her pride had been touched; her delicacy wounded;
her sensibilities assailed in the tenderest point.

“Leave me!” she said, after a little pause, during which she,
in her turn gazing upon him, now bewildered and abashed, with
eyes of serene wonder, not all unmingled with contempt —
“Nay! not another word — leave me — begone! You are not
worthy of a woman's love — you are not worthy to be treated or
regarded as a man. Leave me, I say, and trouble me no more.
Poor, weak, mean-spirited, vain, jealous, and ungenerous, begone!
You know — no man knows better — the falsehood of
the last words you have spoken. No man knows better their
unfeelingness, their ungenerous cruelty. But if I had — if I
had loved another — in what does that concern you? in what
am I responsible to you for my likings or dislikings? Once
and for all be it said, I love you not — should not love you,
were you the only one of your sex on the face of God's earth
— and I pray God to help and protect the woman who shall
love you — if ever you be loved of woman, which I for one believe
not — for she shall love the veriest tyrant that ever tortured
a fond heart, under the plea of loving.”

“I go,” he replied. “I am answered, once and for all. I
go, and may you never need my aid, my forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness!” she exclaimed, with a contemptuous glance.
“Forgiveness! I know not what you have to forgive! But
you should rather pray that I may have need of them; then
may you have the pleasure of refusing me at my need.”

“Ah! it is thus you think of me. It is time, then, that I
should leave you, Fare you well, Theresa.”

“There is no need for farewells at present. The day is
early yet; and I trust still to see your temper changed before
you set forth on your journey. It would grieve my father
sorely that you should leave us thus.”

“He will not know how I leave you. He will see me no
more for years — perhaps never!”

“What do you mean?”

“That I shall mount my horse within this half hour, and return
no more until I shall have twice crossed the Atlantic. So
fare you well, Theresa.”

“Fare you well, Denzil, if it must be so. And God bless
you, and send you a better mind. You will be sorry for this
one day. There is my hand, fare you well; and rest assured
of this, return when you may, you will find me the same
Theresa.”

He took her hand, and wrung it hard. “Farewell,” he said.
“Farewell; and God grant that when I do return, I find you
the wife, and not the mistress, of Jasper St. Aubyn.”

Ungenerous and bitter at the last, he winged the shaft at
random, which he hoped would pierce the deepest, which he
trusted would prevent the consummation he most dreaded —
that she should be the wife of the boy whom he had saved,
whom he had now hated.

The other contingency, at which he had hinted basely, unmanly,
brutally, he knew to be impossible — but he knew also,

that the surmise would gall her beyond endurance. That, that
was the cruel, the unworthy object of the last words Denzil
Bras-de-fer ever exchanged in this world with Theresa
Allan.

He turned on his heel, and, without looking back once, strode
through the garden, with all his better feelings lost and swallowed
up in bitterness and hatred — entered his own apartment,
and there wrote a few lines to his uncle, to the effect that in
order to avoid the pain of a parting, and the sorrows of a last
adieu, he had judged it for the wisest to depart suddenly and
unawares, and that he should not return to Widecomb until his
voyage should be ended.

Then, leaving the house, where he had passed so many a
happy hour, in hot and passionate resentment, he mounted his
horse and rode away at a hard gallop across the hills toward
Hexworthy and Plymouth.

The last words he uttered had gone to Theresa's heart like a
death-shot. She did not speak, or even sigh, as she heard
them, but pressed her hand hard on her breast, and fell speechless
and motionless on the dewy greensward.

He, engrossed by his selfish rage, and deafened to the sound
of her fall by the beatings of his own hard heart, stalked off
unconscious what had befallen her; and she lay there, insensible,
until the servant-girl, missing her at the breakfast hour,
found her there cold, and, as at first she believed, lifeless.

She soon revived, indeed, from the swoon; but the excitement
and agitation of that scene brought on a slow, lingering
fever; and weeks elapsed ere she again left her chamber. When
she did quit it, the fresh green leaves of summer had put on
their sere and yellow hue, the autumn flowers were fast losing
their last brilliancy, the hoar-frosts lay white, in the early
mornings, over the turf-walks of her garden, ice had been seen
already on the great pool above the fords of Widecomb, and

everything gave notice that the dreary days of winter were approaching,
and even now at hand.

The northwest winds howled long and hollow over the open
hills and heathery wolds around Widecomb manor, and ever as
their wild melancholy wail fell on the ears of Theresa, as she
sat by her now lonely hearth, they awoke a thought of him, the
playmate of her happy childhood, from whom she had parted,
not as friends and playmates should part, and who was now
ploughing the fair Atlantic, perhaps never to return.

A shadow had fallen upon her brow; a gloom upon her
young and happy life.

And where was he who, unconsciously, though not perhaps
unintentionally, had been the cause of the cloud which had arisen,
and whence that shadow, that gloom? Where was Jasper St.
Aubyn?