The thief in the night :: :: University of Virginia Library

How long ago it seemed to him since Gaston
had seen her! He himself had been so nearly
happy that these two years were like a blessed
age, beyond which he could scarcely recollect.
He had known well in the beginning that Catherine
did not love him; but when month by month
of their foreign sojourn went by, and under the sunbeams
of his constant care her heart seemed to
open like a flower, with little acts of graciousness,
an intimate word, a clinging to his arm, a seat
reserved beside herself; when, into all the familiar
intercourse of daily life, sometimes there slipped
from her lips a half-endearing term, sometimes a
smile, — once, he remembered, a caress, a slight

and brief and trivial thing, yet a caress, — then
Beaudesfords' heart had lightened of all the load
it ever bore, and he believed that ere long he
should win her for his own indeed, that her heart
would be his, as his had so long been hers; and
possessed of what he fancied to be an infinite
patience, he waited, and day and night his one
thought was her pleasure. But, in fact, Beaudesfords
had no patience at all: he had in its place
a plentiful perseverance. He had never been
called upon to suffer seriously: had he been, he
would have rebelled and fallen at once. He would
not suffer in his siege of Catherine's heart: it
must end but one way, he thought, and it was all
a precious endeavor. To serve those we love is a
delight. Beaudesfords then, during these two
years, had been happy in earning the wages of
bliss. The time seemed to him a period that had
no date behind it. He forgot that Catherine had
ever stood upon the verge of want, forgot that he
had ever conferred a benefit upon her. This
wealth and ease seemed to provide her natural
atmosphere; and thus he almost forgot that Gaston
and she had ever exchanged a glance.

“You remember my wife, Gaston,” said he.
“You remember her when you first saw her,

standing on that ledge of rocks;” for the picture
she had made in standing there flashed back upon
him at the moment. “Ah, that was a thousand
years ago! She was an airy nothing then,” he
said: “now she has a local habitation and a name.
She is Beaudesfords of Beaudesfords now!”

To all this Gaston replied not a syllable. He
only bowed lower and lower over a cold hand that
lay in his one instant, and seemed to melt away
like a snow-flake; and scarcely could it be said
that his brown face darkened with a deeper hue
than the mere bending gave it.

But across Catherine's memory flashed another
picture, — the starlit midnight, with the swinging
shadows of its tree-branches, his lips that bent to
hers, her lips that rose to his; and a bitter flush
of shame burst over throat and face, and dyed
them with a stain that Beaudesfords had never
seen before. Then she had passed on to receive
the welcome of the hurrying and clustering servants,
and to her mother's rooms, where Mrs.
Stanhope and her other daughters sat without
suspicion of the scene below.

Gaston had arrived at Beaudesfords only that
day, intending to take away with him various
articles of his property that, during his expedition,

had remained under the protection of its
roof. Mrs. Stanhope, who kept the house in her
daughter's absence, or rather kept the housekeeper,
and who held one of the diplomatic principles
of always treating a man as if you might
some day want to use him, now that there was no
danger, with Catherine safely provided for, and
out of the way besides, and with Rose too much
of Caroline's mind to be affected one way or the
other in a single day and night, felt the coming
of this adventurous gentleman to be a great lightener
of the tedium she experienced in their splendid
but lonesome country-seat, could not forbear
reading to him, in her magnanimity, the latest
letters from her son and daughter, and urged him
to pass the night beneath the roof that had, in
truth, been wont to be as often his shelter as that
of Beaudesfords himself. She was as much surprised
as everybody else when Catherine stood
smiling in the doorway, like the embodiment not
only of a great sunbeam, but of a whole sky full
of sunshine; for Beaudesfords was a spendthrift
in surprises, much as he had once declared that
he detested them, and always contrived to swoop
down on his household when they thought him a
hundred horizons away.

Beaudesfords, of course, would not hear of
Gaston's leaving; on the contrary, he must stay, —
stay indefinitely. Just back from his expedition,
what engagements had he? None at all. This
was his home: he had no other. Did he understand
that? Did he suppose that because he,
Beaudesfords, was married, his wife banished his
friends? No: Catherine and he had but one
wish. The western wing, as of old, as much as
he wanted of it, should be in his undisturbed possession
so long as he chose to occupy it or to
return to it: if ever he made another home for
himself, with a hearth-stone in it, and anybody
sitting beside the hearth-stone, well and good;
but till he made it, — and Beaudesfords didn't
believe he was a marrying man, — till he made it,
the fiat had gone forth: bring his traps down to
Beaudesfords.

And so he did.