The Sorceress (complete). Oliphant Margaret

had better go. Betty, you know Moulsey’s box and that new basket that mamma brought me before we left the Baths.”

      “Come along yourself, quick, Bee.”

      “No, I shall stop in the omnibus.”

      “When you have made up your minds,” cried Betty, who had slipped out of the vehicle at the first word. Betty thought it would be more fun to go through the Custom House than to wait all the time cooped up here.

      And Bee had her reward; for Aubrey was there, waiting at a distance till the matter was settled. “I should have risked everything and come, even if the penalty had been a quarrel with Charlie,” Aubrey said, “but I must not quarrel with anyone if I can help it. We shall have hard work enough without that.”

      “You have seen papa?”

      “Yes, I have seen him: but I have not done myself much good, I fear,” said Aubrey, shaking his head. “Bee, you won’t give me up whatever they may say?”

      “Give you up? Never, Aubrey, till you give me up!”

      “Then all is safe, my darling. However things look now they can’t hold out for ever. Lies must be found out, and then – in time – you will be able to act for yourself.”

      “Do you think papa will stand to it like that, Aubrey?”

      Aubrey shook his head. He did not make any reply.

      “Tell me. Is it a lie?” she said.

      He bent down his head upon her hand, kissing it.

      “Not all,” he said, in an almost inaudible voice. “ I said that – at Cologne – ”

      “I did not understand,” said Bee. “No; it does not matter to me, Aubrey – not so very much; but if you promised – ”

      “I never promised – never! My only thought was to escape – ”

      “Then I can’t think what you have done wrong. Aubrey, is she tall, with dark hair, and beautiful dark eyes, and a way of looking at you as if she would look you through and through?”

      “Bee!” he said, gripping her fast, as if someone had been about to decoy her away.

      “And a mouth,” said Bee, “that is very pretty, but looks as if it were cut out of steel? Then, I have seen her. She sat down by me one day in the wood, when I was doing that sketch, and gave me such clever hints, telling me how to finish it, till she made me hate it, don’t you know. Is she horribly clever, and a good artist? and like that – ”

      “Bee! What did that woman say to you?”

      “Nothing very much. Asked me about the people at the hotel, and if there were any Leighs – not you, she pretended, but the Leighs of Hurst-leigh, whom she knew. I thought it very strange at the time why she should ask about the Leighs without knowing anything – and then I forgot all about it. But to-day it came back to my mind, and I have been thinking of nothing else. Aubrey – she is older than you are?”

      “Yes,” he said.

      “And she made you promise to marry her?” said Bee, half unconscious yet half conscious of that wile of the cross-examiner, coming back to the point suddenly.

      “Never, Bee, never for one moment in my misery! That I should have to make such a confession to you! – but there was no promise nor thought of a promise. I desired nothing – nothing but to escape from her. You don’t doubt my word, Bee?”

      “No; I don’t doubt anything you say. But I think she is a dreadful woman to get anybody in her power, Aubrey. My little drawing was for you. It was the place we first met, and she told me how to do it and make it look so much better. I am not very clever at it, you know; and then I hated the very sight of it, and tore it in two. I don’t know why.”

      “I understand why. Bee, you will be faithful to me, whatever you are told?”

      “Till I die, Aubrey.”

      “And never, never believe that for a moment my heart will change from you.”

      “Not till I hear it from yourself,” she said, with a woeful smile. The despair in him communicated itself to her, who had not been despairing at all.

      “Which will never be – and when you are your own mistress, my darling – ”

      “Oh, we shan’t have to wait for that!” she cried, with a burst of her native energy. “Dear Aubrey, they are coming back; you must go away.”

      “Till we meet again, darling?”

      “Till we meet again!”

      CHAPTER XII

      Bee stole into her mother’s room as she went upstairs before that first dinner at home which used to be such a joyous meal. How they had all enjoyed it – until now. The ease and space, the going from room to room, the delight in finding everything with which they were familiar, the flowers in the vases (never were any such flowers as those at home!), the incursions of the little ones shouting to each other, “Mamma’s come home!” Even the little air of disorder which all these interruptions brought into the orderly house was delightful to the young people. They looked forward as to an ideal life, to beginning all their usual occupations again and doing them all better than ever. “Oh, how nice it is to be at home!” the girls had said to each other. Instead of those hotel rooms, which at their best are never more than hotel rooms, a genre not to be mistaken, how delightful was the drawing-room at home, with all its corners – Bee’s little table where she muddled at her drawings, mamma’s great basket of needlework where everything could be thrown under charitable cover, Betty’s stool on which she sat at the feet of her oracle of the moment, whoever that might be, and all the little duties to be resumed – the evening papers arranged for papa (as if he had not seen enough of them in the daytime in his office!), the flowers to see after, the little notes to write, all the pleasant common-places of the home life. But to-night, for the first time, dinner was a silent meal, hurried over – not much better than a dinner at a railway station, with a sensation in it of being still on the road, of not having yet reached their destination. The drawing-room was in brown holland still, for they were all going on to Kingswarden to-morrow. The house felt formal, uninhabited, as if they had come home to lodgings. All this was bad enough; but the primary trouble of all was the fact that mamma was upstairs – gone to bed before dinner, too tired to sit up. Such a thing had never happened before. However tired she was, she had always so brightened up at the sensation of coming home.