A Woman's Burden: A Novel. Hume Fergus

must – I will. I do not fear you now. No, I defy you!"

      "Take care, young lady; you had better not defy me."

      "And why not?" She winced, though she spoke haughtily enough.

      With a sudden pounce the man seized her wrist and bent so close to her that his lips almost touched her ear. So low, too, did he speak, that she could with difficulty hear what he said. But enough she heard to make her colour come and go; and when he had finished, the beads of perspiration stood out upon her forehead.

      "Who told you?" she gasped. "Who told you?"

      "The man who left me just now. He tells me all I wish to know."

      "What is his name?"

      "He has no name – for you. Call him 'The Shadow,' if you will. It will serve as well as any other name. Now, do you go or stay?"

      She leaned against the writing-table, breathing heavily. For more than a minute she stood thus, battling with herself. Then slowly she turned and looked at him.

      "I will stay," she said. Then she fell helplessly into a chair and sobbed bitterly.

      Barton looked at her with a sneer. He went to the side-board for a decanter and a glass. As in a dream she was conscious of his holding wine to her lips, and as in a dream she drank it, and heard him speak to her.

      "Remember," he said, "on your implicit obedience depends the future. Thwart me, and – "

      "Hush, hush!" she cried, looking round in fear lest already someone should have overheard. "I will do all I can."

      "Very good. Now, if you feel better, we will return to the drawing-room."

      At the door she laid her hand upon his shoulder.

      "One moment, Mr. Barton; you will keep this man – this shadow, as you call him – from doing harm?"

      "I will. He is as much my slave as you are."

      And Miriam, although she shuddered, did not dare to contradict him. She was indeed his slave. His whispered communication had given her no choice. Again, from that moment, poor Miriam had taken up her burden.

      For long after that, the impression left by this extraordinary interview was deep upon her. Circumstances altogether beyond her control compelled her to obey Barton; but she could by no means understand him. He puzzled her completely. She could not reconcile the man's wish to ruin Gerald with his apparently co-existent desire to give him a chance of escape from the trap prepared for him. It was so utterly inconsistent to her mind. She could only surmise that the man had a conscience, and that in this way he strove to quieten it. The desire for vicarious punishment which seemed to have taken possession of him was, to her thinking, as childish as it was reprehensible. She could not reconcile it with either a normal sense of morality or with sanity.

      It was no doubt a species of mania. Besides, in many other ways Barton's actions were such as to cast the gravest doubts as to his mental state. His behaviour became more and more perplexing, and his actions almost invariably baseless and inconsequent. And it was not until long after, when the skeins of the various lives with which her own had become entangled, began to unravel themselves, that she understood what was now perfectly inexplicable to her. Then, knowing what she knew, she was no longer surprised.

      "Wherever have you been, Miss Crane?" demanded Mrs. Darrow with some asperity, as she and the Squire entered.

      "Oh, she has been talking to me on a little matter of business," interrupted Barton before Miriam could reply. "It's all right, Julia, there is nothing for you to disturb yourself about."

      "Oh, really, I don't mind in the least," said Mrs. Darrow, seeing she had made a faux pas; "but now that Miss Crane has returned to us, perhaps she will be so good as to sing something?"

      Miriam's first impulse was to decline, for her interview with Barton had shaken her nerve a good deal. But she saw the sinister look of curiosity on Mrs. Darrow's face, and she determined she would give that lady no further ground for suspicion.

      "I will sing with pleasure," she said, moving towards the piano. "But I am afraid I have brought no music."

      "Oh, I saw to that," said Mrs. Darrow producing a roll. "I was quite sure Uncle Barton would like to hear your voice, so I brought a few of your songs for you."

      "A few of my songs?" repeated Miriam; "and where, pray, did you get them?"

      "Oh, it was Dicky who found them, in your room, dear. The child brought them down to show me a picture on the title page of one of them which seemed to have attracted him."

      "Indeed! Perhaps you will give me the music?"

      Mrs. Darrow rose to fetch the parcel. Then she proceeded to open it and read out the titles of the songs. On Hilda's face there was the blandest of smiles, masking, if the truth had but been known, the keenest of interest. She knew that Mrs. Darrow's bombshell was now about to explode. To her, as to the wily widow, this was the incident of the evening – in fact, the whole raison d'etre of it.

      "I hear your voice is a contralto, Miss Crane," said the Major, admiring the contour of her head. "I am so glad; it's my favourite voice."

      "Really, Major?" observed Hilda. "I should have thought you would like something more lively – to me a contralto, no matter how beautiful, is always rather doleful."

      "There I can't agree with you," put in Gerald. "To my thinking the contralto is always full of pathos – it is the voice which goes straight to the heart."

      "Now, you too surprise me, Mr. Arkel," replied Hilda, smiling ever so amiably. "I did not think you were so susceptible in the – what is it the doctors call it – the cardiac region?"

      "I think you, of all people, should know me better than that," murmured Gerald, bending towards her.

      "Nonsense; I admit no such superiority. But hush, let us hear what it is Miss Crane is going to sing to us!"

      Ever suspicious at any kindness however trifling on the part of Julia, the Squire had moved up close to the piano, and was keeping a pretty close watch upon her. But Mrs. Darrow was all unconscious of his scrutiny, being too deeply absorbed in the effective lodgment of her bombshell to pay much attention to anything else.

      "'The Sands of Dee,' 'The Clang of the Wooden Shoon,' 'Down the Long Avenue,'" rattled off Mrs. Darrow. Then, with the prettiest air of surprise, "Oh, and here is a comic song!"

      "I think you must be mistaken," said Miriam coldly. "I do not sing comic songs."

      "Now, now, Miss Crane, you know you are hiding your light under a bushel," cried Mrs. Darrow with horribly artificial mirth. "What's more, I expect you sing them delightfully. Come now, confess."

      Miriam seated there at the piano might in truth have been carved out of marble, so cold and so perfectly calm was she.

      "I am sorry to disappoint you, but I don't sing any songs of that kind at all."

      "Oh, but really!" Mrs. Darrow was smoothing out the folio of music; "you can't say that, in the face of this. Surely this must be yours – 'It's a Funny Little Way I've Got!' M. Crane, Frivolity Music Hall!" She handed the sheet over to Miriam.

      Barton bit his lip, and began to see at last what she was after. Mrs. Darrow proceeded.

      "Really, Miss Crane, I don't think I deserved to be so deceived at your hands. You might at least have told me that you were a singer at that class of – entertainment."