40+ Adventure Novels & Lost World Mysteries in One Premium Edition. Henry Rider Haggard

masquerade as laudable 'ambition.' Men and women, especially women, hate the truth, because, like the electric light, it shows them as they are, and that is vile. It has grown so strange to them from disuse that, like Pilate, they do not even know what it is! I was going to say, however, that if you care to trust me with it, I think I see how I can take a message to Angela for you—without either causing you to break your promise or doing anything dishonourable myself."

      "How?"

      "Well, if you like, I will take her that ring. I think that is a very generous offer on my part, for I do not like the responsibility."

      "But what is the use of taking her the ring?"

      "It is something that there can be no mistake about, that is all, a speaking message from yourself. But don't give it me if you do not like; perhaps you had rather not!"

      "I don't like parting with it at all, I confess, but I should dearly like to send her something. I suppose that you would not take a letter?"

      "You would not write one, Mr. Heigham!"

      "No, of course, I forget that accursed promise. Here, take the ring, and say all you can to Angela with it. You promise that you will?"

      "Certainly, I promise that I will say all I can."

      "You are very good and kind. I wish to Heaven that I were going to Marlshire with you. If you only knew how I long to see her again. I think that it would break my heart if anything happened to separate us," and his lips quivered at the thought.

      Lady Bellamy turned her sombre face upon him—there was compassion in her eyes.

      "If you bear Angela Caresfoot so great a love, be guided by me and shake it off, strangle it—be rid of it anyhow; for fulfilled affection of that nature would carry a larger happiness with it than is allowed in a world planned expressly to secure the greatest misery of the greatest number. There is a fate which fights against it; its ministers are human folly and passion. You have seen many marriages, tell me, how many have you known, out of a novel, where the people married their true loves? In novels they always do, it is another of society's pleasant fictions, but real life is like a novel without the third volume. I do not want to alarm you, Mr. Heigham; but, because I like you, I ask you to steel your mind to disappointment, so that, if a blow comes, it may not crush you."

      "What do you mean, Lady Bellamy, do you know of any impending trouble?"

      "I? Certainly not. I only talk on general principles. Do not be over- confident, and never trust a woman. Come, let us get home."

      Next morning, when Arthur came down to breakfast, the Bellamys had sailed. The mail had come in from the Cape at midnight, and left again at dawn, taking them with it.

      CHAPTER XLVI

       Table of Content

      The departure of the Bellamys left Arthur in very low spirits. His sensations were similar to those which one can well imagine an ancient Greek might have experienced who, having sent to consult the Delphic oracle, had got for his pains a very unsatisfactory reply, foreshadowing evils but not actually defining them. Lady Bellamy was in some way connected with the idea of an oracle in his mind. She looked oracular. Her dark face and inscrutable eyes, the stamp of power upon her brow, all suggested that she was a mistress of the black arts. Her words, too, were mysterious, and fraught with bitter wisdom and a deep knowledge distilled from the poisonous weeds of life.

      Arthur felt with something like a shudder that, if Lady Bellamy prophesied evil, evil was following hard upon her words. And in warning him not to place his whole heart's happiness upon one venture, lest it should meet with shipwreck, he was sure that she was prophesying with a knowledge of the future denied to ordinary mortals. How earnestly, too, she had cautioned him against putting absolute faith in Angela—so earnestly, indeed, that her talk had left a flavour of distrust in his mind. Yet how could he mistrust Angela?

      Nor was he comforted by a remark that fell from Mildred Carr the afternoon following the departure of the mail. Raising her eyes, she glanced at his hand.

      "What are you looking at?" he said.

      "Was not that queer emerald you wore your engagement ring?"

      "Yes."

      "What have you done with it?"

      "I gave it to Lady Bellamy to give to Angela."

      "What for?"

      "To show her that I am alive and well. I may not write, you know."

      "You are very confiding."

      "What do you mean?"

      "Nothing. At least, I mean that I don't think that I should care to hand over my engagement ring so easily. It might be misapplied, you know."

      This view of the matter helped to fill up the cup of Arthur's nervous anxiety, and he vainly plied Mildred with questions to get her to elucidate her meaning, and state her causes of suspicion, if she had any; but she would say nothing more on the subject, which then dropped, and was not alluded to again between them.

      After the Bellamys' departure, the time wore on at Madeira without bringing about any appreciable change in the situation. But Mildred saw that their visit had robbed her of any advantages she had gained over Arthur, for they had, as it were, brought Angela's atmosphere with them, and, faint though it was, it sufficed to overpower her influence. He made no move forward, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the episode on the hills when he had gone so very near disaster. On the contrary, he appeared to her to grow increasingly preoccupied as time went on, and to look upon her more and more in the light of a sister, till at length her patience wore thin.

      As for her passion, it grew almost unrestrainable in its confinement. Now she drifted like a rudderless vessel on a sea which raged continuously and knew no space of calm. And so little oil was poured upon the troubled waters, there were so few breaks in the storm-walls that rose black between her and the desired haven of her rest. Indeed, she began to doubt if even her poor power of charming him, as at first she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half- unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and affection. The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a freezing wind, and for a moment turned her heart to ice.

      Poor Mildred! higher than ever above her head bloomed that "blue rose" she longed to pluck. Would she ever reach it after all her striving, even to gather one poor leaf, one withered petal? The path which led to it was very hard to climb, and below the breakers boiled. Would it, after all, be her fate to fall, down into that gulf of which the sorrowful waters could bring neither death nor forgetfulness?

      And so Christmas came and went.

      One day, when they were all sitting in the drawing-room, some eight weeks after the Bellamys had left, and Mildred was letting her mind run on such thoughts as these, Arthur, who had been reading a novel, got up and opened the folding-doors at the end of the room which separated it from the second drawing-room, and also the further doors between that room and the dining-room. Then he returned, and, standing at the top of the big drawing-room, took a bird's-eye view of the whole suite.

      "What are you doing, Arthur?"

      "I am reflecting, Mildred, that, with such a suite of apartments at your command, it is a sin and a shame not to give a ball."

      "I will give a ball, if you like, Arthur. Will you dance with me if I do?"

      "How many times?" he said, laughing.

      "Well, I will be moderate—three times. Let me see—the first waltz, the waltz before supper, and the last galop."

      "You will dance me off my head. It is dangerous to waltz with any one so pretty," he said, in that bantering tone he often took with her, and which aggravated her intensely.

      "It is more likely that my own head will suffer, as I dance