Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/703

 three, were lying at the library still. I have brought two of them away with me, leaving the other, in case she should call yet.”

“What has made her leave the letters there?” cried the dowager.

“It is that which I cannot understand. It is that which—I don’t know why—seems to have struck my heart with fear.”

Lady Oakburn interrupted in an impatient tone. “I don’t understand it at all, Jane. Perhaps you’ll begin at the beginning and enlighten me.”

“What beginning?” asked Jane, uncertain how to take the words.

“What beginning!” echoed the exasperated old lady. “Why, the beginning of it all, when Clarice first went out. I know nothing about the particulars; never did know. What letters did you send to her, and what answers did you get?—and where did she hide herself, and what did she tell you of it? Begin at the beginning, I say.”

“It will be two years next month, July, since Clarice left us,” began Jane, with her customary obedience. “Sometime in the following month, August, I received the first letter from her, telling me she had found a situation in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, and that she would”—Jane hesitated a moment, but went on—“keep her vow.”

“Her vow! What vow?”

“She took a vow before leaving home, that she would never betray our name as connected with her.”

“Oh!” said the countess. “She took it in a passion, I suppose.”

“Yes. She said she hoped the situation would prove a comfortable one, and that if I liked to write to her, I might address my letters ‘Miss Chesney,’ to be kept at a certain library in the neighbourhood, where she would call for them; but she again repeated that she was not known by her own name. I did write to her, three or four letters in the course of the next twelvemonth; and she answered them. She never told me she was not in the same situation, and I concluded she was there. Summer weather had come round then”

“Get on with your story, Jane. What has summer weather got to do with it?” was the old lady’s angry reprimand. And Lord Oakburn had stopped his restless walk to listen.

“In that summer—I think it was in June—I had another letter from Clarice, telling me not to write until I heard from her again, as she might be going to the seaside. Of course I supposed that the family were going to take her. This, you observe, was the month when, as Mrs. West says, she quitted them. I heard nothing more until the next January, when she wrote to wish us the bonne année, a custom she had learnt in France; and that letter was forwarded to South Wennock from our old home at Plymouth. I”

“Stop a bit,” said the dowager. “What did she say of herself and her movements in that letter?”

“Really nothing. She did not say a word about the seaside journey, or that she was back in London, or anything about it. She tacitly suffered me to infer—as I did infer—that she was still with the same family. The letter bore the London postmark. She said she was well and happy, and asked after us all; and there was a short postscript to the letter, the words of which I well remember,—'I have maintained my vow.’ I showed this letter to papa, and he”

“Forbade you to answer it,” interrupted the earl, for Jane had stopped in hesitation. And the old countess nodded her approval—as if she should have forbidden it also.

“So that letter was not answered,” resumed Jane. “But in the next March, I—I—a circumstance occurred to cause me to feel anxious about Clarice, and I wrote to her. In fact, I had a dream, which very much”

“Had a what?” shrieked the countess.

“I know how foolish you must think me, aunt. But it was a dreadful dream; a significant, strange, fearful dream. It seemed to bode ill to Clarice, to shadow forth her death. I am superstitious with regard to dreams; I cannot help being so; and it made a great impression on me. I wrote then to Clarice, asking for news of her. I told her we had left Plymouth, and gave her the address at South Wennock. No reply came, and I wrote again. I wrote a third time, and still there was no answer. But I did not think much of that. I only thought that Clarice was angry at my not having answered her New Year’s letter, and would not write, to punish me. To-day, upon going to the library, I found those three letters waiting there still: not one of them had been fetched away by Clarice.”

“And the people she was with say Clarice left them last June!—and they don’t know what place she went to, or where she is?” reiterated the earl, while the old dowager only stared in discomposure.

“They know nothing of her whatever, papa, or of her movements since.”

Why, that’s a twelvemonth ago!”

Yes, it was a twelvemonth ago. They, the three, stood looking at each other in silence; and a nameless fear, like a shadow of evil, crept in amidst them, as the echo of the words died away on the air.