Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/224

214 "Can it be this is Miss Leavenworth?"

The noble figure appeared to droop, the gently lifted head to fall, and for a moment I doubted if I had been correct in my supposition. Then form and head slowly erected themselves, a soft voice spoke, and I heard a low "yes," and hurriedly advancing, confronted—not Mary, with her glancing, feverish gaze, and scarlet, trembling lips—but Eleanore, the woman whose faintest look had moved me from the first, the woman whose husband I believed myself to be even then pursuing to his doom!

The surprise was too great; I could neither sustain nor conceal it. Stumbling slowly back, I murmured something about having believed it to be her cousin; and then, conscious only of the one wish to fly a presence I dared not encounter in my present mood, turned, when her rich, heart-full voice rose once more and I heard:

"You will not leave me without a word, Mr. Raymond, now that chance has thrown us together?" Then, as I came slowly forward: "Were you so very much astonished to find me here?"

"I do not know—I did not expect—" was my incoherent reply. "I had heard you were ill; that you went nowhere; that you had no wish to see your friends."

"I have been ill," she said; "but I am better now, and have come to spend the night with Mrs. Veeley, because I could not endure the stare of the four walls of my room any longer."

This was said without any effort at plaintiveness, but rather as if she thought it necessary to excuse herself for being where she was.

"I am glad you did so," said I. "You ought to be