Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/255

Rh burden as a poor man's wife? Will you be mine soon; at once almost? The week after next, for instance."

"O Bothwell!"

"Think, dear love, there is nothing to delay our marriage, except want of faith in each other, or in ourselves. If you have any doubt of me, Hilda, or any doubt as to your own love for me—"

"I have none, Bothwell—not a shadow of doubt."

"Then let us be married on Tuesday week. That is the day Dora suggested. She tells me that you are the most sensible girl she ever met with, and that you are not going to buy a wagon-load of clothes in order to overdress your part in that old, old play called Love in a Cottage: so you see there is nothing to wait for."

"But I must have a wedding-gown, Bothwell, and a gown for travelling."

"Then you have just a week in which to get them made, dear. Not an hour more."

There was some further discussion; but in the end Hilda yielded to her lover's pleading. It should be any day he liked—it should be Tuesday. The two gowns should be ordered next morning. Edward Heathcote had given Dora full powers, and he would doubtless hurry home at her bidding in time to arrange the terms of Hilda's marriage-settlement, and to be present at the wedding.

Bothwell was almost beside himself with gladness for the rest of the day; but good-feeling impelled him to restrain his exuberance, and to be grave and quiet in the presence of the patient sufferer, whose pale calm face told but little of mental struggle or bodily pain. The evening was spent in Julian Wyllard's room. There was a good deal of conversation, and Hilda sang some of her favourite songs; a sacred song of Gounod's, "There is a green hill far away," which Dora especially loved, and again, "Ave Maria," by the same composer. Bothwell sat in a corner by the pretty little cottage piano, listening to the rich full voice of his beloved, watching her slender fingers as they strayed over the keys, ineffably happy. He had no thought of evenings in the years that were gone, when he had listened to another singer, and watched other hands, delicate nervous fingers, glittering with diamonds. The voice of that old time was a thinner voice, a somewhat reedy soprano, and those tapering fingers had something of a bird's claws in their extreme attenuation; but he had thought the thin voice passing sweet in the days that were gone, and the hand of the siren had seemed to him a thing of beauty.

He left Penmorval soon after daybreak next morning, to ride back to Trevena. He was to return on the following Saturday to take up his abode there until the wedding-day;