Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/359

Rh she had gone so far as to take him into Hilda's private sitting-room, and let him gloat over the rows of prettily-bound books—Tennyson and Browning, and Dickens and Thackeray—and the little tables, and manifold nicknacks, the mantelpiece border which those dear hands had worked. There stood his own photograph, framed and curtained with plush, as if it were too sacred for the common eye. He had given her a smaller copy of the same photograph, and he hoped that she had taken that with her, that she looked at it sometimes, among strange faces.

Miss Meyerstein expatiated on Hilda's abrupt departure, and the little luggage with which she had provided herself.

"Only her dressing-bag and a small portmanteau," said the Fräulein. "She left all her pretty frocks hanging in the wardrobe; all her laces and ribbons, and gloves and ornaments in her drawers. She must have had to buy everything new. And there is her wedding-gown, just as it came from the dressmaker's the day after she left home."

And then, at Bothwell's urgent, reiterated entreaty, Miss Meyerstein went into the adjoining room, and came back, after a rattling of keys, bringing with her a white object which looked like the sheeted dead being carried away from a plague-stricken house.

It was only Hilda's wedding-gown, wrapped in voluminous coverings of white linen.

Miss Meyerstein flung off the coverings, and shook out the white satin gown, satin of so rich a fabric that it took all manner of pearly and opal hues in the autumn light—a smart little frock, with a round skirt, and just one big puff at the back of the waist, like a carelessly-tied sash.

"Short, for dancing," said Miss Meyerstein, as she held out the frock at arm's length, dangling in the air.

"But she didn't expect to dance upon her wedding-day!" ejaculated Bothwell stupidly.

"No, but afterwards. She would go to dances, and she would be expected to appear as a bride."

"Of course," muttered Bothwell, wondering how many dances—save the dances of pixies in a moonlit glen—might be expected to occur within easy reach of Trevena.

He knelt and kissed the hem of the white satin frock, and then turned away with a sigh that was almost a sob.

"Not a grain of dust has got to it," said Miss Meyerstein. "It will be ready when it is wanted."

"Yes," answered Bothwell. "The gown will be ready when it is wanted; but who can tell who the bridegroom will be?"

"He will be nobody if he is not you," said Miss Meyerstein. "That poor child positively adores you."

"How do you know? It is nearly a year since you saw her."

"Such love as that does not wear itself out in a year."

To-day Bothwell felt that he wanted even such poor com-