Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/427

416 I was vexed.

I said, suddenly: “Perhaps because I have never seen a woman I could love.”

“Yes, you have!“ she answered quickly.

And if the spirit of mischief ever dwelt in woman, and looked out of woman’s eyes, it looked out of those that now most unscrupulously sought my somewhat agitated face, “Yes, you have!“ She rose, opened a door that led into another room,, and said, “Ethel!“

There came forth a lady, younger, taller, darker-haired, and as beautiful as Terese.

“Ethel Barrington. Mr. Deane, my husband’s sister. She is younger than I am — (don’t stare at me, Ethel) — but very like — very like my beautiful mother, and your picture of her; is she not? Of course we thought you knew everything. But Ethel had come to us, the night of the fire, from Sir Frederick Worth’s. She and the servants had all time to be helped out somehow. I could not leave Leslie. He went to a room to secure papers; there you found him, and you know the rest. Ethel was fetched again the next morning by Lady Worth. It was Ethel who told you that Leslie could tread that terrible plank. She only returned to us yesterday. Do you understand it now?”

I did understand it. I understood, too, the bright exulting glance that would follow me and find me out, and tell me again and again, without the trouble of words, till I was shame-faced and cowardly, and struck with tremor and chicken- heartedness, that I had — yes, I had, and that I knew I had seen the woman I could marry, and that Ethel Barrington was she. And so I became a hero! — a hero? Do you doubt it; question it? Fair doubter, cease. I am Ethel Barrington’s hero. I am hers.



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