Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/454

 8, 1864.] as Sir Stephen himself could have said it. “Rely upon it, he must have paid the penalty of the crime over and over again. He could not have existed but in the constant dread of discovery; he was not without a conscience. And what must that have been to him, with the scarlet letter ‘M’ ever eating into his breast?”

time rolled on. Another year was in, and its months glided away until the autumn. It had been no eventful year, this; rather too much of event had been crowded into the preceeding one, and this was calm—so calm, as to be almost monotonous. The storm had spent itself, the turbulent waves had laid themselves to rest.

Lady Oakburn had returned from the Continent as soon as she heard of the trouble connected with Mr. Carlton, travelling in the dead of winter; and Lucy Chesney quitted South Wennock for her own home. The marriage with Frederick Grey had been postponed; it was to have taken place in the spring, but all parties united in agreeing that it might be more seemly to delay it until the autumn.

Laura had remained with Jane. Lady Oakburn had asked her to come to her, and make her house her home. Many friends had stepped forward, and pressed her to come and pay them as long a visit as she liked; but Laura had chosen to stay with Jane, very much, it must he confessed, to Jane’s own surprise. For a few short weeks Laura’s grief had been excessive, which grief was intermixed, as before, with moments of anger against Mr. Carlton for the disgrace he had brought upon himself; but all that wore away, and Laura gradually grew very much her old self again, and worried Judith nearly to death with her caprice, mostly as touching the ornaments and trimmings of her black dresses.

They sat together, Jane and her sister, on a bright morning in September. Laura was in a petulant mood. Her pretty foot, peeping from underneath the crape of her dress, tapping the carpet impatiently; her widow’s cap, a very marvel of tasty arrangement, was just lodged on the back of her head. The recent bugbear of Lady Laura’s life had been this very article of widow’s attire—the cap; it was the cause of the present moment’s rebellion. Laura had grown to hate the cap beyond everything: not from any association with the past it might be supposed to call up, but simply as a matter of personal adornment; and she believed Jane to be her greatest enemy, because she held to it that Laura could not, and must not, throw the cap off until a twelvemonth had elapsed from the death of Mr. Carlton.

And yet Laura need not have been afraid of the cap; a more lovely face than hers, as it looked now, with her rich hair braided, and the white crape lappets thrown back, it is impossible to conceive. The present trouble was this: Laura would not go up to Lucy’s wedding, now about to take place, unless she could leave the odious caps behind her. Jane assured her it would not be proper to appear without them.

“Then I will not go at all,” Laura was saying with pouting lips. “If I can’t appear before people but as a guy, I’ll stay where I am. How would you like being made into an old woman, Jane, if you were as young as I am? Why don’t you take to the caps yourself, if you are so fond of them?”

“I am not a widow,” said Jane.

“I wish you were! you’d know what the caps are, then. They never could have been invented for anybody on this side fifty. And their heat is enough to give one brain-fever.”

“Only three months longer, Laura,” said Jane soothingly, “and the twelvemonth will have expired. I am sure you would not like to leave them off sooner yourself.”

“Where’s the good of them?” sharply asked Laura. “They don’t make me regret my—my husband either more or less. I can mourn him if I please without the cap as much as I can with it; and they are ruin to the hair! Everybody says it is most unhealthy to keep the head covered.”

“But you don’t cover yours,” Jane ventured to remark, as she glanced at the gossamer article perched on the knot of hair behind.

“No, but you’d like me to. Why should you hold out for the wretched things, Jane? My belief is, you are jealous of me. It’s not my fault if you are not handsome.”

Jane took it all meekly. When Laura got into this temper, it was best to let her say what she would. And Jane thought she talked more for the sake of opposition than anything, for she believed that Laura herself was sufficiently sensitive to appearances not to quit the caps before the year had gone by.

But the result was, that Lady Laura did not go to London to the wedding. Perhaps she had never intended to go. Judith thought so, and privately said so to her mistress. The following year Laura was to spend with Lady Oakburn, the heavy widow’s silks and the offending caps left behind her at South Wennock; and Judith felt nearly sure that Lady Laura had not meant to show herself in town until she was divested of these unbecoming appendages.