Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/339

 forgot also, at least for that day, because something occurred which turned her thoughts for the time in quite a different direction.

The ponies were brought out for Hugh and Mildred to take their customary canter. The young heiress, for whom so much time and pains were spent, looked ill; the delicate flush had vanished from her cheek; she seemed languid, and cheerful only by effort. A moment after they had gone, as Mrs. Kinloch closed the door, for it was a raw November day, she saw and picked up a rudely-folded letter in the hall. "Good-bye, Lucy Ransom," were the words she read. They were enough. Mrs. Kinloch felt that her heart was struck by a bolt of ice. "Poor, misguided, miserable girl!" she said. "Why did I not see that something was wrong? I felt it, I knew it,--but only as one knows of evil in a dream. Who can calculate the mischief that will come of this? O God! to have my hopes of so many years ruined, destroyed, by a wretch whose power and existence even I had not once thought of! Has she drowned herself, or fled to the city to hide her disgrace? But if this should be imagination merely! She may have run away with some lubberly fellow from the factory, whom she was ashamed to marry at home. But no! she was too sad last evening when she asked to go to her grandmother's for a day. What if"--The thought coursed round her brain like fire on a train of gunpowder,--flew quicker than words could utter it; and the woman bounded to her bureau, as though with muscles of steel. She clutched at the papers and bank-notes in her private drawer, and looked and counted them over a dozen times before she could satisfy herself. Her thin fingers nervously opened the packages and folds,--the papers crackling as her eye glanced over them. They were there; but not _all_. She pored over the mystery,--her thoughts running away upon every side-avenue of conjecture, and as often returning to the frightful, remediless fact before her. She was faint with sudden terror. By degrees she calmed herself, wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, smiled at her fright, and sat down again, with an attempt at self-control, to look through the drawers thoroughly. As she went on, the tremor returned, and before she had finished the fruitless search her heart beat so as to stop her breath; she gasped in an agony that the soul rarely feels more than once in this life. She shut up the drawers, walked up and down the room, noticed with a shudder her own changed expression as she passed before the mirror, and strove in vain to give some order to her confused and tumultuous thoughts. At length she sat down exhausted. She was startled by a knock. Opening the door, there in a newly-furbished suit, with clean linen, and a brown wig worn for the first time on his hitherto shining head, stood Theophilus Clamp. He had even picked a blossom from the geranium in the hall and was toying with it like a bashful boy.

"A fine day, Ma'am!" said he, as he took a seat.

"Yes, very," she answered, mechanically, scarcely looking up.

"The young folks have gone out to ride, I suppose."

"Yes, Sir."--A pause, in which Mrs. Kinloch covered her face with her handkerchief.

"You don't seem well, Ma'am. Shall I call Lucy?"

"Lucy is gone," she answered,--quickly adding, "gone to her grandmother's."

"Well, that is singular. I've been today to look at my land above the old lady's house, and she asked me to send word to Lucy to come up and see her."

"To-day?"

"Yes, Ma'am; not two hours ago."

Mrs. Kinloch was rapidly revolving probabilities. What interest had Lucy to interfere with her affairs? As for Mildred, she was not to be thought of as prying into secrets; she was too innocent. Hugh was too careless. Who more than this man Clamp was likely to have done or procured t