Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/574

556 horror. For this was the first hint ever given her that Clementina had a brother at all; and there was a strange mixing up of ideas and associations together in the old cook's story, which froze her blood, she scarcely knew why. She had not known the Kinnisides before they came to Holly Lane, five years ago now; and as she was only eighteen at this time—Clementina one year older—her ignorance was to be accounted for, and her wondering fear at this discovery of a secret to be excused.

Mrs. Kinniside did not make much fuss about her daughter's disappearance. Though she was deathly pale, and unnaturally calm, and looked, as the servants said, "awful," with her jaw set, as if it was a mask, and her wandering eyes wild and terrified, yet she made light of the whole thing in speech, and took it as a matter of no moment whatever.

"Never mind, my dear," she said to Bessie, when that young person, in all the impulsiveness of her age and nature, would have roused the whole neighborhood to search; "never mind; she has only gone into the village to see some poor person; she will be here directly. The less said about it the better, my dear Miss Bailey; why make a commotion over so very commonplace an event as a young lady's early morning walk?"

With which she abashed, completely routed, and annihilated poor Bessie, not used to this sudden shifting of weather vanes. Her caution and self-command redoubled when Sir James Walshe came, it happened, earlier to-day than usual—those things always do happen exactly as they should not—and expressed the proper lover-like disappointment at the absence of his saintly Adeline. For a moment he seemed inclined to pout and fume—for all that such tempers were far against his usual bearing and condition—but when Bessie, prompted by Mrs. Kinniside, challenged him to a game of chess, he was as contented as any one could be, under the circumstances, and in no humor to quarrel with his companion; who, on her part—alas, for the selfishness of the human heart!—quite forgot Clementina's absence, or even her existence at all, in the pleasure of a tête à tête with the man her friend was going to marry.

By-and-bye the game ended, and then Sir James, starting up briskly, as one who has lingered too long in pleasant by-paths, proposed to Bessie to walk with him into the village, and meet "Adeline" on her way home.

"Shall we, Mrs Kinniside?" said Bessie, turning her innocent face, beaming with happiness, frankly upon that lady.

"If you wish it, my dear?" replied Clementina's mother, not daring to oppose the arrangement, but by no means willingly assenting. She was feverishly awaiting the return of Adams, the gardener, whom she had sent off on horseback to the Joliffes'—four miles—where the elder Miss Arthur was staying; and, unable to offer any valid reason why Sir James and little Bessie should not stroll quietly down to the village to meet Clementina, she was forced to let them go, on what she knew to be a fool's errand, ending in nothing, if it did not end in evil.

"What a dreadful story that was about Miss Arthur's sister!" began Bessie, when they were alone. Her head was full of nothing else but this and Hannah's Master Tom, though her heart might have other matter on hand.

"It seems to have impressed you," said Sir James, looking down at her, kindly.

"Indeed it has. Are you not easily impressed by what you hear?" she returned.

"Yes; but I am a man, and men are harder than women, and do not let their imaginations run away with them so far."