Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/113

 We kept him with us that night; yes, and for weeks after. By Heaven's mercy he will be with me all the rest of my life.

It was this unexpected visit of Phillip's, and the feeling that grew between us as I nursed him well and strong again, that brought it about that I told Kenneth Moore, who had become so repugnant to me that I could not bear to see him or hear him speak, that I wanted to be released from the promise he had wrung from me that night at the garden gate.

His rage was terrible to witness. He saw at once that my heart was given to someone else, and guessed who it must be; for, of course, everybody knew about our visitor from the clouds. He refused to release me from my pledge to him, and uttered such wild threats against poor Phillip, whom he had not seen, and who, indeed, had not spoken of love to me at that time, that it precipitated my union with his rival. One insult that he was base enough to level at Phillip and me stung me so deeply, that I went at once to Mr. Rutley and told him how it was possible for evil minds to misconstrue his continuing to reside at the farm.

When I next met Kenneth Moore I was leaving the registrar's office upon the arm of my husband. Kenneth did not know what had happened, but when he saw us walking openly together, his face assumed an expression of such intense malignity, that a great fear for Phillip came like a chill upon my heart, and when we were alone together under the roof that might henceforth harmlessly cover us both, I had but one thought, one intense desire—to quit it for ever in secret with the man I loved, and leave no foot-print behind for our enemy to track us by.

It was now that Phillip told me that he possessed an independent fortune, by virtue of which the world lay spread out before us for our choice of a home.

"Sweet as have been the hours that I have passed here—precious and hallowed as this little spot on the wide earth's surface must ever be to me," said my husband, "I want to take you away from it and show you many goodly things you have as yet hardly dreamed of. We will not abandon your dear old home, but we will find someone to take care of it for us, and see what other paradise we can discover in which to spend our life-long honeymoon."

I had never mentioned to Phillip the name of Kenneth Moore, and so he thought it a mere playful caprice that made me say:—

"Let us go, Phillip, no one knows where—not even ourselves. Let Heaven guide us in our choice of a resting-place. Let us vanish from this village as if we had never lived in it. Let us go and be forgotten."

He looked at me in astonishment, and replied in a joking way:—

"The only means I know of to carry out your wishes to the letter, would be a nocturnal departure, as I arrived—that is to say, in my balloon."

"Yes, Phillip, yes!" I exclaimed eagerly, "in your balloon, to-night, in your balloon!"

That night, in a field by the reservoir of the gas-works of Nettledene, the balloon was