The hard fierce eyes, that had not wept over the child's coffin, filled with tears.
"Oh, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, do not come near me. Oh, if I had minded you--and your aunts--" And the pent-up misery of the life that had fallen lower and lower since the first step in evil, found its course in a convulsive sob and shriek, so grievous that Alison was thankful for Colin's promptitude in laying hold of Rose, and leading her out of the room before him. Alison felt obliged to follow, yet could not bear to leave Maria to policemen and prison warders.
"Maria, poor Maria, I am so sorry for you, I will try to come and see you--"
But her hand was seized with an imperative, "Ailie, you must come, they are all waiting for you."
How little had she thought her arm would ever be drawn into that arm, so unheeded by both.
"So that is Edward's little girl! Why, she is the sweetest little clear-headed thing I have seen a long time. She was the saving of us."
"It was well thought of by Colin."
"Colin is a lawyer spoilt--that's a fact. A first-rate get-up of a case!"
"And you think it safe now?"
"Nothing safer, so Edward turns up. How he can keep away from such a child as that, I can't imagine. Where is she? Oh, here--" as they came into the porch in fuller light, where the Colonel and Rose waited for them. "Ha, my little Ailie, I must make better friends with you."
"My name is Rose, not Ailie," replied the little girl.
"Oh, aye! Well, it ought to have been, what d'ye call her--that was a Daniel come to judgment?"
"Portia," returned Rose; "but I don't think that is pretty at all."
"And where is Lady Temple?" anxiously asked Alison. "She must be grieved to be detained so long."
"Oh! Lady Temple is well provided for," said the Colonel, "all the magistrates and half the bar are at her feet. They say the grace and simplicity of her manner of giving her evidence were the greatest contrast to poor Rachel's."
"But where is she?" still persisted Alison.
"At the hotel; Maria's was the last case of the day, and she went away directly after it, with such a choice of escorts that I only just spoke to her."
And at the hotel they found the waggonette at the gateway, and Lady Temple in the parlour with Sir Edward Morden, who, late as it was, would not leave her till he had seen her with the rest of the party. She sprang up to meet them, and was much relieved to hear that Mauleverer was again secured. "Otherwise," she said, "it would have been all my fault for having acted without asking advice. I hope I shall never do so again."
She insisted that all should go home together in the waggonette, and Rose found herself upon Mr. Beauchamp's knee, serving as usual as a safety valve for the feelings of her aunt's admirers. There was no inconstancy on her part, she would much have preferred falling to the lot of her own Colonel, but the open carriage drive was rather a risk for him in the night air, and though he had undertaken it in the excitement, he soon found it requisite to muffle himself up, and speak as little as possible. Harry Beauchamp talked enough for both. He was in high spirits, partly, as Colin suspected, with the escape from a dull formal home, and partly with the undoing of a wrong that had rankled in his conscience more than he had allowed to himself. Lady Temple, her heart light at the convalescence of her sons, was pleased with everything, liked him extremely, and answered gaily; and Alison enjoyed the resumption of pleasant habits of days gone by. Yet, delightful as it all was, there was a sense of disenchantment: she was marvelling all the time how she could have suffered so much on Harry Beauchamp's account. The rejection of him had weighed like a stone upon her heart, but now it seemed like freedom to have escaped his companionship for a lifetime.
Presently a horse's feet were heard on the road before them; there was a meeting and a halt, and Alick Keith's voice called out--"How has it gone?"
"Why, were you not in court?"
"What! I go to hear my friends baited!"
"Where were you then?"
"At Avonmouth."
"Oh, then you have seen the boys," cried Lady Temple. "How is Conrade?"
"Quite himself. Up to a prodigious amount of indoor croquet. But how has it gone?"
"Such a shame!" returned Lady Temple. "They acquitted the dreadful man, and the poor woman, whom he drove to it, has a year's imprisonment and hard labour!"
"Acquitted! What, is he off?"
"Oh, no, no! he is safe, and waiting for the Assizes, all owing to the Colonel and little Rose."
"He is committed for the former offence," said Colonel Keith; "the important one."
"That's right! Good night! And how," he added, reining back his horse, "did your cousin get through it?"
"Oh, they were so hard on her!" cried Lady Temple. "I could hardly bring myself to speak to Sir Edward after it! It was as if he thought it all her fault!"
"Her evidence broke down completely," said Colonel Keith. "Sir Edward spared her as much as he could; but the absurdity of her whole conduct was palpable. I hope she has had a lesson."
Alick's impatient horse flew on with him, and Colin muttered to Alison under his mufflers,--"I never could make out whether that is the coolest or the most sensitive fellow living!"
CHAPTER XXII. THE AFTER CLAP
"I have read in the marvellous heart of man, That strange and mystic scroll, That an army of phantoms vast and wan Beleaguer the human soul. "Encamped beside life's rushing stream, In Fancy's misty light, Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam Portentous through the night." The Beleaguered City, LONGFELLOW.
A dinner party at the Deanery in the sessions week was an institution, but Rachel, lying on the sofa in a cool room, had thought herself exempt from it, and was conscious for the time of but one wish, namely, to be let alone, and to be able to shut her eyes, without finding the lids, as it were, lined with tiers of gazing faces, and curious looks turned on her, and her ears from the echo of the roar of fury that had dreadfully terrified both her and her mother, and she felt herself to have merited! The crush of public censure was not at the moment so overwhelming as the strange morbid effect of having been the focus of those many, many glances, and if she reflected at all, it was with a weary speculating wonder whether one pair of dark grey eyes had been among those levelled at her. She thought that if they had, she could not have missed either their ironical sting, or perchance some kindly gleam of sympathy, such as had sometimes surprised her from under the flaxen lashes.
There she had lain, unmolested and conscious of a certain relief in the exceeding calm; the grey pinnacle of the cathedral, and a few branches of an elm-tree alone meeting her eye through the open window, and the sole sound the cawing of the rooks, whose sailing flight amused and attracted her glance from time to time with dreamy interest. Grace had gone into court to hear Maria Hatherton's trial, and all was still.
The first break was when her mother and Miss Wellwood came in, after having wandered gently together round the warm, walled Deanery garden, comparing notes about their myrtles and geraniums. Then it was that amid all their tender inquiries after her headache, and their administration of afternoon tea, it first broke upon Rachel that they expected her to go down to dinner.
"Pray excuse me," she said imploringly, looking at her mother for support, "indeed, I don't know that I could sit out a dinner! A number of people together make me so dizzy and confused."
"Poor child!" said Miss Wellwood, kindly, but looking to Mrs. Curtis in her turn. "Perhaps, as she has been so ill, the evening might be enough."
"Oh," exclaimed Rachel, "I hope to be in bed before you have finished dinner. Indeed I am not good company for any one."
"Don't say that, my dear," and Miss Wellwood looked puzzled.