PART THE SECOND

SUMMER

The moon shines on a rippling brook in Springfield, and the summer flowers are sleeping. But even in sleep the foxglove lights up the underwood, and the clover retains the sunset's crimson fire. It is a beautiful and peaceful night; an odorous stillness is in the air, and

"the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."

The shadows of gently-undulating branches and the delicate traceries of the feather-grass-so subtly sensitive that in the stillest night its bells are tremulous; mayhap in response to fairy whisperings-are reflected in the stream which reflects also the shadow of Nelly Marston, who is bending low to look at her fair face in the depths made luminous by stars. As with sparkling eyes she stoops lower and lower in half-sportive, half-earnest admiration of herself, her face rises in the water to greet her, until the smiling lips of flesh almost kiss their shadow.

As she gazes, another shadow bends over hers, blotting the fairer vision, and a strong arm is thrown around her waist.

"Why, Nelly-Miss Marston! Are you about to play Ophelia in my aunt's pretty brook?"

The girl starts to her feet, and swiftly releases herself from his embrace. Not far from them, but unseen by either, stands the gardener's son, watching them. Their breasts are stirred by emotions which bring an agitated pleasure to them; his is stirred by darker passions.

"I was simply," replies Nelly, with burning blushes in her face, "bending over the water to-to-"

And pauses for lack of words.

Mr. Temple assists her.

"To look at your pretty face, or perhaps to kiss yourself, as a spirit might. Labour thrown away, Miss Marston, and most certainly unprofitable, if what the poet says is true:

 
"Some there be that shadows kiss;
Such have but a shadow's bliss."
 

Nelly Marston regains her composure.

"We did not expect you to-night, Mr. Temple."

"Then I should be all the more welcome," he answers gaily. "I am starving, Nelly-"

She checks him by a look.

"I beg your pardon. Miss Nelly Marston, I am starving with hunger. I have not had a morsel of food in my mouth since the morning."

"There will be no difficulty in reviving your fainting soul, Mr. Temple," she says, with a desperate attempt to imitate his light manner; "but Lady Temple must not know you are here. 'Miss Marston,' she said to me this afternoon, my nephew will be absent for some time. He will write to me regularly. Directly his letters arrive, let me have them. If I am asleep place them at once by my side.'"

Mr. Temple, a handsome, graceful man, not less than thirty-five years of age, interposes with a merry laugh.

"I posted one to her ladyship three hours ago, twenty miles from this spot."

"All the more reason," says Nelly Marston seriously, "why she should not know you are in Springfield."

He tries to stop her remonstrance by, "Now, my dear Mother Hubbard!" but she will not listen to him.

"Lady Temple unfortunately magnifies the smallest trifles into serious vexations. She is very, very fretful" – this with a little weary sigh-"and the doctor says it is most important she should not be annoyed in any way. Mr. Temple, if she suspects you are in the house to-night, she will never forgive you."

"And houses, lands, and money," he rejoins, with a careless shrug of his shoulders, "would melt away into such airy distances that, though my limbs were quickened with mercury, I should never be able to overtake them. But what are all these when weighed against love-"

Flushed and palpitating, Nelly finds strength to interrupt him.

"Mr. Temple, I must not listen to you. I am not ignorant of the reason why your aunt sent you away-for you were sent, you know!" she adds, somewhat saucily.

"Oh, yes, I know I was sent away. I am sure I did not want to go."

"Twice to-day Lady Temple has spoken seriously to me-I leave you to guess upon what subject. Mr. Temple, you know what my position is. I am a dependent, without parents, without friends, without money. Sometimes when I look into the future, and think of what would become of me if I were thrown upon the world, I tremble with fear."

"And yet you have a strong will of your own," he mutters, not in the most amiable tone; but in another instant he relapses into his lighter mood.

There is a moment's hesitation on her part, as though her strong will were about to desert her; but she, also, succeeds in controlling herself.

"No, I am weak, very, very weak; but for my own sake I must strive to be strong. And now I will leave you, please. No; do not walk with me to the house. We shall be seen, and the servants will talk."

"Let them talk!" he cries impetuously.

She looks him steadily in the face.

"If they do, Mr. Temple, who will suffer-you or I?"

"You don't understand me, Nelly-nay, I will call you Nelly when no one is by to hear! – I will answer for their discretion; but indeed and indeed, we shall not be seen!"

While he speaks, she is walking towards the house, and he is by her side. After them, through the path where the shadows lie, steals the gardener's son, quivering with excitement. If he could but hear what these two were saying to each other! He loves Nelly Marston with all the strength of his nature. He not only loves her; he respects her. The very ground she walks upon is sacred in his eyes. Until lately he had fed hopefully upon small crumbs of comfort which the girl, wittingly or unwittingly, had given him. Nelly had spoken pleasantly to him; Nelly had smiled upon him as she tripped past him; Nelly wore a flower he gave her. But he had never found the courage to open his heart to her, she being in his estimation so far above him, and now he fears that a rival has stepped in, and that what he yearns for with all his soul is slipping from him.

"Mr. Temple," says Nelly, when they are near the house, "you said just now that you were starving of hunger. You had best bribe one of the servants, and get something to eat. Then I should advise you to quit Springfield, and not return till you are sent for."

"Should you!" he replies, defiantly and yet beseechingly. "Advice is a cheap gift. You would not send for me, I warrant."

"By what right should I?"

"Hungry for food I am," he says, "but I have another kind of hunger upon me which makes me regardless of that."

"Indeed!" she exclaims, with a pretty gesture of surprise.

"Nelly, you are merciless. You see that I am starving of love for you, and you systematically-"

She stays to hear no more, and gliding from him, passes into the house. But he, stung by her avoidance of him, steps swiftly after her, and before she is aware of his presence, stands with her in the sick chamber, where Lady Temple lies sleeping.

Within this man is working the instinct of our common nature. The more difficult to win becomes the prize-without question of its worth: the measure of difficulty gauges that-the more ardent is he in its pursuit, and the greater value it assumes. And being piqued in this instance, all the forces of his intellect come to his aid.

And Nelly? Well, loving him already, she loves him the more because of his persistence, and because of the value he by his recklessness appears to place upon her.

"O Mr. Temple," she whispers, deeply agitated, "how can you so compromise me? Go, for Heaven's sake, before she wakes!'

"On one condition," he answers, lowering his voice to the pitch of hers; "that you meet me by the brook in an hour from this."

"Anything-anything! – but go!"

"You promise, then?"

"Yes, yes-I promise."

He is about to seal the promise, she being at his mercy, when Lady Temple moves restlessly, and opens her eyes. He has barely time to slip behind the curtains at the head of the bed before the sick lady speaks.

"Is that you, Miss Marston?"

"Yes, Lady Temple."

"I thought I heard voices!"

"I have this moment come in."

"I went to sleep without taking my medicine, Miss Marston. Why did you let me go to sleep without it?"

"You fell asleep suddenly, Lady Temple, and I thought it best not to wake you."

"Give it to me now."

Nelly takes a bottle from a table at the head of the bed, pours out the medicine, and gives it to the sick lady. As she replaces the bottle, Mr. Temple, with unthinking and cruel audacity, seizes her hand, and kisses it. Lady Temple, with the medicine at her lips does not drink, but gazes suspiciously at Nelly, who cannot keep the colour from her cheeks.

"What sound is that?" asks Lady Temple. "What makes your face so red, Miss Marston?"

Nelly busies herself-her hand being released-about the pillows, and replies:

"You should not gaze at me so strangely. You are full of fancies to-night, Lady Temple."

"Maybe, maybe. Hold up the candle, so that I may see the room-higher, higher!"

Her inquisitive eyes peer before her, but she sees nothing to verify her suspicions, Mr. Temple being safely concealed behind the curtains.

"That will do, Miss Marston. Put down the candle-the glare hurts my eyes. Full of fancies!" she murmurs. "It is true I see shadows; I hear voices: I am not certain at times whether I am awake or asleep. But what I said to you to-day," she exclaims in a louder tone, "is no fancy, Miss Marston."

"There is no occasion for you to repeat it, Lady Temple."

"I am the best judge of that, Miss Marston, and I do not intend to be misunderstood. I tell you now, plainly, that I sent my nephew away because I saw what was going on between you."

"Lady Temple!" cries Nelly indignantly.

"You must not agitate me, Miss Marston. Oblige me by holding this glass while I speak. If you wish to leave the house, you may do so."

"It is so generous and good of you to threaten me!" says the girl scornfully; "knowing my position. If I had any shelter but this, I would not stop with you another day."

"You are only showing your ingratitude, Miss Marston, I do not threaten you, and I will not be contradicted. I promised your mother before she died that you should have a home here while I live, and I will not turn you away. If you go, you go of your own accord. I tell you again I know perfectly well what is stirring within that busy head of yours. You are like your mother, no better, and no worse, and I knew her well enough; never content, never content unless every man she saw was at her feet."

"And yet," says Nelly more quietly, "you have spoken slightingly of her more than once because she sacrificed herself, as you term it, for love."

"Yes, she was caught at last, and was punished."

"It was a happy punishment, then. She would not have changed her lot with yours, Lady Temple."