“AND YOU will tell me a story, Barbara, and you will come to tea in the schoolroom with me and Miss Martin?” cried Maisie, dancing round the girl in her excitement.
“If Miss Martin will ask me,” smiled Barbara.
On the conclusion of her stay with her other friends in the neighbourhood Barbara had come to pay a long-promised visit to the Davenants. Not Frank Carlyn. The day after the dinner-party at the Priory he had been summoned home on urgent business, much to Elizabeth’s relief.
All the Davenants liked Barbara, who had been a friend of Sir Oswald’s poor young wife, while with Maisie she was a special favourite. She had seen the governess a few minutes before breakfast. Miss Martin had made but little impression upon her beyond striking her as a silent and not very agreeable young person.
Now Elizabeth was standing just inside the open door of the schoolroom waiting for Maisie. Above all things she was anxious to see as little as possible of Frank Carlyn’s fiancée. It was easy to pretend not to hear Barbara’s courteous reference to her with regard to the projected tea-party in the midst of Maisie’s chatter, but it would be difficult to avoid the offered visit, and Elizabeth was afraid of Miss Burford, and of what she might find out.
Maisie was doing her best to pull Barbara into the room with her.
“Come and see my French exercise. There are only two mistakes, so daddy is going to give me a box of bon-bons.”
Barbara yielded. “Ah, well! I think I really can’t resist that.”
“I’m afraid Maisie is a little tiresome,” Miss Martin said apologetically. She was standing near the window and the morning sunlight was streaming full upon her; in its clear radiance her hair looked oddly black. Barbara’s puzzled gaze rested upon it. It seemed so strange that so young a woman should dye her hair, and yet Barbara asked herself, looking at it, could there be any doubt? The governess flushed under her scrutiny, and in a moment Barbara looked away. Miss Martin’s pallor seemed to have transferred itself to her now, and she said little as she glanced at Maisie’s vaunted exercise.
A servant appeared in the doorway.
“Sir Oswald would be glad if you could spare him a few minutes, miss,” he said, addressing himself to the governess. “It is an important letter that needs answering. Miss Maisie is to go to her ladyship.”
“I will come at once,” Miss Martin said, moving to the door with an unmistakable air of relief. “Come, Maisie!”
“I will take Maisie to Lady Davenant,” Barbara promised, and the governess hurried off.
As she went down the passage she heard Maisie coaxing, “You will come to the schoolroom tea to-day, Barbara?” And she caught the girl’s clear-toned reply, “I will tell you the story, Maisie, dear, but I don’t know about the tea. If I ask Granny to give it us in the boudoir, won’t that do as well?”
Elizabeth went on to the study. Sir Oswald had come back from town the preceding day. The verdict of the specialist had not been quite so favourable as the local doctor had hoped. The eyes were better, decidedly better, he said, but there must be an interval of three months before the operation which would give Sir Oswald back his sight could be attempted.
Three months seemed but a little time to wait to the rest of the world, but to Sir Oswald, who had been confidently reckoning on his immediate restoration to sight, it was an eternity.
He was looking dull and depressed when Elizabeth went in, and gave her only the briefest of directions as to the reply when she read his letter to him. But when she rose he stopped her.
“You have heard my sentence, Miss Martin? Three months more of this horrible darkness and helplessness?”
“Yes, I have heard,” the aloofness there had been in Elizabeth’s voice of late had gone; it was very pitiful now.
“Why don’t you tell me to be thankful it is no worse?” Sir Oswald questioned with a reckless laugh. “That is the stock remark. Good heavens! Three months more of this total blindness! I wonder whether you know—whether anybody knows—what it means to me.”
“One can only think of the getting well in the end,” Elizabeth said gently.
Sir Oswald shrugged his shoulders “How do I know the fellow may not say the same thing at the end of this three months? But I must not weary you, Miss Martin. You don’t know how much your tact and sympathy have helped me since you came to the Priory.”
“I am very glad that I have been able to be of use to you, Sir Oswald,” Elizabeth said quietly.
Sir Oswald felt that she was turning away. He got up, moving towards her uncertainly, all his prudent resolutions swept to the winds by his longing to have her sympathy, to keep her presence with him.
“Miss Martin—Elizabeth,” he said hoarsely. “I shall want your help more than ever now, won’t you give it to me?”
He could hear her quickened breathing. He knew that she was struggling to retain her self-control.
“I shall always be glad to do anything I can, Sir Oswald,” she murmured.
He stepped forward quickly, her agitation teaching him coolness, he caught one of her slim, soft hands in his.
“That is not all I want, Elizabeth; I want you, dear—to be with me always—to be my wife.”
The governess struggled to free her hand.
“Oh, this is madness, Sir Oswald!” she cried.
“Let me go, please.”
But Sir Oswald’s clasp only tightened on the fluttering fingers.
“Why should it be madness, Elizabeth? Is it impossible that you should care for a blind man?”
“Oh, no—not that!” Elizabeth cried quickly, and Sir Oswald’s face brightened.
“What is it, then?” he questioned. “I have learned in my blindness and helplessness to care for you very dearly, Elizabeth. Don’t tell me that it is hopeless. Let me teach you.”
“No, no, no!” Elizabeth’s voice caught in her throat in a muffled shriek. “Sir Oswald, I tell you again you are mad—mad! You are asking a woman to marry you of whom you know nothing, whom you have never even seen.”
Sir Oswald still held her hand, but some of the passion died out of his face.
“I know you, Elizabeth—that is enough for me. I think I fell in love with you the first time you came into the room with your sweet voice, your gentle, tender ways. And if I haven’t seen you—well, I made Perkins read aloud Mrs. Sunningdale’s description of you one day. I think I have got it by heart. But I should have known what you looked like without that, my dear; I couldn’t help it, I think.”
Elizabeth stood still, her fingers lying inert in his clasp.
“What do you mean by Mrs. Sunningdale’s description of me? I don’t understand,” she questioned hoarsely.
A faint smile crept under Sir Oswald’s brown moustache. “I heard my mother telling Sybil the other day she had lost the first letter Mrs. Sunningdale wrote about you, and I laughed to myself. That letter is calmly reposing in one of the drawers of my writing-table. It was brought to me to hear what Mrs. Sunningdale said about Maisie’s new governess, and I shall not part with it until I see the original Elizabeth.”
“What did she say?” Elizabeth asked abruptly. There was still that curious immobility in her attitude.
Sir Oswald’s smile deepened.
“I wonder if you will tell me again that I am mad, Elizabeth, when you know that I can repeat her description word for word? Listen! ‘Miss Martin is above middle height, slight and dark, with one of the most lovable faces I have ever seen; she has masses of dark brown hair and pretty, kind brown eyes.’ So you see, Miss Martin, I have some idea what you are like. I have pictured you very often in my thoughts, the clouds of hair shadowing the most lovable little face in the world, the pretty, kind, brown eyes.”
The woman with the grey eyes and black hair, listening, tore her hands from his with a moan. So near—so near she had been, nay, she was—to detection. And she had thought herself so safe from all the world but Frank Carlyn.
“And now I want those same kind brown eyes to come and be eyes for me,” Sir Oswald went on. “Elizabeth, you will take pity on me?”
“No, no!” The grey eyes were full of wild terror now. “I can’t! Indeed I can’t!”
It was impossible for Sir Oswald to mistake either the finality or the pain in her tone, his face grew suddenly graver, sterner.
“Do you mean that there is some real obstacle?” he asked slowly.
“Yes—a barrier that can never be passed. I can never marry. I shall never think of marrying.” Elizabeth’s sobs were rising now in her throat, threatening to choke her.
Sir Oswald, in his blindness, felt very far away.
“I can’t understand,” he said helplessly. “Does this mean that you care for someone else—that you are engaged—married even?”
“No” Elizabeth said faintly. She was telling him the bare truth, and yet when she heard his sigh she felt that it was worse than the cruellest of lies.
“But you have cared for someone else?” Sir Oswald hazarded.
“Ah, no, no!” Elizabeth cried, putting up her hands to her throat.
“Then,” said Sir Oswald slowly, “if you are not bound to anyone, if you don’t care, if you never have cared for anyone, I shall not give up hope.”
“Oh, you will! You must!” Elizabeth’s breath came quick and fast, she fought despairingly to regain her self-control, not to yield to the impulse that bade her thrust herself and her story on Sir Oswald Davenant’s mercy. “Don’t you see that unless you promise to forget—to give up—I can’t stay here—at the Priory?” she said, with a hoarse catch in her throat. “And I have nowhere else to go. I am so lonely.”
As he heard the last words Sir Oswald’s face softened and grew very pitiful. He moved a little nearer with his uncertain, stumbling steps, but Elizabeth would not trust herself within touch of those strong, kind hands again.
“I am at your mercy, Elizabeth,” he said gravely. “You may rely at least upon it that I will not speak of it again while you are in my house unless you yourself give me permission. On your part—”
He paused and Elizabeth watched his face anxiously. He went on in a minute. “You must promise to stay here and be good to Maisie and me as you have been hitherto. We can’t do without you, either of us, Elizabeth.”
The hint of weakness in the strong man’s voice touched the governess as no pleading could have done. For one instant she stood beside him, warm, palpitating, hesitating, the next she had caught sight of herself in a small Venetian mirror inlet into the wall opposite her, and hurried breathlessly from the room.
She ran upstairs. On the lawn beneath she could hear Maisie chattering to Barbara Burford. She would go down in a minute or two, but she must have breathing space to think matters over first. That Sir. Oswald should propose to her, want to marry her, had never entered her calculations, changed though his manner had been of late. She had always heard that some men looked upon a flirtation with a governess as a recognized form of amusement, and she supposed that her lot was to be the same as others. But now everything was altered; apart from the fact that she stood on the verge of detection she knew that what had passed would render it impossible for her to remain at the Priory long; and, as she had told Sir Oswald, she had nowhere else to go. Tears welled up in her eyes as she glanced round the pretty bedroom she had learned to look upon as her own.
There was a knock at her door. Eliza, the schoolroom maid, stood in the doorway, her pretty childish face showing unmistakable signs of tears.
“What is it, Eliza?” asked Elizabeth kindly. She liked the girl, who had waited on her since her coming to the Priory, but just at present she found her own worries all-absorbing.
“My mother is ill,” the girl said tearfully. “Her ladyship says I can go home at once, and Ellen can wait on you, but I thought that I should like to tell you myself—” She paused expectantly.
For once Elizabeth’s ready sympathy failed her.
“Your mother is ill, Eliza?” she repeated dully. “I—I am very sorry.”