an ugly and suspicious truth?
The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of theallegation against her. She evidently feared lest I should make inquiryand discover the disgraceful truth.
Presently, as we came to a bend in the stream where the water wasdeeper, its unruffled surface shining like a mirror, I halted, andlooking straight into her face, said:--
"Miss Miller, yesterday at your house I made a discovery--one thatutterly astounded me."
Her countenance went ashen grey.
"A discovery!" she faltered. "What--what do you mean?"
Instantly I saw that I had quite unintentionally alarmed her andhastened to set her at her ease.
"I saw upon a table in your drawing-room the photograph of a very dearfriend--Ella Murray. She was your friend, so your father told me. Howcurious that we should both have been acquainted with her!"
"Oh! Ella! Did you really know poor Ella?" she exclaimed quickly,reassured that my discovery was not of a compromising character.
"I knew her very well indeed," was my slow response. "When were youacquainted with her?"
"Oh! years ago. We were together at the Sacre Coeur at Evreux, and bothleft the convent the same year. She was my most intimate friend, andonce or twice came with me here, to Studland, when we had our holidaystogether."
"She actually visited here!" I exclaimed in surprise.
"Several times. Mr Murray was my father's friend. As you know, helived at Wichenford, in Worcestershire. Then we went to reside entirelyabroad, and for quite a long time, a year or more, I lost sight of her.She was very beautiful. From a child her wonderful face was everywhereadmired. In the convent we girls nicknamed her `The Little Madonna,'for she bore a striking likeness to the Van Dyck's Madonna in the Pittiin Florence, a copy of which hung in the convent chapel."
"Ah, of course!" I cried. Now that she recalled that picture, Irecognised the extraordinary likeness. Perhaps you, who read thischronicle of strange facts, know that small canvas a foot square whichhangs in a corner of one of the great gold-ceilinged salons, almostunnoticed save by the foreign art enthusiast. The expression ofsweetness and adoration distinguishes it as a marvellous work. "What doyou know further concerning her?" I asked. "Tell me all--for she wasmy friend."
"About a year before we went to live at Enghien, near Paris, Mrs Murraydied. Then her father let Wichenford Place to an American, and went toAustralia for a sea-trip, leaving Ella in charge of an old aunt wholived in London. I saw her once, at her aunt's house in PorchesterTerrace. She was very unhappy, and when I asked her the reason she toldme in bitter tears that she loved a man who adored her in return. Shewould not tell me the man's name, but only said that her father and heraunt were compelling her to marry a wealthy elderly man who was odious,and whom she hated. Poor little Ella! I pitied her, and tried tocomfort her, but it was quite useless, for that very evening her father,who was then back in London, compelled her to go out and meet her secretlover and give him his _conge_. Who he was or what became of him I donot know. I only know that she loved him as dearly as any woman hasever loved a man--poor little Ella!"
I stood before her motionless, listening to those words. Was this true?Had Fate any further shaft of bitterness to thrust into my alreadybroken heart?
"Miss Miller!" I managed to exclaim, in a very low voice I fear, "whatyou tell me is utterly astounding. You know the man who loved EllaMurray. He was none other than myself--I who loved her, ay better thanmy own life--I who received that dismissal from the sweet lips that I soadored--the lips that I now know were compelled to lie to me."
"You--Mr Leaf!" she cried. "Impossible. You were actually Ella'ssecret lover!"
"Ah, yes! God alone knows how I have suffered all these years," I said,half-choked. "You were her friend, Miss Miller, therefore you willforgive me if even to-day I wear my heart upon my sleeve. You will say,perhaps, that I am foolish, yet when a man loves a woman honestly, as Idid, and he craves for affection and happiness, the catastrophe ofparting is a very severe one--often more so to the man than to thewoman. But," I added quickly, "pardon me, I am talking to you as thoughyou were as old as myself. You, at your age, have never experienced thebitterness of a blighted love."
"Unfortunately I have," she answered, in a low, trembling voice. "I,too, loved once--and only once. But, alas! after a few short weeks ofaffection, of a bliss that I thought would last always, the man I lovedwas cruelly snatched from me for ever." And she sighed and tears welledin her fine eyes, as she looked aimlessly straight before her--her mindfilled with painful recollections.
She told me no more, and left me wondering at the secret love romancethat, to my great surprise, seemed to have already hardened her youngheart.
Every girl, even in her school years, has her own little affair of theheart, generally becoming hopelessly infatuated with some man much hersenior, who is in ignorance of the burning he is awakening within thegirlish breast. But hers was, I distinguished, a real seriousaffection, one which, like my own, had ended in black grief and tragedy.
But she had told me one truth--a ghastly truth. I had misjudged my deardead love! She had still loved me--she had still been mine--in heart myown!
CHAPTER TWELVE.
IN WHICH A STRANGE THING HAPPENS.
"If your love has ended in tragedy, as mine has done, then we can surelysympathise with each other, Miss Miller," I said, looking into hertearful eyes. "You know well how I have suffered. I believed that Ellareally preferred that man to myself, and what you have now told meamazes me. I believed that she was false to me--and yet you tell methat she was true. Ah! how dearly I loved her! I do not believe thatany man ever loved a woman so fondly, and with such fierce passion as Idid. I was hers--body and soul. My love for her was that deep,all-consuming affection which sometimes makes a man as wax in a woman'shands--to be moulded for good or for evil as she wills it. I lost allcount of time, of friends, of everything, for I lived only for her. Thehours when we were parted were to me like years, her words were music,her smiles the sunlight of my life, her sighs the shadows, her kissesthe ecstatic bliss of terrestrial paradise in which I lived. Ah! yes,you who have loved and lost can well understand all that her love meantto me--you can understand why one dark foggy night I stood upon CharingCross platform and swore an oath that never again would I put foot inthe country which, though my native land, held for me only a poignantmemory."
"Yes," she answered, with a slight sigh, "I quite understand how youmust have suffered. Yet how strange it is that you should actually havebeen Ella's lover--the man who she declared to me was the only one shewould ever love. I did not know you, of course, yet I sympathised withyou when she told me that she was going that evening to meet you, and tolie to you under compulsion."
"But why--why did she consent to do this?" I asked.
"She confessed to me the reason. She spoke in confidence, but now thatit is all past, I may surely tell you. The fact was that her father,owing to the great depreciation in the value of land, had got into thehands of the Jews, and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Blumenthal, whohad lent him a large sum upon mortgage, had offered to return the deedson the day that he married Ella."
"Then she actually sacrificed herself to save her father!" I cried.
"Without a doubt. And what a sacrifice! She loved you, Mr Leaf, andyet she dismissed you in order to save her father from ruin."
"Blumenthal was a brute to have ever suggested such a condition," Ideclared savagely. "I never saw him. What kind of man was he? Did youmeet him?"
"Yes. He was at Porchester Terrace on the afternoon when I called," shereplied. "A short, stout, black-whiskered man, of a decidedly Hebrewcast. He was dressed loudly and wore a white waistcoat with heavy goldalbert--a typical City man such as one sees in Cornhill or Lothbury."
"She showed no sign of affection towards him?"
"None whatever. He was introduced to me by Mr Murray as Ella'saffianced husband, and I was,
of course, amazed that she shouldentertain a spark of affection for him. But half an hour later, when wewere alone, she confessed in tears everything to me, just as I haverelated it to you."
"Well, you utterly astound me," was all I could exclaim.
What she had revealed to me placed my little Ella in an entirely newlight. I never dreamed of her self-martyrdom. I sighed heavily, and abig lump arose in my throat as I reflected that, perhaps, after alldeath was preferable to life with a man whom she could not love.
The calm twilight was deepening into night, and the silence was brokenonly by the low murmuring of the water, the swift swish of some rat orwater-hen in the rushes startled at our presence, and the dismal cry ofa