第63章 Wherein his Grace of Osmonde's courier arrives fro

"But there will be many babbling people,"said her sister,with a curious look."You do not like company,and these days my rooms are full.'Twill irk and tire you.""I care not for the people--I would be with you,"Anne said,in strange imploring."I have a sick fancy that I am afraid to sit alone in my chamber.'Tis but weakness.Let me this afternoon be with you.""Go then and change your robe,"said Clorinda,"and put some red upon your cheeks.You may come if you will.You are a strange creature Anne."And thus saying,she passed into her apartment.As there are blows and pain which end in insensibility or delirium,so there are catastrophes and perils which are so great as to produce something near akin to these.As she had stood before her mirror in her chamber watching her reflection,while her woman attired her in her crimson flowered satin and builded up her stately head-dress,this other woman had felt that the hour when she could have shrieked and raved and betrayed herself had passed by,and left a deadness like a calm behind,as though horror had stunned all pain and yet left her senses clear.She forgot not the thing which lay staring upward blankly at the under part of the couch which hid it--the look of its fixed eyes,its outspread locks,and the purple indentation on the temple she saw as clearly as she had seen them in that first mad moment when she had stood staring downward at the thing itself;but the coursing of her blood was stilled,the gallop of her pulses,and that wild hysteric leaping of her heart into her throat,choking her and forcing her to gasp and pant in that way which in women must ever end in shrieks and cries and sobbing beatings of the air.But for the feminine softness to which her nature had given way for the first time,since the power of love had mastered her,there was no thing of earth could have happened to her which would have brought this rolling ball to her throat,this tremor to her body--since the hour of her birth she had never been attacked by such a female folly,as she would indeed have regarded it once;but now 'twas different--for a while she had been a woman--a woman who had flung herself upon the bosom of him who was her soul's lord,and resting there,her old rigid strength had been relaxed.

But 'twas not this woman who had known tender yielding who returned to take her place in the Panelled Parlour,knowing of the companion who waited near her unseen--for it was as her companion she thought of him,as she had thought of him when he followed her in the Mall,forced himself into her box at the play,or stood by her shoulder at assemblies;he had placed himself by her side again,and would stay there until she could rid herself of him.

"After to-night he will be gone,if I act well my part,"she said,"and then may I live a freed woman."'Twas always upon the divan she took her place when she received her visitors,who were accustomed to finding her enthroned there.This afternoon when she came into the room she paused for a space,and stood beside it,the parlour being yet empty.She felt her face grow a little cold,as if it paled,and her under-lip drew itself tight across her teeth.

"In a graveyard,"she said,"I have sat upon the stone ledge of a tomb,and beneath there was--worse than this,could I but have seen it.This is no more."When the Sir Humphreys and Lord Charleses,Lady Bettys and Mistress Lovelys were announced in flocks,fluttering and chattering,she rose from her old place to meet them,and was brilliant graciousness itself.She hearkened to their gossipings,and though 'twas not her way to join in them,she was this day witty in such way as robbed them of the dulness in which sometimes gossip ends.It was a varied company which gathered about her;but to each she gave his or her moment,and in that moment said that which they would afterwards remember.With those of the Court she talked royalty,the humours of her Majesty,the severities of her Grace of Marlborough;with statesmen she spoke with such intellect and discretion that they went away pondering on the good fortune which had befallen one man when it seemed that it was of such proportions as might have satisfied a dozen,for it seemed not fair to them that his Grace of Osmonde,having already rank,wealth,and fame,should have added to them a gift of such magnificence as this beauteous woman would bring;with beaux and wits she made dazzling jests;and to the beauties who desired their flatteries she gave praise so adroit that they were stimulated to plume their feathers afresh and cease to fear the rivalry of her loveliness.

And yet while she so bore herself,never once did she cease to feel the presence of that which,lying near,seemed to her racked soul as one who lay and listened with staring eyes which mocked;for there was a thought which would not leave her,which was,that it could hear,that it could see through the glazing on its blue orbs,and that knowing itself bound by the moveless irons of death and dumbness it impotently raged and cursed that it could not burst them and shriek out its vengeance,rolling forth among her worshippers at their feet and hers.

"But he CAN not,"she said,within her clenched teeth,again and again--"THAT he cannot."Once as she said this to herself she caught Anne's eyes fixed helplessly upon her,it seeming to be as the poor woman had said,that her weakness caused her to desire to abide near her sister's strength and draw support from it;for she had remained at my lady's side closely since she had descended to the room,and now seemed to implore some protection for which she was too timid to openly make request.