She awakened late in the afternoon with a start.Her father was standing over her,listening to Miss Monro's account of her indisposition.She only caught one glimpse of his strangely altered countenance,and hid her head in the cushions--hid it from memory,not from him.For in an instant she must have conjectured the interpretation he was likely to put upon her shrinking action,and she had turned towards him,and had thrown her arms round his neck,and was kissing his cold,passive face.Then she fell back.But all this time their sad eyes never met--they dreaded the look of recollection that must be in each other's gaze.
"There,my dear!"said Miss Monro."Now you must lie still till Ifetch you a little broth.You are better now,are not you?""You need not go for the broth,Miss Monro,"said Mr.Wilkins,ringing the bell."Fletcher can surely bring it."He dreaded the being left alone with his daughter--nor did she fear it less.She heard the strange alteration in her father's voice,hard and hoarse,as if it was an effort to speak.The physical signs of his suffering cut her to the heart;and yet she wondered how it was that they could both be alive,or,if alive,they were not rending their garments and crying aloud.Mr.Wilkins seemed to have lost the power of careless action and speech,it is true.He wished to leave the room now his anxiety about his daughter was relieved,but hardly knew how to set about it.He was obliged to think about the veriest trifle,in order that by an effort of reason he might understand how he should have spoken or acted if he had been free from blood-guiltiness.Ellinor understood all by intuition.But henceforward the unspoken comprehension of each other's hidden motions made their mutual presence a burdensome anxiety to each.Miss Monro was a relief;they were glad of her as a third person,unconscious of the secret which constrained them.This afternoon her unconsciousness gave present pain,although on after reflection each found in her speeches a cause of rejoicing.
"And Mr.Dunster,Mr.Wilkins,has he come home yet?"A moment's pause,in which Mr.Wilkins pumped the words out of his husky throat:
"I have not heard.I have been riding.I went on business to Mr.
Estcourt's.Perhaps you will be so kind as to send and inquire at Mrs.Jackson's."Ellinor sickened at the words.She had been all her life a truthful plain-spoken girl.She held herself high above deceit.Yet,here came the necessity for deceit--a snare spread around her.She had not revolted so much from the deed which brought unpremeditated death,as she did from these words of her father's.The night before,in her mad fever of affright,she had fancied that to conceal the body was all that would be required;she had not looked forward to the long,weary course of small lies,to be done and said,involved in that one mistaken action.Yet,while her father's words made her soul revolt,his appearance melted her heart,as she caught it,half turned away from her,neither looking straight at Miss Monro,nor at anything materially visible.His hollow sunken eye seemed to Ellinor to have a vision of the dead man before it.His cheek was livid and worn,and its healthy colouring gained by years of hearty out-door exercise,was all gone into the wanness of age.
His hair,even to Ellinor,seemed greyer for the past night of wretchedness.He stooped,and looked dreamily earthward,where formerly he had stood erect.It needed all the pity called forth by such observation to quench Ellinor's passionate contempt for the course on which she and her father were embarked,when she heard him repeat his words to the servant who came with her broth.
"Fletcher!go to Mrs.Jackson's and inquire if Mr.Dunster is come home yet.I want to speak to him.""To him!"lying dead where he had been laid;killed by the man who now asked for his presence.Ellinor shut her eyes,and lay back in despair.She wished she might die,and be out of this horrible tangle of events.
Two minutes after,she was conscious of her father and Miss Monro stealing softly out of the room.They thought that she slept.
She sprang off the sofa and knelt down.
"Oh,God,"she prayed,"Thou knowest!Help me!There is none other help but Thee!"I suppose she fainted.For,an hour or more afterwards Miss Monro,coming in,found her lying insensible by the side of the sofa.
She was carried to bed.She was not delirious,she was only in a stupor,which they feared might end in delirium.To obviate this,her father sent far and wide for skilful physicians,who tended her,almost at the rate of a guinea the minute.
People said how hard it was upon Mr.Wilkins,that scarcely had that wretch Dunster gone off,with no one knows how much out of the trusts of the firm,before his only child fell ill.And,to tell the truth,he himself looked burnt and scared with affliction.He had a startled look,they said,as if he never could tell,after such experience,from which side the awful proofs of the uncertainty of earth would appear,the terrible phantoms of unforeseen dread.Both rich and poor,town and country,sympathised with him.The rich cared not to press their claims,or their business,at such a time;and only wondered,in their superficial talk after dinner,how such a good fellow as Wilkins could ever have been deceived by a man like Dunster.Even Sir Frank Holster and his lady forgot their old quarrel,and came to inquire after Ellinor,and sent her hothouse fruit by the bushel.
Mr.Corbet behaved as an anxious lover should do.He wrote daily to Miss Monro to beg for the most minute bulletins;he procured everything in town that any doctor even fancied might be of service,he came down as soon as there was the slightest hint of permission that Ellinor might see him.He overpowered her with tender words and caresses,till at last she shrank away from them,as from something too bewildering,and past all right comprehension.