you speak. If you have come here with any evil in your heart, or with the intention to deceive or betray, pause before you answer. I am a lonely and almost friendless woman, and have no claim except upon your compassion; but it is not always well to deal ill with such as I, since we have at last a friend whose vengeance you too must fear. So, by the love of Christ and by the presence of the God who made you, speak to me only such truth as you will utter at his judgment. Now, answer, I am ready."
At her words, spoken with an earnestness and in a voice which made them almost awful, a momentary expression of fear swept across Lady Bellamy's face, but it went as quickly as it came, and the hard, determined look returned. The mysterious eyes grew cold and glittered, the head erected itself. At that moment Lady Bellamy distinctly reminded Mr. Fraser of a hooded cobra about to strike.
"Am I to speak before Mr. Fraser?"
"Speak!"
"What is the good of this high-flown talk, Angela? You seem to know my news before I give it, and believe me it pains me very much to have to give it. He is dead, Angela."
The cobra had struck, but as yet the poison had scarcely begun to work. There was only numbness. Mr. Fraser gave a gasp and half dropped, half fell, into his chair. The noise attracted Angela's attention, and pressing her hand to her forehead she turned towards him with a ghost of a laugh.
"Did I not tell you that this evil woman would bring evil news." Then addressing Lady Bellamy, "But stop, you forget what I said to you, you do not speak the truth. Arthur dead! How can Arthur be dead and I alive? How is it that I do not know he is dead? Oh, for shame, it is not true, he is not dead."
"This seems to me to be a thankless as well as a painful task," said Lady Bellamy, hoarsely, "but, if you will not believe me, look here, you know this, I suppose? I took it, as he asked me to do, from his dead hand that it might be given back to you."
"If Mr. Heigham is dead," said Mr. Fraser, "how do you know it, where did he die, and what of?"
"I know it, Mr. Fraser, because it was my sad duty to nurse him through his last illness at Madeira. He died of enteric fever. I have got a copy of his burial certificate here which I had taken from the Portuguese books. He seems to have had no relations living, poor young man, but Sir John communicated with the family lawyer. Here is the certificate," and she handed Mr. Fraser a paper written in Portuguese and officially stamped.
"You say," broke in Angela, "that you took this ring from his dead hand, the hand on which I placed it. I do not believe you. You beguiled it from his living hand. It cannot be that he is dead; for, if he were, I should have felt it. Oh, Arthur!" and in her misery she stretched out her arms and turned her agonized eyes upwards, "if you are dead, come to me, and let me see your spirit face, and hear the whisper of your wings. Have you no voice in the silence? You see he does not come, he is not dead; if he were dead, Heaven could not hold him from my side, or, if it could, it would have drawn me up to his."
"My love, my love," said Mr. Fraser, in a scared voice, "it is not
God's will that the dead should come back to us thus——"
"My poor Angela, why will you not believe me? This is so very painful, do you suppose that I want to torture you by saying what is not true about your love? The idea is absurd. I had meant to keep it till you were calmer; but I have a letter for you. Read it and convince yourself."
Angela almost snatched the paper from her outstretched hand. It ran thus, in characters almost illegible from weakness:—
"Dearest,—Good-bye. I am dying of fever. Lady Bellamy will take back your ring when it is over. Try to forget me, and be happy. Too weak to write more. Good-bye. God——"
At the foot of this broken and almost illegible letter was scrawled the word, "ARTHUR."
Angela read it slowly, and then at length the poison did its work. She did not speak wildly any more, or call upon Arthur; she was stung back to sense, but all the light went out of her eyes.
"It is his writing," she said, slowly. "I beg your pardon. It was good of you to nurse him."
Then, pressing the paper to her bosom with one hand, with the other she groped her way towards the door.
"It is very dark," she said.
Lady Bellamy's eyes gave a flash of triumph, and then she stood watching the pitiable exhibition of human misery as curiously as ever a Roman matron did an expiring gladiator. When Angela was near the door, the letter still pressed against her heart, she spoke again.
"The blow comes from God, Angela, and the religion and spiritual theories which you believe in will bring you consolation. Most likely it is a blessing in disguise—a thing that you will in time even learn to be thankful for."
Lady Bellamy had overacted her part. The words did not ring true, they jarred upon Mr. Fraser; much more did they jar upon Angela's torn nerves. Her pale cheek flushed, and she turned and spoke, but there was no anger in her face, nothing but sorrow that dignified, and unfathomable love lost in its own depths. Only the eyes seemed as sightless as those of one walking in her sleep.
"When your hour of dreadful trouble comes, as it will come, pray God that there may be none to mock you as you mock me." And she turned like a stricken thing, and went slowly out, blindly groping her way along.
Her last words had hit the victor hard. Who can say what hidden string they touched, or what prescience of evil they awakened? But they went nigh to felling her. Clutching the mantel-piece, Lady Bellamy gasped for air; then, recovering a little, she said:
"Thank God, that is over."
Mr. Fraser scarcely saw this last incident. So overwhelmed was he at the sight of Angela's agony that he had covered his face with his hand. When he lifted it again, Lady Bellamy was gone, and he was alone.
CHAPTER L
Three months had passed since that awful Christmas Day. Angela was heart-broken, and, after the first burst of her despair, turned herself to the only consolation which was left her. It was not of this world.
She did not question the truth of the dreadful news that Lady Bellamy had brought her, and, if ever a doubt did arise in her breast, a glance at the ring and the letter effectually quelled it. Nor did she get brain-fever or any other illness; her young and healthy frame was too strong a citadel to be taken out of hand by sorrow. And this to her was one of the most wonderful things in her affliction. It had come and crushed her, and life still went on much as before. The sun of her system had fallen, and yet the system was not appreciably deranged. It was dreadful to her to think that Arthur was dead, but an added sting lay in the fact that she was not dead too. Oh! how glad she would have been to die, since death had become the gate through which she needs must pass to reach her lover's side.
For it had been given to Angela, living so much alone, and thinking so long and deeply upon these great mysteries of our being, to soar to the heights of a noble faith. To the intense purity of her mind, a living heaven presented itself, a comfortable place, very different from the vague and formularised abstractions with which we are for the most part satisfied; where Arthur and her mother were waiting to greet her, and where the great light of the Godhead would shine around them all. She grew to hate her life, the dull barrier of the flesh that stood between her and her ends. Still she ate and drank enough to support it, still dressed with the same perfect neatness as before, still lived, in short, as though Arthur had not died, and the light and colour had not gone out of her world.
One day—it was in March—she was sitting in Mr. Fraser's study reading the "Shakespeare" which Arthur had given to her, and in the woes of others striving to forget her own. But the attempt proved a failure; she could not concentrate her thoughts, they would continually wander away into space in search of Arthur.
She was dressed in black; from the day that she heard her lover was dead, she would wear no other colour, and as she gazed, with her hands