East Angels

Rutherford and Mrs. Harold were both at home; they were in Mrs.

Rutherford's sitting-room up-stairs. But when she had preceded him and opened the door of that apartment, only Aunt Katrina was there.

"Mercy, Evert! where did you come from?" she exclaimed, in a key rather higher than her usual calm tones. It seemed to him that she looked frightened.

"From New York, of course. You are alone? Where is Margaret?" He spoke abruptly.

"Oh, she's _here_," responded Aunt Katrina, quickly, in a rea.s.suring voice.

But her emphasis told him that it might not be "here" long, it might be some other word. Would that word be "Fernandina?"

At any rate, Margaret was not yet gone.

"What do you mean by 'here?' She's not in the room."

"She doesn't spend every moment with me; I want _some_ time for my own reading and--and meditation. She's in the garden, or the drawing-room, I suppose--somewhere about."

"Aunt Katrina, tell me in so many words--is she going back to Lanse?"

"Why--er--why, yes, I believe so." Aunt Katrina's voice fairly faltered.

"You have had a hand in this: you have urged her."

"Well, Evert, she's Lanse's wife, you know."

"Where is she?"

"I have told you already that I don't know."

"Not gone?" he said, with quick-returning suspicion.

"Oh dear no! What are you thinking of?"

"I'm thinking that I cannot trust either of you! When is she going, then?"

"Well, there has been a good deal about that. Back and forth, you know; letters and--"

"_When?_" he repeated, imperatively.

"To-morrow," answered Aunt Katrina, in almost the same tone as his own.

"How you do storm, Evert!"

But he had left the room before her words were finished.

Margaret was not in the drawing-room, she was not in the garden. He met Pablo. "Do you know where Mrs. Harold is?" he said.

"She's in der yorrange grove, sah. I ben dar myse'f looken' arter der place a little, as I has ter, en I see her dar." Pablo meant the old grove--his grove; the new grove was on the other side of the house, and was as ugly as a new grove always is. Down to this hour old Pablo had never become satiated with the delight of working in the old grove at his own pleasure and according to southern methods alone; poor little Melissa Whiting's voice had long been stilled, but Pablo was rioting

The old grove was in bloom. It was not so productive now as it had been in Mrs. Thorne's day, but it was more beautiful; Pablo's rioting had not included steady labor of any sort, there had been no pruning, and very little digging; the aisles were green and luxuriant, the ground undisturbed. The perfume of the blossoms filled the air; on some of the trees blossoms and ripe fruit were hanging together.

Winthrop walked on under the bright foliage and bride-like bloom. But there was no sign of Margaret.

"Of course she would not be here," he thought, "or at least she would not stay; it's far too sweet."

At length he saw her light dress. She was not in the grove, as he had thought; she was in a glade beyond it. Here there was an old nondescript pillar, crowned by a clumsy vase. She was leaning against this ornament, with her back to the grove; one arm lay across the top. She wore no gloves, and he could see her pretty hand with its single ring, the band of plain gold. In front of her there was the low curb of an old well, overgrown with jessamine; she appeared to be looking at it.

His footsteps had made no sound on the soft earth, he came upon her before she discovered him.

"I don't think you can be much surprised to see me," he said; "you have waited here to the last hour of your allotted time. You might have gone days ago, and then I should not have seen you at all; but you have waited. It looks quite as if you expected me to come, as if you wished to give me one more final thrust before you joined your excellent husband. Of course I deserve nothing better."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

"Yes, I have waited. But it was because I have been trying to--to arrange something," Margaret answered.

She had taken her hand from the old pillar, she stood erect now, with the white shawl she was wearing folded closely round her.

"Something nicely calculated to make me suffer more, I suppose; I haven't been punished enough for speaking as I did."

"It wasn't anything that concerned you."

"That everlasting self-possession of yours, Margaret! Here I come upon you suddenly; you're not a hard-hearted woman at all, and yet, thanks to that, you can receive me without a change of expression, you can see all my trouble and grief, and talk to me about 'arrangements!'"

"You asked me--you accused me--" Her calmness was not as perfect as he had represented it.

"What are the arrangements?" he said, abruptly.

"Do you think we had better discuss them?"

"We will discuss everything that concerns you. But don't be supposing I haven't heard; I have seen Aunt Katrina, and forced it out of her, I know you intend to go back to Lanse--intend to go to-morrow."

She did not reply.

"You don't deny it?"

"No, I don't deny it."

"And the arrangements?"

"I--I had thought of living here."

"Here, at East Angels, you mean? Oh, you wish to bring _him_ here? An excellent idea; Aunt Katrina would not be separated longer from her dear boy, and Lanse and his retinue would fit in nicely among all the comforts and luxuries we have between us collected here. Yes; I see."

There was a quiver for an instant in Margaret's throat, though her face did not alter. "My only thought was that perhaps it would be more of a home for me," she answered, looking off over the green open s.p.a.ce and the thicket beyond it.

His hardness softened a little. "Of course it would. You surely cannot have had the idea of living at Fernandina?"