But she became presently severe again,and finished her reading of the letter gravely.Then she folded it carefully,deposited it in a box on her table,which she locked.After a few minutes,however,she unlocked the box again and transferred the letter to her pocket.The serenity of her features did not relax again,although her previous pretty prepossession of youthful spirit was still indicated in her movements.Going into her bedroom,she reappeared in a few minutes with a light cloak thrown over her shoulders and a white-trimmed broad-brimmed hat.Then she rolled up the manuscript in a paper,and called her French maid.As she stood there awaiting her with the roll in her hand,she might have been some young girl on her way to her music lesson.
"If my brother returns before I do,tell him to wait.""Madame is going"--
"Out,"said Mrs.Ashwood blithely,and tripped downstairs.
She made her way directly to the shore where she remembered there was a group of rocks affording a shelter from the northwest trade winds.It was reached at low water by a narrow ridge of sand,and here she had often basked in the sun with her book.It was here that she now unrolled John Milton's manuscript and read.
It was the story she had told him,but interpreted by his poetry and adorned by his fancy until the facts as she remembered them seemed to be no longer hers,or indeed truths at all.She had always believed her cousin's unhappy temperament to have been the result of a moral and physical idiosyncrasy,--she found it here to be the effect of a lifelong and hopeless passion for herself!The ingenious John Milton had given a poet's precocity to the youth whom she had only known as a suspicious,moody boy,had idealized him as a sensitive but songless Byron,had given him the added infirmity of pulmonary weakness,and a handkerchief that in moments of great excitement,after having been hurriedly pressed to his pale lips,was withdrawn "with a crimson stain."Opposed to this interesting figure--the more striking to her as she had been hitherto haunted by the impression that her cousin during his boyhood had been subject to facial eruption and boils--was her own equally idealized self.Cruelly kind to her cousin and gentle with his weaknesses while calmly ignoring their cause,leading him unconsciously step by step in his fatal passion,he only became aware by accident that she nourished an ideal hero in the person of a hard,proud,middle-aged practical man of the world,--her future husband!At this picture of the late Mr.Ashwood,who had really been an indistinctive social bon vivant,his amiable relict grew somewhat hysterical.The discovery of her real feelings drove the consumptive cousin into a secret,self-imposed exile on the shores of the Pacific,where he hoped to find a grave.But the complete and sudden change of life and scene,the balm of the wild woods and the wholesome barbarism of nature,wrought a magical change in his physical health and a philosophical rest in his mind.He married the daughter of an Indian chief.Years passed,the heroine--a rich and still young and beautiful widow--unwittingly sought the same medicinal solitude.Here in the depth of the forest she encountered her former playmate;the passion which he had fondly supposed was dead revived in her presence,and for the first time she learned from his bearded lips the secret of his passion.Alas!not SHEalone!The contiguous forest could not be bolted out,and the Indian wife heard all.Recognizing the situation with aboriginal directness of purpose,she committed suicide in the fond belief that it would reunite the survivors.But in vain;the cousins parted on the spot to meet no more.
Even Mrs.Ashwood's predilection for the youthful writer could not overlook the fact that the denouement was by no means novel nor the situation human,but yet it was here that she was most interested and fascinated.The description of the forest was a description of the wood where she had first met Harcourt;the charm of it returned,until she almost seemed to again inhale its balsamic freshness in the pages before her.Now,as then,her youth came back with the same longing and regret.But more bewildering than all,it was herself that moved there,painted with the loving hand of the narrator.For the first time she experienced the delicious flattery of seeing herself as only a lover could see her.The smallest detail of her costume was suggested with an accuracy that pleasantly thrilled her feminine sense.The grace of her figure slowly moving through the shadow,the curves of her arm and the delicacy of her hand that held the bridle rein,the gentle glow of her softly rounded cheek,the sweet mystery of her veiled eyes and forehead,and the escaping gold of her lovely hair beneath her hat were all in turn masterfully touched or tenderly suggested.And when to this was added the faint perfume of her nearer presence--the scent she always used--the delicate revelations of her withdrawn gauntlet,the bracelet clasping her white wrist,and at last the thrilling contact of her soft hand on his arm,--she put down the manuscript and blushed like a very girl.Then she started.
A shout!--HIS voice surely!--and the sound of oars in their rowlocks.
An instant revulsion of feeling overtook her.With a quick movement she instantly hid the manuscript beneath her cloak and stood up erect and indignant.Not twenty yards away,apparently advancing from the opposite shore of the bay,was a boat.It contained only John Milton,resting on his oars and scanning the group of rocks anxiously.His face,which was quite strained with anxiety,suddenly flushed when he saw her,and then recognizing the unmistakable significance of her look and attitude,paled once more.He bent over his oars again;a few strokes brought him close to the rock.
