When he left her, she did not ask him to come again.
Her father did, though, and told him to be patient; better days were in store. "Give her time," said he, "and, a month or two hence, if you have the same feeling for her you used to have--"
"I love her more than ever. I worship her--"
"Then you will have me on your side, stronger than ever. But you must give her time."
And now Coventry had an ally far more powerful than himself--an ally at once zealous and judicious. Mr. Carden contented himself at first with praising him in general terms; next he affected to laugh at him for renting the villa, merely to be in the place which Grace had occupied. Then Grace defended him. "Don't laugh at an honest love. Pity it. It is all we can do, and the least we can do."
But when he advanced further, and began to remind his daughter she had once given this gentleman hopes, and all but engaged herself to him, she drew back with fear and repugnance, and said, "If he can not forget that, pray let him never come near me again."
"Oh," said Mr. Carden, "I believe he has no hopes of the kind; it is of you I am thinking, not of him. It has got about that poor Little had a connection with some girl in humble life, and that he was in love with her, and you in love with him. That wounds a father's pride, and makes me grateful to Coventry for his unshaken devotion, whilst others are sneering at my poor child for her innocent love."
Grace writhed, and the tears ran down her cheeks at this. "Oh, spare the dead!" she faltered.
Then her father kissed her, and begged her to forgive him; he would avoid all these topics in future: and so he did, for some time; but what he had said rankled.
A few days after this Coventry came again, and did nothing but soothe Grace with words; only he managed so that Grace should detect him looking very sad when he was not actually employed in cheering her.
She began to pity him a little, and wonder at his devotion.
He had not been gone many hours when another visitor arrived quite unexpectedly--Mr. Raby. He came to tell her his own news, and warn her of the difficult game they were now playing at Raby Hall, that she might not thwart it inadvertently.
Grace was much agitated, and shed tears of sympathy. She promised, with a sigh, to hold no communication with Mrs. Little. She thought it very hard, but she promised.
In the course of his narrative Mr. Raby spoke very highly of Jael Dence, and of her conduct in the matter.
To this Grace did not respond. She waited her opportunity, and said, keenly and coldly, "How did she come to be in your house?"
"Well, that is a secret."
"Can you not trust me with a secret?"
"Oh yes," said Raby, "provided you will promise faithfully to tell no one."
Grace promised, and he then told her that Jael Dence, in a moment of desperation, had thrown herself into the river at the back of his house. "Poor girl!" said he, "her brain was not right at the time.
Heaven keep us all from those moments of despair. She has got over it now, and nurses and watches my poor sister more like a mother watching her child than a young woman taking care of an old one.
She is the mainspring of the house."
At all this Grace turned from pale to white, but said nothing; and Raby ran on in praise of Jael, little dreaming what pain his words inflicted.
When he left her, she rose and walked down to the sea; for her tortured spirit gave her body energy. Hitherto she found she had only suspected; now she was sure. Hitherto she had feared Henry Little had loved Jael Dence a little; now she was sure he had loved her best. Jael Dence would not have attempted self-destruction for any man unless he loved her. The very act proved her claim to him more eloquently than words could do. Now she believed all--the anonymous letter--Mr. Coventry's report--the woman's words who worked in the same factory, and could not be deceived. And her godfather accepted Jael Dence and her claim to sympathy: she was taken into his house, and set to nurse Henry Little's mother: poor Grace was slighted on all sides; she must not even write to Mrs.
Little, nor take part in the pious falsehood they were concocting together, Raby and his Jael Dence, whom everybody loved best--everybody except this poor faithful ill-used wretch, Frederick Coventry; and him she hated for loving her better than the man she loved had loved her.
Tender, but very proud, this sensitive creature saw herself dethroned from her love. Jael Dence had eclipsed her in every way; had saved his life with her strong arm, had almost perished with him; and had tried to kill herself when he was dead. SHE was far behind this rival in every thing. She had only loved, and suffered, and nearly died. "No, no," she said to herself, "she could not love him better than I did: but HE loved HER best; and she knew it, and that made her arm strong to fight, and her heart strong to die for him. I am nobody--nothing." Then the scalding tears ran down her cheeks. But soon her pride got the upper hand, and dried her cheeks, and nearly maddened her.
She began to blush for her love, to blush for her illness. She rose into that state of exasperation in which persons of her sex do things they look back upon with wonder, and, strange to say, all this without one unkind thought of him whose faults she saw, but excused--he was dead.
She now began to struggle visibly, and violently, against her deadly sorrow. She forced herself to take walks and rides, and to talk, with nothing to say. She even tried to laugh now and then. She made violent efforts to be gracious and pitiful to Mr. Coventry, and the next minute made him suffer for it by treating him like a troublesome hound.
He loved her madly, yet sometimes he felt tempted to kill her, and end both her torture and his own.
