He never finished his speech, which was perhaps fortunate for him. With Enid's soft eyes, slightly distressed and appealing in expression, looking straight into his own, with the sight before him of her pale, wistful face, the lovely lips which had fallen into so pathetic a curve of weariness and sorrow, how could the Rector be expected to preserve his self-possession? His thoughts and his words became confused; he did not quite know what he was saying, nor whether she heard and understood him aright. He was glad to remember afterwards that the expression of her countenance did not change; he brought neither alarm nor astonishment into her eyes; there were only gentle gratitude and a kind of hopelessness, the meaning of which he could not fathom, in the girl's still raised listening face. But at that very moment a knock came to the door; and half to the Rector's relief, half to his embarrassment, the General himself walked in.

"Ah, thank Heaven, she is here!" were the old man's first words. "We thought she was lost, Mr. Evandale--we did indeed. I met your messenger on the way to the Hall, and sent him on for the carriage. A pretty time you've given us, young lady!" he said, smiling at Enid and pinching her chin, and then grasping the Rector's hand with a look of relief and gratitude which told its own story.

"Miss Vane has been a good deal distressed and upset," said Mr.

Evandale. "She was at Mrs. Meldreth's bedside when the old woman died this afternoon, and the scene was naturally very painful. I brought her here that she might rest and recover herself a little before going home."

He wanted to explain and simplify matters for Enid's benefit; he had grasped the fact that her uncle's entrance was making her exceedingly nervous. He put it down to fear of the General's anger, but it afterwards occurred to him that Mrs. Meldreth's confession might, for some reason or other, be the cause of her agitation. Certainly her distress and confusion were at that moment very marked. She had risen from her seat at his entrance, her color changing to crimson and then to dead white more than once during the Rector's speech. It settled at last into a painful pallor, which so impressed the General that he did not even administer the gentle rebuke which he had intended Enid to receive for her infringement of the rules on which her life was based. He could not scold her when she stood before him, pale to the very lips, her eyelids cast down, her hands joined together and nervously trembling, a very embodiment of conscious guilt and shame.

"Bless my soul, she does look upset, and no mistake!" he exclaimed, in his hearty and impulsive way. "Come, my dear--don't be so miserable about it! I daresay you did not know how late it was, and the poor woman could not be left. Yes, I quite understand; and I will explain it all to your aunt. Sit down and rest until the carriage comes, as the Rector does not mind our invasion of his study."

Mr. Evandale made some polite but slightly incoherent rejoinder, to which nobody listened, for the General's attention was at that moment completely monopolised by Enid, who on feeling his arm around her, suddenly hid her white face on his shoulder and burst into tears.

"Oh, uncle," she sobbed, "you are so kind--so good! Forgive me!"

"Forgive you, my dear? There is nothing to forgive!" said the astonished General, in a slightly reproving tone. "Of course I do not like your staying out so late on a winter afternoon, but you need not make such a fuss about it, my child. You must control yourself, control yourself, you know. There, there--don't cry! What will Mr. Evandale think of you?

Why, bless me, Evandale has gone! Well, well, you need not cry--I am not angry at all--only stop crying--there's a good girl!"

"Say you forgive me, uncle!" moaned Enid, heedless of his rather disconnected remarks, which certainly had no bearing at all on the dilemma forced upon her by the nature of Mrs. Meldreth's confession.

"Forgive you, my dear? Why, of course I do! You're a little upset, are you not? But you must not give way like this--it'll never do--never do,"

said the General, patting her on the back benevolently. "There now--dry your eyes, like a good girl; and I think I hear the carriage in the lane, so we must be going. You've no idea how anxious about you poor dear Flossy has been all the afternoon."

He was pleased to see that her tears were checked. She raised herself from his shoulder and brushed away the salt drops with which her cheeks were wet; but she sobbed no longer, and she stood perfectly still and calm. He was not a man of keen observation; and, if the cold white look which suddenly overspread her countenance had any meaning, it was not one that he was likely to read aright.

A servant brought the intelligence that the carriage was at the door, and shortly afterwards the Rector appeared. He had slipped away when Enid burst into tears, hoping that she might confide to the General what she had refused to confide to him; but a glance at the faces of the two told him that his hopes had not been realised. The kindly complacency which characterised the General's countenance was undisturbed, while Enid's face bore the impress of mingled perplexity and despair. It seemed to Maurice Evandale that each expression would have been changed if Enid had bared her heart to her uncle. He did not know--he could not even guess--what her secret was; but he instinctively detected the presence of trouble, perhaps of danger.

The two men parted very cordially; for the General was deterred from seeing much of the Rector only by Mrs. Vane's dislike of him, and his kindly feeling was all the more effusive because he had so few opportunities of expressing it. Enid took leave of the Rector with a look, a wan little smile which touched him inexpressibly.

"You have part of my secret," it seemed to say. "Help me to bear the burden; I am weak and need your aid." He vowed to himself that he would do all that a man could do--all that she might ever ask. But Enid was quite unconscious of having made that mute appeal.

She lay back in a corner of the carriage, saying she was too tired to talk. The General left her in peace, but took one of her little hands and held it tenderly between his own. He could not imagine why it trembled and fluttered so much, why once it seemed to try to drag itself away. The poor girl must be quite overdone, he thought to himself; she was far too kind, too tender-hearted to go about amongst the village people and witness all their woes; she was not strong enough to do such work--he must speak to Flossy about it. And, while he was thus thinking, the carriage turned in at the park gates and presently halted at the great front-door. The servants came forward to assist the General, who was a little stiff in his joints now and then; and he, in his turn, gave an arm to Enid as she alighted. The old butler looked at her curiously as she entered and stood for a moment, dazed and bewildered, in the hall. Miss Enid was always pale, but he had never seen her look so white and scared. She must be ill, he decided, and especially when she shrank so oddly as he deferentially mentioned his mistress' name.

"My mistress hoped that you would come to her sitting room as soon as you arrived, ma'am," he said.

She made a strange answer.

"No, no--I cannot--I cannot see her to-night!"

The General was instantly at her side.

"Enid, my dear, what do you mean? Your aunt wants to see you. She won't be vexed with you--I'll make it all right with her," he added, in a lower tone. "She has been terribly anxious about you. Come--I will take you to her room."

"Not just now, uncle--not to-night," said the girl, in a tone of mingled pain and dread. "I--I can't bear it--I am ill--I must be alone now!"

"My dear child, you must go to bed and rest. I'll explain it all to Flossy. She will come to see you."

"No, no--I can't see any one! Forgive me, uncle; I hardly know what I am saying or doing. I shall be better to-morrow. Till then--till then at least I must be left in peace!"

She broke from his detaining hand with something so like violence, that the General looked after her in wonder as she ran up-stairs.

"She must be ill indeed!" he murmured thoughtfully to himself, as he wended his way to his wife's boudoir, to make his report to Flossy.

Meanwhile Enid's progress up-stairs was barred for a moment by her little playmate and scholar, Dick, who ran out of his nursery to greet her with a cry of joy. To his surprise and mortification, cousin Enid did not stop to kiss him--did not even give him a pleasant word or smile. With a stifled cry she disengaged her frock from his hand, breaking from him as she had broken from the General just before, and sped away to her own room. He heard her turn the key in her door, and, for the first time realising the enormity of the woe that had come upon him--the unprecedented fact that cousin Enid had been unkind--he lifted up his voice and bursted into a storm of sobs, which would at any ordinary time have brought her instantly to his side to comfort and caress.

But this time Enid either did not hear or did not heed. She was crouching down by the side of her bed, with her face hidden in the coverlet, and her hands pressed over her ears, as if to exclude all sound of the world without; and between the difficult passionate sobs by which her whole frame was shaken, one phrase escaped from her lips from time to time--a phrase which would have been unintelligible enough to an ordinary hearer, but would have recalled a long and shameful story to the minds of Florence Vane and one other woman in the world.

"Sabina Meldreth's child!" she muttered to herself not knowing what she said. "How can I bear it? Oh, my poor uncle! Sabina Meldreth's child!"

CHAPTER XIX.

Hubert Lepel had promised to spend Christmas Day at Beechfield, but for some unexplained reason he stayed away, sending at the last moment a telegram which his sister felt to be unsatisfactory. Flossy did not often exert herself to obtain a guest; but on this occasion she wrote a rather reproachful letter to her brother, and begged him not to fail to visit them on New Year's eve. "The General was disappointed," she wrote, "and so was someone else." Hubert thought that she meant herself, felt a thrill of wondering compassion, and duly presented himself at the Hall on the thirty-first of December.

He saw Flossy alone in her luxurious boudoir before anyone else knew of his arrival. He thought her looking ill and haggard, and asked after her health. To his surprise, the question made her angry.

"Of course I am not well--I am never well," she answered; "but I am no worse than usual. There is someone else in the house whose appearance you had better enquire after."

"You are fond of talking in riddles. Do you mean the General?" said Hubert drily.

"No, not the General," Florence answered, setting her lips.

Hubert shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject. He had not an idea of what she meant; but when, shortly before dinner, he first saw Enid, a light flashed across his mind--Flossy meant that the girl was ill. He had certainly been rather dense and rather unkind, he thought to himself, not to ask after her. And how delicate she was looking! What was the matter with her? It was not merely that she was thinner and paler, but that an indefinable change had come over her countenance. The shadow that had always lurked in her sweet eyes seemed to have fallen at last over her whole face, darkening its innocent candor, obscuring its tranquil beauty; the look of truthfulness and of ignorance of evil had gone. No child-face was it now--rather that of a woman who had been forced to look evil in the face, and was repelled and sickened at the sight. There was no joy in the eyes with which Enid now looked upon the world.

Hubert watched her steadily through the long and elaborate meal which the General thought appropriate to New Year's eve, noting her weariness, her languor, her want of interest in anything that went on, and could not understand the change. Was this girl--sick apparently in body and mind--the guileless maiden who had listened with such flattering attention to the stories of his wanderings in foreign lands, when he last came down to Beechfield Hall? He tried her with similar tales--they had no interest for her now. She was silent, _distraite_, preoccupied.

Still gentle and sweet to every one, she was no longer bright; smiles seemed to be banished for ever from her lips.

She and Florence scarcely spoke to each other. The General did not seem to notice this fact; but Hubert had not been half an hour in their company before he recognised its force. They must have quarrelled, he said to himself rather angrily--Flossy had probably tried to tyrannise, and the girl had resented her interference. Flossy was a fool; he would speak to her about it as soon as he had the opportunity, and get the truth from her--forgetting for the moment that, if ever a man set himself an impossible task, it was this one of getting the truth from Flossy.

Before dinner was ended, the sound of footsteps, the tuning of instruments; the clearing of voices could be distinguished in the hall.

Hubert glanced at his host for explanation, which was speedily given.

"It is the village choir," he said confidentially. "They come on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, and sing in the hall. When they have finished, they all have a glass of wine and drink our healths before they go down to supper in the kitchen. It's an old custom."

"And a very disagreeable one," said Mrs. Vane calmly. "Your ears will be tortured, Hubert, by the atrocious noise they make. With your permission, Enid and I will go to the drawing-room;" and, glancing at Enid, she rose from her chair.

"My dear Flossy, I entreat of you to stay!" said the General. "You have never gone away before--it would hurt their feelings immensely. I have sent word for Dick to be brought down; I mean them to drink his health too, bless the little man! It will be quite a slight to us all if you go away."

Flossy smiled ironically, but she looked at Enid in what Hubert thought a rather peculiar way. He knew his sister's face very well, and he could not but fancy that there was some apprehension in the glance. Enid sat still, looking at the tablecloth before her. Her face had grown perceptibly paler, but she did not move. A little spot of red suddenly showed itself on each of Mrs. Vane's delicate cheeks.

"Well, Enid, what do you say?" she asked, with less languor of utterance than usual. "Do you wish to suffer a purgatory of discord? Come--let us go to the drawing-room; nobody will notice whether we are here or not."

"My dear, I said I wished you to stay," began the General anxiously; but Florence only laughed a little wildly, and beat her fan once or twice upon the table.

"Come, Enid. We have had music enough, surely! You are coming?"

"No, I am going to stay here," said the girl, without raising her eyes.