"No; she would die as her mother died--of a broken heart."

"You can speak so calmly, remembering who killed her mother--for what you and I are responsible!"

"Look, Hubert--if you cannot speak calmly yourself, you had better not speak at all. You seem to think that I am cold and callous. I suppose I am; and yet I am more anxious in this matter to keep Enid from grief and pain than you seem to be. I do not like to see her looking pale and sad. I would do anything within my power to help her, and I thought--I thought that you would do the same. It seems that you shrink from the task."

"It is so horrible--so unnatural! How can I ask her to be mine--I, with my hands stained----"

"Hush! I will not have you say those words! We both know--if we are to speak of the past--that it was an honorable contest enough--a fair fight--a meeting such as no man of honor could refuse. You would have fallen if he had not. It is purely morbid, this brooding over the consequences of your actions. Everybody who knew the circumstances would have said that you were in the right. I say it myself, although at my own cost. To marry Enid now because she loves you will be the only way you can take to repair the harm that was done in the past and to shield her for the future."

It was not often that Florence spoke so long or so energetically; and Hubert, in spite of his revolt of feeling at the prospect held out to him, was impressed by her words. After a few moments' silence, he sat down again and began to argue the matter with her from every possible point of view. He told her it was probable that Enid did not know her own mind; that she would be miserable if she married a man who could not love her; that the whole world would cry shame on him if it ever learned the circumstances of her father's death; that Enid herself would be the first to reproach him, and would indeed bitterly hate him if she ever knew.

"If she ever knew--if the world ever knew!" said Florence scornfully.

Hitherto she had been very quiet and let her brother say his say. "As if she or the world were ever going to know! There is no way in which the truth can be known unless one of us tells it; and I ask you, is that a thing that either of us is very likely to do? It would mean social ruin for us--utter and irretrievable ruin! If we only hold our tongues, Enid and the world will never know."

"That is true," he answered moodily; and then he sat so long in one position, with his arms crossed on his breast; and his eyes fixed on vacancy, that Florence asked him with some curiosity of what he was thinking.

"I was wondering," he said, "whether that poor wretch Westwood found his undeserved punishment more galling than I sometimes find the bonds of secrecy and falsehood and dishonor that bind me now. He at any rate has gained his freedom; but I am in bondage still. I have my sentence--a life sentence--to work out."

"He is free now, certainly," Florence answered, with an odd intonation of her voice; "so I do not think that you need trouble yourself about him. Think of Enid rather, and of her needs."

"Free? Yes--he is dead," said Hubert quickly, replying to something in her tone rather than to her words. "He died as I told you--some time ago."

"You read it in the newspaper?"

"Yes."

"And you never saw that next day the report of his death was contradicted?"

"Florence, what do you mean?"

"You went away from England just then with a mind at ease, did you not?

But I was here, with nothing to do but to think and brood and read; and I read more than that. There were two men named Westwood at Portland, and the one who died--as was stated in next day's paper--was not the one we knew."

"And he is in prison all this time? Don't you see that that makes my guilt the worse--brings back all the intolerable burden, renders it simply impossible that I should ever make an innocent girl happy?" His voice was hoarse, and the veins upon his forehead stood out like knotted cords.

"Sit down," said Flossy calmly, "and listen to me. I have an odd story to tell you. The man of whom we speak managed to do what scarcely another convict has done in recent times--he escaped. He nearly killed the warder in his flight, but not quite--so that counts for nothing. It is rumored that he reached America, where he is living contentedly in the backwoods. I can show you the newspaper account of his escape. I thought," she added a little cynically, "that it might relieve your mind to hear of it; but it does not seem to do so. I fancied that you would be glad. Would you rather that he were dead?"

"No, no; Heaven knows that I rejoice in his escape!" cried her brother, sitting down again with his forehead bowed upon his clasped hands and his elbows on his knees. "I have blood-guiltiness enough already upon my soul. Glad? I am so glad, Florence, that I can almost dare to thank God that Westwood is alive and has escaped. I--I shall never escape!"

CHAPTER XXI.

Enid had the look of a veritable snow-queen thought Hubert, as he came upon her a day or two later in a little _salon_ opening out of the drawing-room, and found her gazing out upon a landscape of which all the lines were blurred in falling snow. She was dressed in a white woollen gown, which was confined at her waist by a simple white ribbon, and had white fur at the throat and wrists.

The dead-white suited her delicate complexion and golden hair; she had the soft and stainless look of a newly fallen snowflake, which to touch were to destroy. Hubert almost felt as if he ought not to speak to one so far removed from him--one set so high above him by her innocence and purity. And yet he was bound to speak.

"You like the snow?" he began.

"Yes--as much as I like anything."

"At your age," said Hubert slowly, "you should like everything."

"You think I am so very young!"

"Well--seventeen."

"Oh, but I don't feel young at all!" the girl said half wearily, half bitterly. "I seem to have lived centuries! You know, cousin Hubert, there are very few girls of my age who have had all the trouble that I have had."

"You have had a great deal--you have been the victim of a tragedy," said Hubert gloomily, not able to deny the truth of her remark, even while he was forced to remember that many other girls of Enid's age had far more real and tangible sorrows than she. The vision of a girl pleading with him to find her work flashed suddenly across his mind; her words about London Bridge--"her last resource"--occurred to him; and his common sense told him that after all Enid's position, sad and lonely though it was, could scarcely be called so pitiable as that of Cynthia West. But it was not his part to tell her so; his own share in producing Enid's misfortunes sealed his lips.

What he said however was almost too direct an allusion to the past to be thought sympathetic by Enid. A very natural habit had grown up at Beechfield Hall of never mentioning her father's fate; and this silence had had the bad result of making her brood over the matter without daring to reveal her thoughts. The word "tragedy" seemed to her almost like a profanation. It sent the hot blood rushing into her face at once.

Enid's organisation was peculiarly delicate and sensitive; her knowledge of the publicity given to the details of her father's death was torture to her. She was glad of the seclusion in which the General lived, because when she went into Whitminster, she would hear sometimes a rumor, a whispered word--"Look--that is the daughter of Sydney Vane who was murdered a few years ago! Extraordinary case--don't you remember it?"--and the consciousness that these words might be spoken was unbearable to her. Hubert had touched an open wound somewhat too roughly.

He saw his mistake.

"Forgive me for speaking of it," he said. "I fancied that you were thinking of the past."

"Oh, no, no--not of that!" cried Enid, scarcely knowing what she said.

"Of other troubles?" Hubert queried very softly. It was natural that he should think of what Flossy had said to him quite recently.

"Yes--of other things."

"Can you not tell me what they are?" he said gently, taking one of her slight hands in his own.

"Oh, no--not you!"

She was thinking of him as Florence's brother, possibly even as Florence's accomplice in a crime; but he attributed her refusal to a very different motive. Tell him her troubles? Of course she could not do so, poor child, when her troubles came from love of him. He was not a coxcomb, but he believed what Flossy had said.

"Not me? You cannot tell me?" he said, drawing her away from the cold uncurtained windows with his hand still on hers. "And can I do nothing to lighten your trouble, dear?"

She looked at him doubtfully.

"I--don't--know."

"Enid, tell me."

"Oh, no!" she cried. "I can't tell you--I can't tell any one--I must bear it all alone!"--and then she burst into tears, not into noisy sobs, but into a nearly silent passion of grief which went to the very heart of the man who stood at her side. She drew her hand away from his and laid it upon the mantelpiece, which she crept to and leaned against, sobbing miserably meanwhile, as if she needed the support that solid stone could give.

Her slender figure, in its closely-fitting white gown, shook from head to foot. It was as much as Hubert could do to restrain himself from putting his arm round it, drawing it closely to him, and silencing the sobs with kisses. But his feeling was that of a grown-up person to a child whom he wanted to comfort and protect, not that of a man to the woman whom he loved. He waited therefore silently, with a fixed look of mingled pain and determination upon his face, until she had grown a little calmer. When at last her figure ceased to vibrate with sobs, he came closer and put his hand caressingly upon her shoulder.

"Enid," he said, "I have asked you before if I could make you happier; you never answered the question. Will you tell me now?"

She raised herself from her drooping attitude, and stood with averted face; but still she did not speak.

"Perhaps you hardly know what I mean. I am willing--anxious--to give my whole life to you, Enid, my child. If you can trust yourself to my hands, I will take such care of you that you shall never know trouble or sorrow again, if care can avert it. Give me the right to do this for you, dear. You shall not have cause to repent your trust. Look at me, Enid, and tell me that you trust me."