CHAPTER XIV.

PARTED.

Half an hour had passed.

Up and down the long drawing-room Aileen wandered, aimlessly, restlessly, oppressed with an overwhelming dread of, she knew not what, a prescience of evil, vague as it was terrible. The dark gloom of the rainy evening was not darker than that brooding shadow in her deep, dusky eyes.

In the library Colonel Jocyln stood facing his son-in-law elect, staring like a man bereft of his senses. The melancholy half light coming wanly through the oriel window by which he stood, fell full upon the face of Rupert Thetford, white and cold, and set as marble.

"My God!" the Indian officer said, with wild eyes of terror and affright, "what is this you are telling me?"

"The truth, Col. Jocyln--the simple truth. Would to Heaven I had known it years ago--this shameful story of wrong-doing and misery!"

"I don't comprehend--I can't comprehend this impossible tale, Sir Rupert."

"That is a misnomer now, Colonel Jocyln. I am no longer _Sir_ Rupert."

"Do you mean to say you credit this wild story of a former marriage of Sir Noel's? Do you really believe your late governess to have been your father's wife?"

"I believe it, colonel. I have facts and statements, and dying words to prove it. On my father's death-bed, he made my mother swear to tell the truth, to repair the wrong he had done; to seek out his son, concealed by his valet, Vyking, and restore him to his rights! My mother never kept that promise--the cruel wrong done to herself was too bitter; and at my birth she resolved never to keep it. I should not atone for the sin of my father; his elder son should never deprive _her_ child of his birthright. My poor mother! You know the cause of that mysterious trouble which fell upon her at my father's death, and which darkened her life to the last. Shame, remorse, anger--shame for herself--a wife only in name; remorse for her broken vow to the dead, and anger against that erring dead man."

"But you told me she had hunted him up and provided for him," said the mystified colonel.

"Yes; she saw an advertisement in a London paper, calling upon Vyking to take charge of the boy he had left twelve years before. Now Vyking, the valet, had been transported for house-breaking long before that, and my mother answered the advertisement. There could be no doubt the child was the child Vyking had taken charge of--Sir Noel Thetford's rightful heir.

My mother left him with the painter, Legard, with whom he grew up, whose name he took; and he is now at Thetford Towers."

"I thought the likeness meant something," muttered the colonel under his mustache, "his paternity is plainly enough written in his face. And so,"

raising his voice, "Mrs. Weymore recognized her son. Really, your story runs like a melodrama, where the hero turns out to be a duke, and his mother knows the strawberry mark on his arm. Well, sir, if Mrs. Weymore is Sir Noel's rightful widow, and Guy Legard his rightful son and heir--pray what are you?"

The colorless face of the young man turned dark red for an instant, then whiter than before.

"My mother was as truly and really Sir Noel's wife as woman can be the wife of man in the sight of Heaven. The crime was his; the shame and suffering hers; the atonement mine. Sir Noel's elder son shall be Sir Noel's heir--I will play usurper no longer. To-morrow I leave St.

Gosport; the day after England, never perhaps, to return."

"You are mad," Colonel Jocyln said, turning very pale; "you do not mean it."

"I am not mad, and I do mean it. I may be unfortunate; but, I pray God, never a villain. Right is right; my brother Guy is the rightful heir--not I."

"And Aileen?" Colonel Jocyln's face turned dark and rigid as iron as he spoke his daughter's name.

Rupert Thetford turned away his changing face.

"It shall be as she says. Aileen is too noble and just herself not to honor me for doing right."

"It shall be as I say," returned Colonel Jocyln, with a voice that rang, and an eye that flashed. "My daughter comes of a proud and stainless race, and never shall she mate with one less stainless. Hear me out, young man. It won't do to fire up--plain words are best suited to a plain case. All that has passed between you and Miss Jocyln must be as if it had never been. The heir of Thetford Towers, honorably born, I consented she should marry; but, dearly as I love her, I would see her dead at my feet before she should marry one who was nameless and impoverished. You said just now the atonement was yours--you said right; go, and never return."

He pointed to the door; the young man, stonily still, took his hat.

"Will you not permit your daughter, Colonel Jocyln, to speak for herself?" he said at the door.

"No, sir. I know my daughter--my proud, high-spirited Aileen, and my answer is hers. I wish you good-night."

He swung round abruptly, turning his back upon his visitor. Rupert Thetford, without one word, turned and walked out of the house.

The bewildering rapidity of the shocks he had received had stunned him--he could not feel the pain now. There was a dull sense of aching torture upon him from head to foot--but the acute edge was dulled; he walked along through the black night like a man drugged and stupefied.

He was only conscious intensely of one thing--a wish to get away, never to set foot in St. Gosport again.

Like one walking in his sleep, he reached Thetford Towers, his old home, every tree and stone of which was dear to him. He entered at once, passed into the drawing-room, and found Guy Legard, sitting before the fire, staring blankly into the coals; and May Everard, roaming restlessly up and down, the firelight falling dully on her black robes and pale, tear-stained face. Both started at his entrance--all wet, and pale and haggard; but neither spoke. There was that in his face which froze the words on their lips.

"I am going away to-morrow," he said, abruptly, leaning against the mantel, and looking at them with quiet, steadfast eyes.

May uttered a faint cry; Guy faced him almost fiercely.

"Going away! What do you mean, Sir Rupert? We are going away together, if you like."

"No; I go alone. You remain here, it is your place now."

"Never!" cried the young artist, passionately--"never! I will go out and die like a dog, of starvation, before I rob you of your birthright!"

"You reverse matters," said Rupert Thetford; "it is I who have robbed you, unwittingly, for too many years. I promised my mother on her death-bed, as she promised my father on his, that you should have your right, and I will keep that promise. Guy, dear old fellow! don't let us quarrel, now that we are brothers, after being friends so long. Take what is your own; the world is all before me, and surely I am man enough to win my own way. Not one other word; you shall not come with me; you might as well talk to these stone walls and try to move them as to move me. To-morrow I go, and go alone."

"Alone!" It was May who breathlessly repeated the word.

"Alone; all the ties that bound me here are broken; I go alone, and single-handed, to fight the battle of life Guy, I have spoken to the rector about you--you will find him your friend and aider; and May is to make her home at the rectory. And now," turning suddenly, and moving to the door, "as I start early to-morrow, I believe I'll retire early.

Good-night."

And then he was gone, and Guy and May were left staring at each other with blank faces.

The storm of wind and rain sobbed itself out before midnight; and in the bluest of skies, heralded by banners of rosy clouds, rose up the sun next morning. Before that rising sun had gilded the tops of the tallest oaks in the park, he, who had so lately called it all his own, had opened the heavy oaken door and passed from Thetford Towers, as home, forever. The house was very still--no one had risen; he had left a note to Guy, with a few brief, warm words of farewell.

"Better so," he thought--"better so! He and May will be happy together, for I know he loves her, and she him. The memory of my leave-taking shall never come to cloud their united lives."

One last backward glance at the eastern windows turning to gold; at the sea blushing in the first glance of the day-king; at the waving trees and swelling meadows, and gray, old ivy-grown front, and then he passed down the avenue, out through the massive entrance-gates, and was gone.

CHAPTER XV.

AFTER FIVE YEARS.

Moonlight falling like a silvery veil over Venice--a crystal clear crescent in a purple sky shimmering on palace and prison, churches, squares and canals, on the gilded gondolas, and the flitting forms passing like noiseless shadows to and fro.

A young lady leaned from a window of a vast Venetian hotel, gazing thoughtfully at the silver-lighted landscape, so strange, so unreal, so dream-like, to her unaccustomed eyes. A young lady, stately and tall, with a pale, proud face, deep, dark eyes, solemn, shining, fathomless, like mountain tarns; floating dark ringlets and a statuesque sort of beauty that was perfect in its way. She was dressed in trailing robes of crape and bombazine, and the face, turned to the moonlight, was cold and still.