"It will take time. But I trust that all will come out truly adjusted in the end."

She had never ventured to bring to her aunt's very external judgment the real questions that troubled her. Mrs. Loring's prompt way of sweeping aside these cobwebs of the brain, as she called the finer scruples of conscience, could not satisfy her yearning desire for light.

"Yes; time works wonders. He is the great restorer. But why not see clearly at once; and not wait in suffering for time's slow movements? I am a wiser philosopher than you are, Jessie; and try to gain from the present all that it has to give."

"Some hearts require a severer discipline than others," said Jessie.

"And mine, I think, is one of them."

"All that is sickly sentiment, my dear child! as I have said to you a hundred times. It is not shadow, but sunshine that your heart wants--not discipline, but consolation--not doubt, but hope. You are as untrue to yourself as the old anchorites. These self-inflicted stripes are horrible to think of, for the pain is not salutary, but only increases the morbid states of mind that ever demand new flagellations."

"We are differently made, Aunt Phoebe," was the quiet answer.

"No, we are not, but we make ourselves different," replied Mrs.

Loring a little hastily.

"The world would be a very dead-level affair, if we were all made alike," said Jessie, forcing a smile, and a.s.suming a lighter air, in order to lead her aunt's mind away from the thought of her as too painfully disturbed by the announcement of Mr. Dexter's marriage.

And she was successful. The subject was changed to one of a less embarra.s.sing character. And this was all of the inner life of Jessie Loring that showed itself on the surface.

CHAPTER XXV.

AND what of Paul Hendrickson during these years of isolation, in which no intelligence could be gained of Jessie, beyond vague rumors? For a time, he secluded himself. Then he returned to a few of the old social circles, not much changed to the common eye. His countenance was a little graver; his voice a little lower; his manner a trifle more subdued. But he was a cheerful, intelligent companion, and always a welcome guest.

To no one, not even to his old friend, Mrs. Denison, did he speak of Mrs. Dexter. What right had he to speak of her? She was still the lawful wife of another man, though separated from him by her own act. But not to think of her was as impossible as not to think at all--not to gaze upon her image as impossible as to extinguish the inner vision. She was always by his side, in spirit; her voice always in his ears; her dear face always before him. "The cup is dashed to pieces at my feet, and the precious wine spilled!" How many, many, many times, each day, did he hear these words uttered, always in that sad, half-desponding voice that first brought them to his ears; and they kept hope in the future alive.

The separation which had taken place Hendrickson regarded as one step in the right direction. When the application for a divorce was made, he hailed it with a degree of inward satisfaction that a little startled himself. "It is another step in the right direction," he said, on the instant's impulse.

Reflection a little sobered him. "Even if the divorce is granted, what will be her views of the matter?"

There came no satisfactory answer to this query.

A thick curtain still veiled the future. Many doubts troubled him.

Next, in the order of events, came the decision by which the marriage contract between Dexter and his wife was annulled. On the evening of the same day on which the court granted the pet.i.tioner's prayer, Hendrickson called upon Mrs. Denison. She saw the moment he came in that he was excited about something.

"Have you heard the news?" he inquired.

"What news?" Mrs. Denison looked at him curiously.

"Leon Dexter has obtained a divorce."

"Has he?"

"Yes. And so that long agony is over! She is free again."

Hendrickson was not able to control the intense excitement he felt.

Mrs. Denison looked at him soberly and with glances of inquiry.

"You understand me, I suppose?"

"Perhaps I do, perhaps not," she answered.

"Mrs. Denison," said the young man, with increasing excitement, "I need scarcely say to you that my heart has never swerved from its first idolatry. To love Jessie Loring was an instinct of my nature--therefore, to love her once was to love her forever. You know how cruelly circ.u.mstances came with their impa.s.sable barriers.

They were only barriers, and destroyed nothing. As brightly as ever burned the fires--as ardently as ever went forth love's strong impulses with every heart-beat. And her heart remained true to mine as ever was needle to the pole."

"That is a bold a.s.sertion, Paul," said Mrs. Denison, "and one that it pains me to hear you make."

"It is true; but why does it give you pain?" he asked.

"Because it intimates the existence of an understanding between you and Mrs. Dexter, and looks to the confirmation of rumors that I have always considered as without a shadow of foundation."

"My name has never been mentioned in connection with hers."

"It has."

"Mrs. Denison!"

"It is true."

"I never heard it."

"Nor I but once."

"What was said?"

"That you were the individual against whom Mr. Dexter's jealousy was excited, and that your clandestine meetings with his wife led to the separation."

"I had believed," said Hendrickson, after a pause, and in a voice that showed a depression of feeling, "that busy rumor had never joined our names together. That it has done so, I deeply regret. No voluntary action of mine led to this result; and it was my opinion that Dexter had carefully avoided any mention of my name, even to his most intimate friends."

"I only heard the story once, and then gave it my emphatic denial,"

said Mrs. Denison.

"And yet it was true, I believe, though in a qualified sense. We did meet, not clandestinely, however, nor with design."

"But without a thought, much less a purpose of dishonor," said Mrs.

Denison, almost severely.

"Without even a thought of dishonor," replied Hendrickson. "Both were incapable of that. She arrived at Newport when I was there. We met, suddenly and unexpectedly, face to face, and when off our guard. I read her heart, and she read mine, in lightning glimpses.

The pages were shut instantly, and not opened again. We met once or twice after that, but as mere acquaintances, and I left on the day after she came, because I saw that the discipline was too severe for her, and that I was not only in an equivocal, but dangerous, if not dishonorable position. Dexter had his eyes on me all the while, and if I crossed his path suddenly he looked as if he would have destroyed me with a glance. The fearful illness, which came so near extinguishing the life of Mrs. Dexter, was, I have never doubted, in consequence of that meeting and circ.u.mstances springing directly therefrom. A friend of mine had a room adjoining theirs at Newport, and he once said to me, without imagining my interest in the case, that on the day before Mrs. Dexter's illness was known, he had heard her voice pitched to a higher key than usual, and had caught a few words that too clearly indicated a feeling of outrage for some perpetrated wrong. There was stern defiance also, he said, in her tones. He was pained at the circ.u.mstance, for he had met Mrs. Dexter frequently, he said, at Newport, and was charmed with her fine intelligence and womanly attractions.

"Once after that we looked into each other's faces, and only once.

And then, as before, we read the secret known only to ourselves--but without design. I was pa.s.sing her residence--it was the first time I had permitted myself even to go into the neighborhood where she lived, since her return from Newport. Now something drew me that way, and yielding to the impulse, I took the street on which her dwelling stood, and ere a thought of honor checked my footsteps, was by her door. A single glance at one of the parlor windows gave me the vision of her pale face, so attenuated by sickness and suffering, that the sight filled me with instant pity, and fired my soul with a deeper love. What my countenance expressed I do not know. It must have betrayed my feelings, for I was off my guard. Her face was as the page of a book suddenly opened. I read it without losing the meaning of a word. There was a painful sequel to this.

The husband of Mrs. Dexter, as if he had started from the ground, confronted me on the instant. Which way he came--whether he had followed me, or advanced by an opposite direction, I know not. But there he stood, and his flashing eyes read both of our unveiled faces. The expression of his countenance was almost fiendish.

"I pa.s.sed on, without pause or start. Nothing more than the answering glances he had seen was betrayed. But the consequences were final. It was on that day that Mrs. Dexter left her husband, never again to hold with him any communication. I have scarcely dared permit myself to imagine what transpired on that occasion. The outrage on his part must have been extreme, or the desperate alternative of abandonment would never have been taken by such a woman.