The Maid of Maiden Lane by Amelia E. Barr (free novels to read TXT) 📗

that are past, and I shall never forget our friendship. I grieve at your going away; I pray that your absence may bring you some consolation. Do not, I beg you, attempt to call on my father. Without explanations, I tell you very sincerely, such a call will cause me great trouble; for you know well a girl must trust somewhat to others’ judgment in her disposal. It gives me more pain than I can say to write in this mood, but necessity permits me no kinder words. I want you to be sure that the wrench, the “No” here is absolute. My dear friend, pity rather than blame me; and I will be so unselfish as to hope you may not think so kindly of me as to be cruel to yourself. Please to consider your letter as never written, it is the greatest kindness you can do me; and, above all, I beg you will not take my father into your confidence. With a sad sense of the pain my words must cause you, I remain for all time your faithful friend and obedient servant, CORNELIA MORAN.

Then she rang for a lighted candle, and while waiting for its arrival neatly folded her letters. Her white wax and seal were at hand, and she delayed the servant until she had closed and addressed them.

“You will take Lieutenant Hyde’s letter first,” she said; “and make no delay about it, for it is very important. Mr. Van Ariens’ note you can deliver as you return.”

As soon as this business was quite out of her hands, she sank with a happy sigh into a large comfortable chair; let her arms drop gently, and closed her eyes to think over what she had done. She was quite satisfied. She was sure that no length of reflection could have made her decide differently. She had Hyde’s letter in her bosom, and she pressed her hand against it, and vowed to her heart that he was worthy of her love, and that he only should have it. As for Rem, she had a decided feeling of annoyance, almost of fear, as he entered her mind. She was angry that he had chosen that day to urge his unwelcome suit, and thus thrust his personality into Hyde’s special hour.

“He always makes himself unwelcome,” she thought, “he ever has the way to come when he was least wanted; but Joris! Oh there is nothing I would alter in him, even at the cost of a wish! JORIS! JORIS!” and she let the dear name sweeten her lips, while the light of love brightened and lengthened her eyes, and spread over her lovely face a blushing glow.

After a while she rose up and adorned herself for her lover’s visit. And when she entered the parlor Mrs. Moran looked at her with a little wonder. For she had put on with her loveliest gown a kind of bewildering prettiness. There was no cloud in her eyes, only a glow of soft dark fire. Her soul was in her face, it spoke in her bright glances, her sweet smiles, and her light step; it softened her speech to music, it made her altogether so delightful that her mother thought “Fortune must give her all she wishes, she is so charming.”

The tea tray was brought in at five o’clock, but Doctor Moran had not returned, and there was in both women’s hearts a little sense of disappointment. Mrs. Moran was wondering at his unusual delay, Cornelia feared he would be too weary and perhaps, too much interested in other matters to permit her lover to speak. “But even so,” she thought, “Joris can come again. To-night is not the only opportunity.”

It was nearly seven o’clock when the doctor came, and Cornelia was sure her lover would not be much behind that hour; but tea time was ever a good time to her father, he was always amiable and gracious with a cup in his hand, and the hour after it when his pipe kept him company, was his best hour. She told her heart that things had fallen out better than if she had planned them so; and she was so thoughtful for the weary man’s comfort, so attentive and so amusing, that he found it easy to respond to the happy atmosphere surrounding him. He had a score of pleasant things to tell about the fashionable exodus to Philadelphia, about the handsome dresses that had been shown him, and the funny household dilemmas that had been told him. And he was much pleased because Harry De Lancey had been a great part of the day with him, and was very eloquent indeed about the young man’s good sense and good disposition, and the unnecessary, and almost cruel, confiscation of property his family had suffered, for their Tory principles.

And in the midst of the De Lancey lamentation, seven o’clock struck and Cornelia began to listen for the shutting of the garden gate, and the sound of Hyde’s step upon the flagged walk. It did not come as soon as she hoped it would, and the minutes went slowly on until eight struck. Then the doctor was glooming and nodding, and waking up and saying a word or two, and relapsing again into semi-unconsciousness. She felt that the favourable hour had passed, and now the minutes went far too quickly. Why did he net come? With her work in her hand-making laborious stitches by a drawn thread—she sat listening with all her being. The street itself was strangely silent, no one passed, and the fitful talk at the fireside seemed full of fatality; she could feel the influence, though she did not inquire of her heart what it was, of what it might signify.

Half-past eight! She looked up and caught her mother’s eyes, and the trouble and question in them, and the needle going through the fine muslin, seemed to go through her heart. At nine the watching became unbearable. She said softly “I must go to bed. I am tired;” but she put away with her usual neatness her work, and her spools of thread, her thimble and her scissors. Her movement in the room roused the doctor thoroughly. He stood up, stretched his arms outward and upward, and said “he believed he had been sleeping, and must ask their pardon for his indifference.” And then he walked to the window and looking out added “It is a lovely night but the moon looks like storm. Oh!”—and he turned quickly with the exclamation—“I forgot to tell you that I heard a strange report to-day, nothing less than that General Hyde returned on the Mary Pell this morning, bringing with him a child.”

“A child!” said Mrs. Moran.

“A girl, then, a little mite of a creature. Mrs. Davy told me the Captain carried her in his arms to the carriage which took them to Hyde Manor.”

“And how should Mrs. Davy know?”

“The Davys live next door to the Pells, and the servants of one house carried the news to the other house. She said the General sent to his son’s lodging to see if he was in town, but he was not. It was then only eight o’clock in the morning.”

“How unlikely such a story is! Do you believe it?”

“Ask to-morrow. As for me, I neither know nor care. That is the report. Who can tell what the Hydes will do?”

Then Cornelia said a hasty “good-night” and went to her room. She was sick at heart; she trembled, something in her life had lost its foot-hold, and a sudden bewildering terror—she knew not how to explain—took possession of her. For once she forgot her habitual order and neatness; her pretty dress was thrown heedlessly across a chair, and she fell upon her