John Marchmont's Legacy. Volume 2 of 3

"Yes," she said; "I will come."

"Don't be long, then. It will be dark very soon. I am not going down there to paint; I am going to fetch a landscape that I want to hang in my mother's room, and to say a few words about – "

He closed the door without stopping to finish the sentence, and went out into the quadrangle.

Ten minutes afterwards Olivia Marchmont rose, and taking a heavy woollen shawl from a chair near her, wrapped it loosely about her head and shoulders.

"I am his slave and his prisoner," she muttered to herself. "I must do as he bids me."

A cold wind was blowing in the quadrangle, and the stone pavement was wet with a drizzling rain. The sun had just gone down, and the dull autumn sky was darkening. The fallen leaves in the wood were sodden with damp, and rotted slowly on the swampy ground.

Olivia took her way mechanically along the narrow pathway leading to the river. Half-way between Marchmont Towers and the boat-house she came suddenly upon the figure of a man walking towards her through the dusk. This man was Edward Arundel.

The two cousins had not met since the March evening upon which Edward had gone to seek the widow in Paul Marchmont's painting-room. Olivia's pale face grew whiter as she recognised the soldier.

"I was coming to the house to speak to you, Mrs. Marchmont," Edward said sternly. "I am lucky in meeting you here, for I don't want any one to overhear what I've got to say."

He had turned in the direction in which Olivia had been walking; but she made a dead stop, and stood looking at him.

"You were going to the boat-house," he said. "I will go there with you."

She looked at him for a moment, as if doubtful what to do, and then said, "Very well. You can say what you have to say to me, and then leave me. There is no sympathy between us, there is no regard between us; we are only antagonists."

"I hope not, Olivia. I hope there is some spark of regard still, in spite of all. I separate you in my own mind from Paul Marchmont. I pity you; for I believe you to be his tool."

"Is this what you have to say to me?"

"No; I came here, as your kinsman, to ask you what you mean to do now that Paul Marchmont has taken possession of the Towers?"

"I mean to stay there."

"In spite of the gossip that your remaining will give rise to amongst these country-people!"

"In spite of everything. Mr. Marchmont wishes me to stay. It suits me to stay. What does it matter what people say of me? What do I care for any one's opinion – now?"

"Olivia," cried the young man, "are you mad?"

"Perhaps I am," she answered, coldly.

"Why is it that you shut yourself from the sympathy of those who have a right to care for you? What is the mystery of your life?"

His cousin laughed bitterly.

"Would you like to know, Edward Arundel?" she said. "You shall know, perhaps, some day. You have despised me all my life; you will despise me more then."

They had reached Paul Marchmont's painting-room by this time. Olivia opened the door and walked in, followed by Edward. Paul was not there. There was a picture covered with green-baize upon the easel, and the artist's hat stood upon the table amidst the litter of brushes and palettes; but the room was empty. The door at the top of the stone steps leading to the pavilion was ajar.

"Have you anything more to say to me?" Olivia asked, turning upon her cousin as if she would have demanded why he had followed her.

"Only this: I want to know your determination; whether you will be advised by me – and by your father, – I saw my uncle Hubert this morning, and his opinion exactly coincides with mine, – or whether you mean obstinately to take your own course in defiance of everybody?"

"I do," Olivia answered. "I shall take my own course. I defy everybody. I have not been gifted with the power of winning people's affection. Other women possess that power, and trifle with it, and turn it to bad account. I have prayed, Edward Arundel, – yes, I have prayed upon my knees to the God who made me, that He would give me some poor measure of that gift which Nature has lavished upon other women; but He would not hear me, He would not hear me! I was not made to be loved. Why, then, should I make myself a slave for the sake of winning people's esteem? If they have despised me, I can despise them."

"Who has despised you, Olivia?" Edward asked, perplexed by his cousin's manner.

"YOU HAVE!" she cried, with flashing eyes; "you have! From first to last – from first to last!" She turned away from him impatiently. "Go," she said; "why should we keep up a mockery of friendliness and cousinship? We are nothing to each other."

Edward walked towards the door; but he paused upon the threshold, with his hat in his hand, undecided as to what he ought to do.

As he stood thus, perplexed and irresolute, a cry, the feeble cry of a child, sounded within the pavilion.

The young man started, and looked at his cousin. Even in the dusk he could see that her face had suddenly grown livid.

"There is a child in that place," he said pointing to the door at the top of the steps.

The cry was repeated as he spoke, – the low, complaining wail of a child. There was no other voice to be heard, – no mother's voice soothing a helpless little one. The cry of the child was followed by a dead silence.

"There is a child in that pavilion," Edward Arundel repeated.

"There is," Olivia answered.

"Whose child?"

"What does it matter to you?"

"Whose child?"

"I cannot tell you, Edward Arundel."

The soldier strode towards the steps, but before he could reach them, Olivia flung herself across his pathway.

"I will see whose child is hidden in that place," he said. "Scandalous things have been said of you, Olivia. I will know the reason of your visits to this place."

She clung about his knees, and hindered him from moving; half kneeling, half crouching on the lowest of the stone steps, she blocked his pathway, and prevented him from reaching the door of the pavilion. It had been ajar a few minutes ago; it was shut now. But Edward had not noticed this.

"No, no, no!" shrieked Olivia; "you shall trample me to death before you enter that place. You shall walk over my corpse before you cross that threshold."

The young man struggled with her for a few moments; then he suddenly flung her from him; not violently, but with a contemptuous gesture.

"You are a wicked woman, Olivia Marchmont," he said; "and it matters very little to me what you do, or what becomes of you. I know now the secret of the mystery between you and Paul Marchmont. I can guess your motive for perpetually haunting this place."

He left the solitary building by the river, and walked slowly back through the wood.

His mind – predisposed to think ill of Olivia by the dark rumours he had heard through his servant, and which had had a certain amount of influence upon him, as all scandals have, however baseless – could imagine only one solution to the mystery of a child's presence in the lonely building by the river. Outraged and indignant at the discovery he had made, he turned his back upon Marchmont Towers.

"I will stay in this hateful place no longer," he thought, as he went back to his solitary home; "but before I leave Lincolnshire the whole county shall know what I think of Paul Marchmont."

END OF VOL. II