CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

A FAITHFUL SERVANT.

When Amethyst found herself, with a shock of surprise, in Sylvester's presence, her first thought was that he had come to plead the cause of Lucian Leigh, and there was a certain distance in her tone as she said--

"Mr Riddell!"

"Miss Haredale," said Sylvester, standing up before her, "I have come to beg you not to marry Sir Richard Grattan. Forgive me--forgive me. I am so beyond defence on any ground but one, that no beating about the bush will soften my actions. I love you, therefore I understand you. Your heart is not in this marriage. If you give away your freedom, all the best part of you will die. I am pleading for no one, not for myself nor for Lucian. Oh, don't deny your heart--your soul--don't do this thing."

His voice was full of such strong vibration, though he spoke low, his eyes so full of passionate purpose, the astonishment at his words was so great, that Amethyst stood looking at him for a moment, with wide-open eyes and parted lips. He took courage and went on--

"I know it would be all well enough for some women. I know how often it is done. But it is not right for you--not for you. That which you defy--you don't think it is your conscience--but it is--it is--it is the Voice of God within you. It is the highest claim that He can make on you." Sylvester came close to her and grasped her hands. In her wide startled eyes, he seemed to read what he must say. Not one thought of himself marred the intensity of his appeal, and she made no attempt to fence with him, forgot how easily, with one conventional word, she could have put him aside. He seized upon her and dominated her, as no one else had ever done.

"I did not think God ever spoke to me," she said.

"Oh yes, He does," answered Sylvester. "I have seen your eyes listen."

"But," said Amethyst, "I don't think you can know. My romance is over. I--till a few days back--I was quite content to marry him. He is quite good. And I am almost bound. It would do such dreadful harm to draw back. It would be wrong just to follow a feeling--a fear--"

"No, no!" cried Sylvester. "Ten thousand times--no! If so, every martyr, every patriot, who followed his highest instincts, regardless of old ties, every soul that had to save itself at any price, every one who has cut off the right hand, put out the right eye, has been wrong. Oh, the right hand, the right eye, are always so good. There is so much to be said for them! You can make out so good a case! Oh, you are so young, you seem but a child, you don't know really what you are doing. You think of your duty to others. No one has taught you your duty to yourself."

"Oh," said Amethyst, with a sort of sad dignity, "I know much more about it all than you think." She moved a little away from him, and sat down, then presently went on speaking out her thoughts. Sylvester seemed to her almost like an incarnation of the opposing force within her.

"I don't think it was wrong as I was--at least for some people there does not seem anything very right. Your father said I was to try for the least wrong--the rather better."

"Yes," said Sylvester, "the least wrong--the most right _for you_!"

"Then--something came over me. It all went flat. Then, you came and told me Lucian was coming back--and--and--I found out in another way, that if--if he brought back my feelings--I could and I would fight it all through--and _nothing_ would stand against me. But oh--the feelings are all gone. I've forgotten him! So my feelings can't be worth much, and--and there doesn't seem enough to fight about--to give it all up and condemn myself and my sisters to a bad, miserable life--oh, so many degradations!"

"Lucian knows now how deeply he offended you," said Sylvester, swerving a little from his point, so much did he care what her feelings were.

"It's not that. It is that I have changed. But I--I couldn't wrong _him_. I couldn't marry _him_ for--for an _establishment_!"

The last word burst out as if in quotation marks, with a passionate accent of self-contempt and scorn.

"What I want to say is," said Sylvester, "don't wrong yourself. Listen!--I believe in counsels of perfection. I don't judge all the women who have married as you say, and been good and saint-like and self-denying, for other people's sake. But you--you hear another Voice. Even for your sisters' sake--listen to it."

Amethyst turned away, and hid her face against the back of her chair. She was not crying,--but a sense of being overwhelmed was coming upon her. The situation was beginning to make itself felt.

"When one has no feelings," she said, after a minute--"neither religious nor any others--there is nothing left but doing right."

"There _is_ that left," he answered, coming nearer. Another silence, then she faltered out--

"Of course--I haven't got my eyes shut. I do know all you mean--what marrying would be.--You think I couldn't expect to be helped to be good afterwards--doing it against my instincts. You think it would be so wrong, that it's worth turning life upside down to stop it--worth _what it will be like, not to do it_?"

"So wrong," said Sylvester, kneeling beside her chair, "that I would rather see you die than do it."

Another pause, then suddenly she stood up, and looked down into his face.

"I will not do it," she said. "I said no one helped me. That's not true. You have done a tremendous thing for me. Thank you!"

She held out her hands, and he put them to his lips; then, as he rose up, the inspiration that had brought him there seemed to die out, and left only trembling human passion in its stead. Nothing more was given him to say. He had really spoken in utter singleness of heart, altogether for her sake. Now, he felt that every word would be for his own.

He murmured an echo of her thanks--looked at her for a moment with white face and shining eyes, and went, without one conventional word of apology, or of parting.

When he got out into the street, he found that he could hardly stand. With an instinct of avoiding notice, he crossed over towards the railing of the square garden, and, finding the gate open, went in and managed to reach a bench close by, and sat there, till his head ceased to swim, and he could see and think clearly once more.

He almost felt as if he were waking from a dream. How could he have faced her with such daring words, and how had she come to listen with so much patience?

If he had saved her, he had done it at a cruel cost. He had not looked into her eyes, and touched her soul, without such growth of the passion within him as made his yearning a living pain, instead of a tender dream, or at least an endurable desire. His love had grown a thousandfold in that short quarter of an hour. And she had listened to him as if he had been a voice in the air! And to what a struggle had he persuaded her!--he who took his own life so easily.

As Sylvester sat musing, he knew that his own words, or the love that had prompted them, had changed himself. He had no need to make any outward change in his life, but he knew, as he got up and walked slowly out of the garden and up the square, that his appeal to Amethyst had bound him to live it in a much more strenuous way.

Amethyst, when he left her, stood still, while a crimson blush spread over face, neck, and arms--a deep glow of shame, the reaction from the utter absence of self-consciousness with which she had listened. She had never thought of Sylvester Riddell, while his eyes were shining into hers, and his voice thrilling into her ears; now she felt as if the eyes and the voice would never leave her. Three times he had been concerned in her fate.

Now, he had told her nothing that she did not know before, but he had given her the impulse to act upon her own inner convictions.

Amethyst was a strong and resolute person, but she shuddered as she thought of the battle that lay before her. She had allowed the brilliant and delightful present to distract her mind from its issues, and to blind her eyes to the vanishing point of all her success. She had been so taken up with interests and amusements, and with the triumph of her beauty, that she had suffered herself to forget the nature of the act to which all was tending, had talked, and thought, and prepared for a worldly marriage, without allowing herself to realise what a marriage without love meant. The pomps and vanities of this wicked world had caught her in their toils.

So she had tied her own hands, and put herself in a false position, entangled herself in all sorts of counter obligations, which must be broken through at the cost of honour and faith.

When she turned round, not five minutes after Sylvester had left her, and saw Sir Richard Grattan coming into the room, she felt that in another five minutes all her power of resistance would be gone. She clasped her hands together behind her back, and stood straight up and waited. Sir Richard's face was disturbed, and not quite that of an eager lover.

"Miss Haredale," he said, in his harsh, full, resolute voice, "I have heard a good deal this morning to surprise me. But I am a man of honour, and in the face of these distressing circumstances, I come to renew the offer I have more than once made you, and I hope for a favourable answer."

"You have laid us under great obligations," said Amethyst, a little more proudly than she would have dared to speak, if he had not referred to his own honour.

"I have acted pretty much with my eyes open, though I did not know of this last--misfortune. I consider it all quite worth my while. It won't be the last time, I dare say, that difficulties may arise, but I considered all that, or most of it, before I began to address you. I don't consider that my credit is in any way affected by other people's conduct. I have acted all through in the hope, the determination to win you, and, as my wife, no annoyances shall be suffered to approach you."

"Sir Richard," said Amethyst, "I wish to tell you the truth. I have been meaning to--to accept your proposals for a long time. Certainly I have given you reason to think I should. I have to tell you that I find, now, that it is utterly impossible. I beg your pardon. I have behaved very ill. But I cannot fulfil my intention."

Sir Richard gave a great start.

"I know what this means," he said abruptly; "some one has come between us. It is your old lover."

"No," said Amethyst, "the truth is your due. I refused Mr Leigh's proposals. I solemnly assure you that you have no rival. There is no one else. I don't prefer any one. But--it is myself. I have found out that I cannot return your feelings--I never told you that I could. And I know now that I could not make you a good wife. If I married only for the sake of outside things, all the good part of me would die out I never--never ought to have entertained the idea."

"I am quite aware," said Sir Richard, somewhat hotly, "that I am not the first in the field, nor the only one. But I was given to understand that your early attachment was entirely at an end."

"It is so. There is no one that I wish to marry." When Amethyst had made this assertion to Lucian Leigh, he had implicitly believed her, but as she raised her eyes to Sir Richard, she saw that he did not think that she was telling the truth. Probably he did not expect truth on such a subject from a young lady. She saw that it would be absolutely hopeless to make him understand the real state of her mind, and a sudden sense of violent recoil came to the aid of her courage.

He was very angry, but he made a strong effort to control himself and to behave well.

"I don't think I have deserved this caprice," he said.

"No, I don't think you have," said Amethyst, "you have offered me much more than I deserve. I have been very wrong; I will not pretend to you that I did not once mean to accept you. But I never shall do so now-- never."

"It would be very unbecoming in me," said Sir Richard, "if I recalled any of the means by which I have endeavoured to recommend myself. Amethyst, don't drive me crazy. Don't you know that I worship you? I will not give you up. I've swallowed everything about your family. I am prepared to make a queen of you. There's nothing my money and your beauty won't command. You shall be the greatest lady, short of royalty, in England in five years' time. You'll take the lead in the county, and with it all, you'll never have reason to be ashamed of your husband. I've a fair square past behind me. My money's honestly come by, and, by heaven, there's a great future before me--and my wife. And I love you."

It was not badly done. It was all true. It was what she had meant her beauty to win for her.

"I can't," she said, turning white, and trembling; "you don't understand what I'm made of. If I loved you, I could be the splendid wife you want, but as I don't--I should hate all that--and very soon I should hate you?"

She spoke low, but in a voice full of passion. His colour rose, and he came close to her side.

"_Who_ is it? Who has come between us?" he said, when there was the sound of a soft sweep and rustle, and Lady Haredale's light sweet voice was heard saying--

"Well, I think you have had time enough to settle it, Sir Richard. Am I to give up my little girl?"