CHAPTER X.

_HOW ADELE RECEIVES THE DISCLOSURE._

The woman who loves should indeed Be the friend of the man that she loves. She should heed Not her selfish and often mistaken desires, But his interest whose fate her own interest inspires.

And this, then, was the awakening? Like almost every thing in this wayward world of ours, it scarcely chimed in with the ideas and plans that had been formed concerning it.

Adele had often mourned her cousin's frivolity, but she was young and hopeful. He was only a boy, she had told herself. Some of the great things in the world--its art, its literature, its science, the grand sphere of politics or the grander field of benevolence--would sooner or later throw chains about his spirit, so that, following where it led, he too, with herself perhaps as a twin attendant star, like the "Laon and Laone" of Shelley, might take a place in the poet's divine temple of genius, and live a life not utterly in vain in its influences on humanity.

She had even thought to arouse him herself, that by love he might rise, as others had done before him, to something higher than the fashionable life of self-pleasing. But of this she had never thought--that love indeed, but the love of another woman, should be the motive-power rousing his soul to earnestness. For she could not be mistaken. The change that had come to him--which change, she could not but remember as she cast her thoughts over the past few days, had dated from that memorable afternoon at the Academy--the impressive way in which he had told her of his thought, the quiet earnestness of his manner, all tended to the revelation of a fact--one that she would have put away indignantly had she not been forced to look it in the face. Arthur was in love, and not with her.

The beautiful woman whom in her youthful enthusiasm she had admired--loved even for her very loveliness--had won her cousin's heart. He loved Margaret Grey as he had never loved her, his cousin, the friend of his youth and childhood: with _her_ he had remained a boy; her beautiful rival had roused the dormant fire within him, and suddenly the boy had put on his manhood.

These were some of the thoughts that crowded bewilderingly on Adele's brain as they sat together on the sofa--she and her cousin--with his strange confession between them. _He_ was waiting to hear what she would say; _she_ was for the first few moments unable to speak. On the table before them lay the forgotten volume of the _Faerie Queene_; at their feet, in sweet confusion, were the scattered flowers fallen from Adele's lap. She sat perfectly still, her hands crossed and her eyes cast down; he looked at her with some earnestness, and perhaps a little surprise.

Arthur's affection for Adele was of a calm, brotherly kind, and he had always imagined that she cared for him in very much the same manner.

Hitherto, indeed, he had not been in a position to gauge the heights and depths of that mysterious, volatile essence which young mortals dignify by the fair name of love. But now, with this new light in his own heart, he was better able to understand his cousin's, and in her downcast face he thought he read her secret.

It made him tender instantly. Young men and old men are alike in this. Whether loving or not themselves, they are pleased when they find out, by indubitable signs, that they have inspired the sentiment; and this knowledge makes them, for the moment, strangely gentle and sympathetic.

Arthur drew nearer to his cousin, and put his arm around her waist. To his surprise again, she pushed his arm gently aside.

"Not now, dear Arthur!" she said, in a soft, clear voice, lifting her blue eyes to his face; "I want you to tell me all about it."

"About what?" said Arthur, somewhat taken aback at the result of his impulsive frankness.

"Your love for Margaret Grey," she said gently, but not without a faint tremor in her voice.

"Did I say I _loved_ her, Adele?" It was Arthur's turn to speak with a trembling voice and flushed face, but these told his tale only too eloquently.

"Not in so many words," replied Adele; "but, dear, you have revealed your secret, and I am glad. It was like yourself, Arthur--frank and true. I might have guessed it before, for she is beautiful as a dream, like the lady Una; and I can imagine so well how a man's heart would go out to that kind of sadness and helplessness. I wish I had been a man;" Adele sighed as she spoke; "but, perhaps, as a woman I shall be able to help you more. Strange--isn't it?--I was thinking of her, her face haunted me so, and longing to find out more about her--all for her own sake; now I will do it for yours."

The words were spoken very quietly and with a certain determination, that Arthur found it very difficult to understand.

"But, Adele," he stammered out, "you forget--"

"That you and I are betrothed in a kind of way--is that what you mean? Thank you for thinking of it; but I should be grieved for _that_ to stand in your way." She smiled a rather watery smile. "I promised not to be like Vivien, so, rather than make a prison of my spells, I shall cast them all to the winds." Then, more gravely, "We were too young, Arthur--I told my mother so--too young to know our own minds, as people say--at least you were." Here Adele stopped suddenly; she was on the point of betraying the secret which--brave little maiden!--she thought she had preserved so well. But her calmness had reassured Arthur.

"You are right, Adele," he answered gravely--and for the moment, with the unreasoning impulse of womanhood, she hated him for his quick acquiescence--"we were both too young; we had seen too little of the world; and even now I scarcely know how we ought to act. Our engagement has been announced; then my aunt--"

Adele smiled faintly: "It will be best to say nothing to mamma at present, nor to anybody; we can surely be what we have been to one another--brother and sister; we have never been more--we could not wish to be less."

There was a tinge of bitterness in Adele's voice as she said the last words, but the ears of very young men, when not quickened by any stronger feeling than brotherly affection, are not swift to catch these slight intonations.

"You must let me be your friend and confidante, Arthur," she continued more gently; "I shall still like to be the first to know everything that nearly concerns you."

Her gentleness touched Arthur. He took one of her hands in his: "You shall always be what you are to me, Adele--my dearest friend and counsellor. I shall come to you for advice and sympathy."

She rose, and stooping began to collect the fallen flowers--a pretext only, for the tears were beginning to force their way to her eyes, and she was determined to show no weakness in her cousin's presence.

"My poor flowers!" she said lightly, "they have been forgotten: go and fetch another vase from the breakfast-room, like a good old fellow. I have filled all here, and I want these up stairs."

By the time her cousin had returned with the vase Adele was herself again. Grouping the flowers delicately, with clever fingers well accustomed to this kind of work, she began her gentle catechism: "Have you seen her again, Arthur?"

Perhaps it was a relief to him to unburden himself, to pour out to another the torrent of self-condemnation that had been oppressing him.

"Don't ask me, Adele," he said, pacing the room excitedly. "I am a wretch--a fool--an idiot! I mistook _her_--think of it! I wonder will she ever be able to bear the sight of me again? I took the advice of a villain, who knows nothing whatever about women like her."

"What _can_ you mean, Arthur?" broke in Adele, whose flowers had fallen from her hands in her astonishment.

He did not seem to hear the interruption. "I did knowingly what I knew would offend her," he continued, clenching his fists and drawing his brows together, as though challenging himself for his misconduct.

Adele sighed: "I _wish_ you would explain yourself, dear."

"Explain myself!" Arthur came suddenly down from the heroic with a little laugh: "Ah, yes, by the bye, you don't know, and really it's not a very creditable story. Well--to make a clean breast of it--I went to the Academy yesterday. _She_ was there, and I had the happiness of seeing her. She didn't see me, but while I was looking at her with feelings that you can imagine, Captain Mordaunt came up behind me."

"Not at all a good companion for you, dear," interrupted Adele with the wise air of a little mother, but blushing, girl like, as she spoke, for Captain Mordaunt was an admirer of hers: he had once or twice seized a quiet opportunity of looking into her blue eyes in a way that offended as much as it bewildered her. "Please have nothing to do with him, Arthur," she continued pleadingly.

"Why, Adele, what have you against Captain Mordaunt? I thought you had only met him once or twice."

"That once or twice was enough. He is one of those men who believe in nothing good, who seem to delight in the wickedness of the world. I always think such people must be particularly bad themselves. But it's no use reasoning about it. I dislike Captain Mordaunt."

"A case, in fact, of 'I do not like you, Doctor Fell,'" put in Arthur provokingly. "I shall send him to you when he wants a character, Adele; but, do you know, amongst ladies your opinion would be considered rather singular? I certainly have never been able to see what they find to admire in him."

"Nor I, and I must say I pity their taste; he's ugly and conceited. But what did he say about her--Margaret Grey, I mean?"

Arthur's manner grew excited again: "What he said was not so bad as what he implied with his odious hints. I was idiot enough to listen to him, to believe him partially. I disobeyed her, Adele, and called on her in that wretched place at Islington."

Adele looked up bewildered: "But I can't see why that should offend her. Of course you were never properly introduced, but then the circumstances were peculiar, and she must have seen that we were tolerably respectable people."

"What a simple, innocent little girl you are, Adele!" said Arthur rather grandly. "You see what I say is quite true--with all your romantic notions you know nothing whatever of the world. I can't very well explain, as you don't seem to understand; but, anyway, what I did was very stupid and wrong, and she showed me that in a moment. Oh, if I could tell you how she looked--so beautiful, so sad!"

The remembrance was overpowering. Arthur hid his burning face in both his hands, and Adele was silent. To her pure young heart this passion, which an older and more experienced woman would certainly have laughed to scorn, was a sacred thing.

"She forgave me," he continued after a pause. "She said I would soon _forget_ the infatuation."

There was a mournful incredulity in the boy's voice to which the young girl's heart responded. That he could ever _forget_ the infatuation seemed, for the moment, as impossible to one cousin as to the other.

Neither of them spoke for some minutes, then Adele raised to her cousin a face that was streaming with tears. "I can't help it, Arthur," she said simply, "and please don't think it's for myself. I have everything to make me happy. I was thinking of you and of her. You know they say women's wits are sharper than men's in these matters. I will try and help you in some way, for you _must_ meet her again, dear; but just now everything seems confused. Mamma expects you to dinner, so you had better go home at once and dress. I can easily arrange for a quiet talk in the course of the evening, and then perhaps I shall have thought of some plan, for we must lose no time, as I know she is only staying temporarily in London."

She said it all in a broken way through the tears she could not keep back. He tried to kiss her then, but she slipped out of his arms.

Poor child! The aching at her heart was too great to be borne any longer. She finished her cry in her own room, but what she had said was true--it was not all for herself.

The beautiful lonely stranger and her cousin's passion, which her woman's insight told her was not very hopeful, had their share in causing her sorrow. She could not indulge long, however, in the luxury of tears. She too had to make her dinner-toilet, and that evening her mother was not the only person at the dinner-table who thought she looked even fairer than usual.