CHAPTER XXXI.

THE OLD LAKE HOUSE.

The park at "Norston's Rest" was divided by a swift stream that flowed into it from the distant uplands, separating the highly cultivated portions from the wilderness. Jessup's cottage was within the pleasure grounds, but its upper windows overlooked a small but deep lake, formed by a ravine, and the hollows of a rocky ledge, which made an almost bottomless gulf, into which the mountain stream emptied itself, and after losing half its volume in some underground outlet glided off down the valley.

Nothing could be more wild and picturesque than this little lake, embosomed, as it was, with thrifty evergreens, fine old trees, and rocks, to which the ivy clung in luxuriant draperies. At its outlet, where the sun shone most of the day, wild hyacinths and mats of blue violets empurpled the banks before they appeared in any other place, and a host of summer flowers kept up the blossom season sometimes long after leaf-fall. Near this spot, the brightest of all the wilderness, stood an old summer-house, built by some former lord of "The Rest." Jessup had trained wild roses among the ivy that completely matted the old building together, and around its base had allowed the lush grasses to grow uncut, casting their seed, year by year, until the most thrifty reached to the balustrades of a wooden balcony that partly overhung the lake in its deepest part.

Nothing could be more picturesque than this old building, when the moon shone down upon and kindled up the waters beneath it, with a brightness more luminous than silver. The shivering ivy, the flickering shadows of a great tree, that drooped long, protecting branches over it, formed a picture that any artist would have got up at midnight to look upon. Still a more practical man might have pronounced its old timbers unsafe, and its position, half perched on a bank, with its balcony over the water, dangerous as it was picturesque.

Be this as it may, two persons stood within this building, after eleven o'clock at night, revealed by the same moon that looked down on those two wounded men, now struggling for life in the proud old mansion and the humble cottage. It was curved like the blade of a sickle then. Now, its rounded fulness flooded the whole wilderness, breaking up its darkness into massive shadows, all the blacker from contrast with the struggling illumination.

The waterfall at the head of the lake was so far off that its noise gave no interruption to the voices of these two persons when they met, for Storms had arrived earlier than the girl, and lay apparently asleep on one of the fixed seats, when Judith Hart came in, breathless with fast walking, and gave forth sharp expletives of disappointment when she supposed the summer-house empty.

"Not here. The wretch--the coward! I knew it--I knew it! He never meant to come. Does he think I will trapse all this way, and wait for him? If I do, may I--Ha!"

The girl stopped at the door, through which she was angrily repassing, with the invective cut short on her lips.

"Hallo! Is it you, Judith? I began to think you wasn't coming, and dropped asleep. But, upon my soul, I was dreaming about you all the time."

"Here you are!" said the girl, coming slowly back. "How was one to know--lying there like a log? That isn't the way one expects to be met after a walk like this!"

"Why, what's the matter? The walk is just nothing for an active girl like you, but I hope you had no trouble in getting out."

"I've had trouble in everything; nothing but trouble, since I first knew you, and I've just come to tell you, that, according to my idea, you are a treasonable, traitorous--"

"Judith Hart!"

"Cut that off short. I come here to have my say, and nothing more. From this night out you and I are two. Remember that. I'm not to be taken in a second time."

Storms arose from the bench, and shook himself, as if he had really been asleep.

"What on earth are you grumbling about, Judith Hart? What has a fellow been doing since nightfall that you come down upon him with a crash like this, after keeping him on the wait in this damp hole till his limbs are stiff as ramrods!"

"They'll be stiffer before I'm fool enough to believe you again, you may be sure of that."

"Hoity-toity! What's the row? Who has forgotten to fee the barmaid, I wonder? Or is it that the mistress begins to suspect that there has been more stealing out than she knows of, or I either?"

The young man said this in a half-jeering tone, that drove the girl wild.

"You say that! You dare to say that!" drawing her wrathful face close to his, till both their evil countenances were defined by the moonlight. "I tell you now that such words are as much as your life is worth."

Storms laughed, sunk both hands into the pockets of his velveteen jacket, and laughed again, leaning against the wall of the old summer-house.

"There, there, Judith! Enough of that! I don't want to be tempted into doing you a harm; far from it. But neither man nor woman must threaten Dick Storms. No one but a lass he is sweet upon would dare do it."

"Dare! I like that!"

"But I don't like it. Once for all, tell me what this is all about."

"You know, as well as I do, that it is everywhere about that you were plighted to the girl up yonder when her father was hurt."

"But you know that there isn't a word of truth in it."

"Not true! Not true! Oh, Richard, I have seen with my own eyes."

Judith lifted her finger threateningly, and shook it close to the young man's face.

"Well, what have you seen?" questioned Dick, a little hoarsely; and even in the moonlight the girl could detect a slow pallor stealing over his face.

"I have been at the inn yonder longer than you know of," she said. "This isn't the first time I've been in the park at night."

He started back a pace, then turned upon her. The cunning of his nature rose uppermost; he spoke to her low and earnestly.

"Then you must know that I don't want the lass, and wouldn't take her at any price, though I don't care to say that."

"Perhaps you deny going to the gardener's cottage at all?"

"No, I don't. Why should I? If you were watching me, so much the better. I wish you had listened to every word I said to her; hating her as you do, it would have done you good, and set all this nonsense at rest."

"But you went?"

"Yes, I went."

"And--and--"

"And told her, then and there, that nothing should force me to wed her. She had set the old man and the young master to nagging me about it. Neither they nor she gave me an hour's peace."

"Oh, Richard! Richard! Is this true?"

"But for my love of you, I might have given in--"

"I don't care that for such love," cried the girl, tearing a leaf of ivy from a spray that had crept through the broken window, and dashing it to the floor. "I want you to love me better than all the world beside. No halving. I want that, and nothing else."

"And haven't you got it? When did you see me walking out with her, or meeting her here like this?"

"She wouldn't come."

"Wouldn't she?"

Storms laughed as he repeated the audacious insinuation, "Wouldn't she?"

Judith threw off her defiant attitude, and the sharp edge left her speech, which became almost appealing.

"Richard Storms! Was it for my sake?"

"I won't answer you; you don't deserve it, suspicioning a fellow like that."

"I am sorry."

"Yes, after pushing me on to--to anything rather than be nagged, at home and up yonder, about wedding the girl, you come here, when I expected a pleasant meeting, with your scolding and threats. It's enough to drive a man into marrying out of hand."

"No, no, Dick! You wouldn't do that."

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"If you ever try this on again, I may. One doesn't stand threats, even from the sweetheart he loves better than everything else--that is, if he is a man worth having." "But I didn't threaten you! I only--"

"Said what you must never say again, if you don't want to see me wedded down in yon church, with a farm of my own, and a fortune waiting, which they are willing to pay down, and ask no questions. A pretty lass pining for me too."

"Pretty! Oh, Richard, this is too bad! You have told me a hundred times that of the two, I was--"

The girl broke off and turned away her face.

"And I have told you the truth, else they would have had me fast before this. Both the young master and the old man were threatening me with the law. You might have heard them."

"No. I was never near enough."

"Well, they did, though; and but for you, I might have given in."

"But you never--never will!"

"So long as you keep quiet, I'll stand out."

"Oh, Richard, no mouse was ever so quiet as I will be. Now, say, was it all for my sake?"

"What else could it be?"

"I don't know. Only it is so strange. And Richard! Richard! I will die before--You understand--I would die rather than harm you."

"That is my own brave lass. Now you are like yourself, and we can part friends--better friends than ever."

"Part! It is not so late."

"But the moon is up, and you will be seen by the village people. They must have no jibes to cast on my wife when you and I are wed."

The girl's eyes flashed in the moonlight, which came broadly through a glass door that led upon the old wooden balcony.

A smile crept over Storms' subtle lips. He was rather proud of his victory over this beautiful Amazon. The brilliant loveliness of her face in the softening light was so like that of Ruth Jessup, that he astonished the handsome virago by taking her head between his hands, and kissing her with something like tenderness.

His heart recoiled from this caress the next moment, as the prodigal son may have loathed the husks he eat, when he was famishing for corn; but Judith sat down upon the hard wooden seat, and covering her face with both hands, broke into a passion of delicious tears.

This outbreak of tenderness annoyed the young man, who was hating himself for this apostacy from the only pure feeling that had ever ennobled his heart, and he said, almost rudely, "Come, come, there is nothing to cry about; I am sorry, that's all."

"Sorry!" repeated the girl, lifting her happy, tearful face into the moonlight. "Ah, well, I will go home, now. Good-night, if you will not go with me a little way."

"We must not be seen together," answered Richard, opening the door for her to pass out; "only remember, I have trusted you."

The girl went to the door, hesitated a moment, and stepped back.

"Will you kiss me again, Richard? It shall be the seal of what I promised."

"Don't be foolish, girl," said Dick, stooping his head that she might kiss him. "You women are all alike; give them an inch and they will take an ell. There, there; good-night."

Storms stood behind the half-open door, and watched the barmaid as she took the little path which led to the postern gate which Ruth had used on the morning of her wedding-day. A key to this gate had been intrusted to the young man, and he had duplicated it for the girl who had just left him.

When Judith was quite beyond his vision, Storms retired back into the summer-house, and examined it with strange scrutiny. There was but one window, a single sash that opened into the balcony, answering for a second door, which was quite sufficient to light the little apartment. Through this window the moonlight fell like a square block of marble, barred with shadows. To Storms it took the form of a tombstone lying at his feet, and he stepped back with a sort of horror, as if some evil thought of his had hardened into stone which he dared not tread upon; going cautiously around it, and gliding along the wall, but with his eyes turned that way, he escaped from the building.