She laughed now as she pictured the scene that would be enacted. But
suddenly the laugh died on her lips, as there flashed across her mind
the words Jessie had said. Stafford was engaged to Maude Falconer, the
girl up at the Villa, whose beauty and grace and wealth all the dale
was talking of.
Oh, God! Was there any truth in it, was there any truth in it? Had
Stafford, indeed, written that cruel letter? Had he left her forever,
forever, forever? Should she never see him again, never again hear him
tell her that he loved her, would always love her?
The room spun round with her, she suddenly felt sick and faint, and,
reeling, caught at the carved mantel-shelf to prevent herself from
falling. Then gradually the death-like faintness passed, and she became
conscious that her father's voice was calling to her, and she clasped
her head again and swept the hair from her forehead, and clenched her
hands in the effort to gain her presence of mind and self-command.
She picked up the letter, and, with a shudder, thrust it in her bosom,
as Cleopatra might have thrust the asp which was to destroy her; then
with leaden feet, she crossed the hall and opened the library door, and
saw her father standing by the table clutching some papers in one hand,
and gesticulating wildly with the other. Dizzily, for there seemed to
be a mist before her eyes, she went to him and laid a hand upon his
arm.
"What is it, father?" she said, "Are you ill? What is the matter?"
He gazed at her vacantly and struck his hand on the table, after the
manner of a child in a senseless passion.
"Lost! Lost! All lost!" he mumbled, jumbling the words together almost
incoherently.
"What is lost, father?" she asked.
"Everything, everything!" he cried, in the same manner. "I can't
remember, can't remember! It's ruin, utter ruin! My head--I can't
think, can't remember! Lost, lost!"
In her terror, she put her young arm round him as a mother encircles
her child in the delirium of fever.
"Try and tell me, father!" she implored him. "Try and be calm, dearest!
Tell me, and I will help you. What is lost?"
He tried to struggle from her arms, tried to push her from him.
"You know!" he mumbled. "You've watched me--you know the truth!
Everything is lost! I am ruined! The mortgage! Herondale will pass
away! I am a poor man, a very poor man! Have pity on me, have pity on
me!"