peace until he should be permitted to speak. [66] And now, what would happen? What was likely to be the result upon Monica of the inevitable disclosure? Would it not seem to her as if the first act of her husband, on succeeding to the family estate, was to banish from it the one being for whom she had so often bespoken his protection and brotherly care? Might she not fancy that he was in some way the originator of the scheme? Might she not be acute enough to see that but for him it never could have been carried out, owing to lack of necessary funds? Her father might have approved it, but he could not have forwarded it as Randolph was able to do. Might it not seem to her that he was trying to rid himself of an [67]unwelcome burden, and to isolate his wife from all whom she loved best? He could not forget some of the words she had spoken not very long after their marriage. Practically those words had been rescinded by what had followed, but that could hardly be so in this case. Monica’s heart clung round Arthur with a passionate, yearning tenderness, that was one of the main-springs of her existence. What would she say to those who had banded together to take the boy from her? [67] Randolph’s pre-occupation and gravity were not lost upon Monica, but she had no clue to their real cause. She felt that there was something in it of which she was ignorant, and there was a sort of sadness and constraint even in the suspicion of such a thing. She was unnerved and [68]miserable, and, although, she well knew she had not merited her husband’s full confidence, it hurt her keenly to feel that it was withheld from her. [68] Evening came on, a wild, melancholy stormy evening—is there anything more sad and dreary than a midsummer storm? It does not come with the wild, resistless might of a winter tempest, sweeping triumphantly along, carrying all before it in the exuberance of its power. It is a sad, subdued, moaning creature, full of eerie sounds of wailing and regret, not wrapped in darkness, but cloaked in misty twilight, grey and ghostlike—a pale, sorrowful, mysterious thing, that seems to know itself altogether out of place, and is haunted by its own melancholy and dreariness. [69] [69] It was in the fast waning light of such a summer’s evening that the portals of Trevlyn opened to welcome Monica again.
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