A Canadian Heroine, Volume 3 | Page 5

the matter rests at all with you. I have decided. I am no longer your ally, but your opponent." At this a new element came into play--anger.
He had been rather unreasonable before--now he became utterly so. "A pretty sort of fellow she must think me, after all," he said to himself. "I suppose she'd be afraid to trust Lucia to me now. However, if she thinks I mean to be beaten that way, she'll find that she is mistaken."
He was walking up and down his room, and working himself up into a greater ill-humour with every turn he made.
"If I could only get to Lucia herself," he went on thinking, "I should see if I could not end the matter at once, one way or the other--that fellow is clear out of the way now, and I believe I should have a chance; but as for Mrs. Costello, she seems to think nothing at all of throwing me over whenever it suits her."
Poor Maurice! he sat down to write to his father in a miserable mood--Mr. Beresford had become suddenly and decidedly worse. The doctors said positively that he was dying, and that a few days at the utmost would bring the end. Maurice had stolen away while he slept, but his angry meditation on Mrs. Costello's desertion had taken up so much of his time, that Mr. Leigh's note was short and hurried. Ill-humour prevailed also to the point of the note being finished without any message (he had no time to write separately) to the Cottage.
His packet despatched, he returned to his grandfather's room. Lady Dighton, now staying in the house, sat and watched by the bedside; and by-and-by leaving her post, she joined Maurice by the window and began to talk to him in a low voice. There was no fear of disturbing the invalid; his sleep continued, deep and lethargic, the near forerunner of death.
"Maurice," Lady Dighton said, "I wish you would go out for an hour. You are not really wanted here, and you look worn out."
"Thank you, I am all right. My grandfather might wake and miss me."
"Go for a little while. Half an hour's gallop would do you good."
Maurice laughed impatiently.
"Why should I want doing good to? It is you, I should think, who ought to go out."
"I was out yesterday. Are you still anxious about your father and Canada?"
Lady Dighton's straightforward question meant to be answered.
"Yes," Maurice said rather crossly. "I am anxious and worried."
"You can do no good by writing?"
"I seem to do harm. Don't talk to me about it, Louisa. Nothing but my being there could have done any good, and now it is most likely too late."
She saw plainly enough the fight that was going on--impatience, eagerness, selfishness of a kind, on one side--duty and compassion on the other. She had no scruple about seeing just as much of her cousin's humour as his looks and manner could tell her, and she perceived that at the moment it was anything but a good or heroic one. She thought it possible that it would have been a relief to him to have struck, or shaken, or even kicked something or somebody; and yet she was not at all tempted to think the worse of him. She did not understand, of course, the late aggravations of his trouble; but she knew that he loved loyally and thought his love in danger, and she gave him plenty of sympathy, whatever that might be worth. She had obtained a considerable amount of influence over him, and used it, in general, for his good. At present he was in rather an unmanageable mood, but still she did not mean to let him escape her.
"He looks dreadfully worried, poor boy!" she said to herself. "Being shut up here day after day must be bad for him. I shall make Sir John take him out to-morrow."
But when to-morrow came, and Sir John paid his daily visit to his wife, she had other things to think about. He found the servants lingering about the halls and staircases in silent excitement, and in the sick room a little group watching, as they stood round the bed, for the old man's final falling asleep.
He had been conscious early in the morning, and spoken to both his grandchildren; but gradually, so very gradually that they could not say "he changed at such an hour," the heavy rigidity of death closed upon his already paralysed limbs, and his eyes grew dimmer. It was a very quiet peaceful closing of a long life, which, except that it had been sometimes hard and proud, had passed in usefulness and honour. And so, towards sunset, some one said, "He is gone," and laid a hand gently upon the stiffening eyelids.
Sir John took his wife