Chapter III: In the Cottage

She seemed to him so fair, so pure, so like the apple blossoms of early June, that he often called her his little Blossom, but now there was a touching pathos in the tones of his voice as he repeated the pet name, and it wrung from Anna a gush of tears. Lifting her blue eyes to his for an instant, she laid her head upon his arm and cried piteously:

“Oh, Adam, you are so good, so much better than I deserve. Yes, I like it, so much.”

Was it a sense of his goodness which made her cry, or was it something else? Adam wished he knew, but he would rather she should tell him of her own accord, and winding his arm around her, he lifted up her head and wiping her tears away, kissed her gently, saying, “Does Blossom like to have me kiss her?”

She did not, but she could not tell him so when he bent so fondly over her, his face all aglow with the mighty love he bore her. Affecting not to hear his question she broke away from his embrace and seating herself in the bay window, began talking of its pretty effect from the road, and the great improvement it was to the cottage. Still she did not deceive Adam Floyd, who all the while her playful remarks were sounding in his ear was nerving himself to a task he meant to perform. But not in any of the rooms he had fitted up for her could he say that if she would have it so she was free from him, even though the bridal was only a week in advance and the bridal guests were bidden. Only in one room, his dead mother’s, could he tell her this. That had been to him a Bethel since his blind mother left it. Its walls had witnessed most of his secret sorrows and his joys, and there, if it must be, he would break his heart by giving Anna up.

“I did not change mother’s room,” he said, leading Anna to the arm-chair where none had sat since an aged, withered form, last rested there. “I’d rather see it as it used to be when she was here, and I thought you would not mind.”

“It is better to leave it so,” Anna said, while Adam continued,

“I’m glad you like our home. I think myself it is pleasant, and so does every one. Even Dunallen complimented it very highly.”

“Dunallen; has he been here?” and Anna blushed painfully.

But Adam was not looking at her. He had never associated the heir of Castlewild with Anna’s changed demeanor, and wholly unconscious of the pain he was inflicting, he went on, “He went all over the house this morning, except indeed in here. I could not admit him to the room where mother died. Did I tell you that he had hired me for a long and profitable job? He is going to make some repairs at Castlewild before he brings home his bride. You know he is engaged to a young heiress, Mildred Atherton.”

It was well for Anna that her face was turned from Adam as she replied,

“Yes, I’ve heard something of an engagement made by the family when he was a mere boy. I thought perhaps he had tired of it.”

“Oh, no; he told me only to-day that he expected to bring his wife to Castlewild as early as Christmas. We were speaking of you and our marriage.”

“Of me?” and Anna looked up quickly, but poor, deluded Adam, mistook her guilty flush for a kind of grateful pride that Dunallen should talk of her.

“He said you were the prettiest girl he ever saw, and when I suggested, ‘except Miss Atherton,’ he added, ‘I will not except any one; Milly is pretty, but not like your _fiancee_.’”

Anna had not fallen so low that she could not see how mean and dastardly it was for Herbert Dunallen to talk thus of her to the very man he was intending to wrong so cruelly; and for a moment a life with Adam Floyd looked more desirable than a life with Herbert Dunallen, even though it were spent in the midst of elegance of which she had never dreamed. Anna’s good angel was fast gaining the ascendency, and might have triumphed had not the sound of horse’s feet just then met her ear, and looking from the window she saw Herbert Dunallen riding by, his dark curls floating in the wind and his cheek flushing with exercise. He saw her, too, and quickly touching his cap, pointed adroitly towards the beechwood grove. With his disappearance over the hill her good angel flew away, and on her face there settled the same cold, unhappy look, which had troubled Adam so much.

“Darling,” he said, when he spoke again, “there is something on your mind which I do not understand. If you are to be my wife, there should be no secrets between us. Will you tell me what it is, and if I can help you I will, even though—though——”

His voice began to falter, for the white, hard look on Anna’s face frightened him, and at last in an agony of terror, he grasped both her hands in his and added impetuously:

“Even though it be to give you up, you whom I love better than my life—for whom I would die so willingly. Oh, Anna!” and he sank on his knees beside her, and winding his arms around her waist, looked her imploringly in the face. “I sometimes fear that you have sickened of me—that you shrink from my caresses. If it is so, in mercy tell me now, before it is too late; for, Anna, dear as you are to me, I would rather to-morrow’s sunshine should fall upon your grave and mine, than take you to my bosom an unloving wife! I have worked for you, early and late, thinking only how you might be pleased. There is not a niche or corner in my home that is not hallowed by thoughts of you whom I have loved since you were a little child and I carried you in the arms which now would be your resting place forever. I know I am not your equal, I feel it painfully, but I can learn with you as my teacher, and, my precious Anna, whatever I may lack in polish, I _will_, I _will_ make up in kindness!”

He was pleading now for her love, forgetting that she was his promised wife—forgetting everything, save that to his words of passionate appeal there came no answering response in the expression of her face. Only the same fixed, stony look, which almost maddened him; it was so unlike what he deserved and had reason to expect.

“I shall be lonely without you, Anna—more lonely than you can guess, for there is no mother here now to bless and cheer me as she would have cheered me in my great sorrow. She loved you, Anna, and blessed you with her dying breath, saying she was glad, for your sake, that the chair where you sit would be empty when you came, and asking God to deal by you even as you dealt by me.”

“Oh, Adam, Adam!” Anna gasped, for what had been meant for a blessing rang in her ears like that blind woman’s curse. “May God deal better by me than I meant to deal by you!” she tried to say, but the words died on her lips, and she could only lay her cold hands on the shoulder of him who still knelt before her, with his arms around her waist.

Softly, gladly came the good angel back, and ’mid a rain of tears which dropped on Adam’s hair, Anna wept her hardness all away, while the only sound heard in the room was the beating of two hearts and the occasional roll of thunder muttering in the distance. In reality it was only a few moments, but to Anna it seemed a long, long time that they sat thus together, her face bent down upon his head, while she thought of all the past since she could remember Adam Floyd and the blind old woman, his mother. He had been a dutiful son, Anna knew, for she had heard how tenderly he would bear his mother in his strong arms or guide her uncertain steps, and how at the last he sat by her night after night, never wearying of the tiresome vigil until it was ended, and the sightless eyes, which in death turned lovingly to him, were opened to the light of Heaven. To such as Adam Floyd the commandment of promise was rife with meaning. God would prolong his days and punish those who wronged him. He who had been so faithful to his mother, would be true to his wife—aye, truer far than young Dunallen, with all his polish and wealth.

“Adam,” Anna began at last, so low that he scarcely could hear her. “Adam forgive me all that is past. I have been cold and indifferent, have treated you as I ought not, but I am young and foolish, I—I—oh! Adam, I mean to do better. I—”

She could not say, “will banish Dunallen from my mind”—it was not necessary to mention him, she thought; but some explanation must be made, and so, steadying her voice, she told him how dearly she had loved him once, thinking there was not in all the world his equal, but that during the year at a city school she had acquired some foolish notions and had sometimes wished her lover different.

“Not better at heart. You could not be that,” she said, looking him now fully in the face, for she was conscious of meaning what she said, “but—but—”

“You need not finish it, darling; I know what you mean,” Adam said, the cloud lifting in a measure from his brow. “I am not refined one bit, but my Blossom is, and she shall teach me. I will try hard to learn. I will not often make her ashamed. I will even imitate _Dunallen_, if that will gratify my darling.”

Why would he keep bringing in that name, when the sound of it was so like a dagger to Anna’s heart, and when she wished she might never hear it again? He was waiting for her now in the beech woods she knew, for she was to join him there ere long, not to say what she would have said an hour ago, but to say that she could not, would not wrong the noble man who held her to his bosom so lovingly as he promised to copy _Dunallen_. And as Anna suffered him to caress her, she felt her olden love coming back. She should be happy with him—happier far than if she were the mistress of Castlewild, and knew that to attain that honor she had broken Adam’s heart.

“As a proof that you trust me fully,” she said, as the twilight shadows deepened around them, “you must let me go home alone, I wish it for a special reason. You must not tell me no,” and the pretty lips touched his bearded cheek.

Adam wanted to walk with her down the pleasant road, where they had walked so often, but he saw she was in earnest, and so he suffered her to depart alone, watching her until the flutter of her light dress was lost to view. Then kneeling by the chair where she had sat so recently, he asked that the cup of joy, placed again in his eager hand, might not be wrested from him, that he might prove worthy of Anna’s love, and that no cloud should ever again come between them.