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Page 56
Rachel sat for hours looking before her, without caring to do anything.
To think that this should be the end of all her hopes! Was it, then,
impossible to find a man with courage in his heart, and blood in his
veins? She felt that she was precluded from any line of action that
would really satisfy her, condemned as she was to a life of daily
drudgery; but her thoughts became more and more embittered, first
against him who had deceived her, and finally against the whole human
race.
Madeleine, on the contrary, had no feelings of this nature; but she had
a feeling of dread, which seemed daily to increase. She felt that the
duplicity of her friend was so great, so enormous, that it quite passed
her imagination; and then the thought that it must be he--he, to whom
alone, among all this world of strangers, she felt herself attracted on
the very ground of his sincerity! Again and again these thoughts arose
within her and tortured her. She felt as if her foothold must be
insecure for evermore. A stain of impurity seemed to have passed over
her life, which made her timid and apprehensive of all these so-called
friends who had thus misunderstood and deceived her.
The morning after that night she was awakened by Fanny, who came into
her room in her dressing-gown before it was quite light. The truth was,
Fanny had not slept very soundly, tormented as she was the whole time by
her fears, and by wondering from whence the warning came. It was quite
certain that it must have proceeded either from Miss Cordsen or
Madeleine, for the windows of both rooms were open. If it were
Madeleine, the plot had become so involved that she did not dare to
think of it. If it were Miss Cordsen, it was bad enough, but still not
so desperate. From the sound she guessed that it must be a glass of
water, or something of that sort, and as soon as day began to dawn she
got up and left her room in the hope of clearing up the mystery.
Madeleine sat up as she heard Fanny come in.
"I beg pardon, Madeleine. I came to see if you could give me a glass of
water. There is a spider in our water-bottle."
She drew back the curtains, and there, sure enough, stood the
water-bottle with its glass. Fanny gave a sigh of relief, and left
Madeleine still gazing in astonishment. It was more than she could
understand.
CHAPTER XIV.
The autumn rains had now begun in earnest. Day after day the water came
down in streams, and at night it could be heard pattering on the
window-panes, and dripping from the eaves, every time one woke.
At first the rain came for a long time from the south-west, but there
was nothing wonderful in that, for the south-west is a rainy quarter.
But when it rained for a whole fortnight with a north wind, people who
were weatherwise maintained that if it once began to rain steadily from
the north, there would be no end to it.
One morning the wind ceased, but the clouds lay heavy and lowering
overhead; and now the weatherwise averred, with much shaking of heads,
that it would be worse than ever. The morning, however, actually passed
without rain, and the air grew lighter and clearer; but just as the
aspect began to improve, the drizzle again commenced.
The rain now set in with renewed vigour, with all its pleasing varieties
of shower and deluge; but the worst form it took was when it poured
persistently and unmercifully from morning to night.
The new moons came in with rain and went out with rain, and every day of
the calendar was alike wet. The wind veered about to every point of the
compass, and heaped up banks of fog out to sea, and heavy masses of
cloud up in the mountains, which finally drifted together, and poured
down their contents in torrents all along the west coast.
And now the storms began in earnest, and went soughing through the trees
in the avenue, and whistling in the rigging of the vessels that were
laid up for the winter.
In the old house at Sandsgaard each separate wind had its own pet
corner, to which it returned with delight every autumn. The north wind
came howling along between the warehouses; the south wind took the wet
leaves from the garden and hurled them in handfuls against the
window-panes; the east wind whirled down the chimneys till all the rooms
were full of smoke; while the pet amusement of the west wind was to make
a clatter with all the loose tiles on the roof, during the whole
livelong night.
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