Through a Glass, Darkly [pp. 225-230]

THRO UGH A GLASS, DARKL Y.
sent a shudder through Hubert's frame. His was
just the nature, indeed, to feel his present position
with something very like acute agony. He remained
standing in silent watchfulness of Lucia for a short
time after she left her father, though apparently he
was examining a certain picture, a recent purchase,
placed on an easel in front of where he stood. He
observed the easeful grace with which Lucia moved
here and there; he saw her smile and bow and turn
her neck with the old, pretty stateliness. A pale ness overspread Hubert's face; a struggle passed on
within him, strong but brief.
"I cannot betray her," he told himself, almost
aloud. A little later he had slipped from the rooms,
and presently he quitted the house. He had de cided to say nothing.
On the following morning he met Dr. Champlin
with an inward pang of sharp shame. A voice
seemed jeering at him, and the words of the voice
were, "So this is the way in which you repay years
of generous protection!" Hubert found it almost
impossible to fix his thoughts on their necessary
work. Dr. Champlin, according to custom, left the
office and entered the carriage which waited to take
him on his round of professional duties. As he was
quitting the room, an impulse seized Hubert to de tain him and tell all that he knew concerning Lucia.
But the impulse died away in a moment, and the doc tor left the office for his carriage. Hubert, sitting
within the office, heard the carriage-door shut and
the vehicle itself rattle away.
Who has ever read the human soul, or even followed one clew definitely along its labyrinth of interblending motives, passions, and desires? No sooner
had Dr. Champlin gone than Hubert regretted not
having told him. The office chancing to be empty,
he sprang from his seat and began pacing the floor
with short, nervous steps. Ten chances to one, he
told himself, that newspaper scandal was at least
half true, and Lucia was throwing herself away on a
worthless adventurer. Why had he paused for a
moment in telling her father the whole truth? Was
it his own pride that had kept him silent? Was it a
strange sense of lealty to Lucia? Fine lealty, indeed, that permitted such self-destruction His
brain was in a whirl as he ceased walking, and flung
himself into a chair. Fortunately, professional duties soon presented themselves in the shape of several patients. But during the next three or four
hours a resolve strengthened within him to let Lucia's father know everything when next they met.
Death, if it strikes with suddenness, always
appalls; but when certain terrible tidings were
brought to Hubert, at about twelve o'clock that
day, the intelligence fairly stunned him. It was a
story horribly brief and simple. The horses of Dr.
Champlin's carriage had taken fright and escaped
their driver's control; they had run for some distance at furious speed until, dashing round a corner,
they had hurled the coachman from his box and
overturned the carriage. Galloping on, they had
finally been stopped. From the shattered vehicle
Dr. Champlin had been taken out in an unconscious
condition. The coachman's injuries were believed
not to be fatal; but the doctor had died almost at
once.
When Hubert's horror had in a measure worn
away, he was enabled to use that shrewd sense of
which he possessed so large a share, and to rid him self of all morbid fancies regarding this dreadful
death being in any wise connected with his own
misconduct. But while he stood, hours later, beside
the white-faced Lucia, and watched her gaze down
upon her father's still whiter face, a miserable sense
of this girl's utterly untrammeled freedom to act as
she chose assailed him with stern force. Lucia
seemed to bear the shock heroically enough. Friends
and family relations crowded about her. It was
not, indeed, until three days after the great cere monious church-funeral that he and she met alone
together.
Lucia then sent a message into her late father's
office, Which, as with most physicians, was on the
basement-floor of the house. It was a message
merely requesting that Dr. Howe would meet her
up-stairs. Hubert at once ascended to the room in dicated; she was waiting for him.
She looked beautiful in her mourning-dress, her
wan face gaining from its darkness a kind of new
sculpturesque beauty. But if Lucia's face had the
pallor of a statue, it had also its cold rigidity.
She offered Hubert no greeting except a slight
bow. She was standing when he entered, and re mained so after she had bowed to him. Hubert
waited for her to speak, which she presently did, in
icy tones.
"You have received from my father, whose will
was yesterday opened, a legacy of some importance."
Lucia named an amount whose largeness made the
word "legacy" seem almost inappropriate. "I
considered that I should be the first to inform you
of this bequest," she proceeded, "and it was on this
account that I sent for you."
"Such liberality amazes me," faltered Hubert.
"I had expected nothing."'He could speak no
other word, just then. Remembrance stabbed him
with a fresh wound of remorse.
"I suppose," Lucia went on, as though she was
reciting what she knew by heart, "that you will naturally succeed to much of my father's practice; but
you have, no doubt, already contemplated a change
of office, and-I need not-"
Her pause seemed intentional. It was almost as
though she had ended with a request that Hubert
would himself finish her sentence. He flushed, and
a faint flash lit his eyes.
"You need not remind me, you doubtless mean,"
he answered, "that my further residence here will
be unsatisfactory. Are you sure," he went on, with
a kind of sad dignity, "that you are justified in supposing I had intended to remain?"
Her composure gave way to a kind of ruffled
haughtiness.
"It would seem as if you had so intended," she
answered, a little confusedly. The fingers of one
hand played in a nervous way with a small bronze
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