CHAPTER XIX.

Mr. Coventry, relieved of a great and immediate anxiety, could now turn his whole attention to Grace Carden; and she puzzled him.  He expected to see her come down beaming with satisfaction at the great event of last night.  Instead of that she appeared late, with cheeks rather pale, and signs of trouble under her fair eyes.

As the day wore on, she showed positive distress of mind, irritable and dejected by turns, and quite unable to settle to anything.

Mr. Coventry, with all his skill, was quite at fault.  He could understand her being in anxiety for news about Little; but why not relieve her anxiety by sending a servant to inquire?  Above all, why this irritation? this positive suffering?

A mystery to him, there is no reason why it should be one to my readers.  Grace Carden, for the first time in her life, was in the clutches of a fiend, a torturing fiend, called jealousy.

The thought that another woman was nursing Henry Little all this time distracted her.  It would have been such heaven to her to tend him, after those cruel men had hurt him so; but that pure joy was given to another, and that other loved him, and could now indulge and show her love.  Show it?  Why, she had herself opened his eyes to Jael’s love, and advised him to reward it.

And now she could do nothing to defend herself.  The very improvement in Henry’s circumstances held her back.  She could not write to him and say, “Now I know you are Mr. Raby’s nephew, that makes all the difference.”  That would only give him fresh offense, and misrepresent herself; for in truth she had repented her letter long before the relationship was discovered.

No; all she could do was to wait till Jael Dence came up, and then charge her with some subtle message, that might make Henry Little pause if he still loved her.

She detected Coventry watching her.  She fled directly to her own room, and there sat on thorns, waiting for her rival to come and give her an opportunity.

But afternoon came, and no Jael; evening came, and no Jael.

“Ah!” thought Grace, bitterly, “she is better employed than to come near me.  She is not a self-sacrificing fool like me.  When I had the advantage, I gave it up; now she has got it, she uses it without mercy, decency, or gratitude.  And that is the way to love.  Oh! if my turn could but come again.  But it never will.”

Having arrived at this conclusion, she lay on the couch in her own room, and was thoroughly miserable.

She came down to dinner, and managed to take a share in the conversation, but was very languid; and Coventry detected that she had been crying.

After dinner, Knight brought in a verbal message from Jael to Mr. Raby, to the effect that the young gentleman was stiff and sore, and she had sent into Hillsborough for Dr. Amboyne.

“Quite right of her,” said the squire.  “You needn’t look so alarmed, Grace; there are no bones broken; and he is in capital hands:  he couldn’t have a tenderer nurse than that great strapping lass, nor a better doctor than my friend and maniac, Amboyne.”