M. E. Braddon

“ Aurora awoke out of her long sleep while her father was at church. She awoke to find her husband watching her; the Sunday papers lying forgotten on his knee, and his honest eyes fixed on the face he loved.
"My own dear John," she said, as she lifted her head from the pillows, supporting herself upon her elbow, and stretching out one hand to Mr. Mellish, "my own dear boy, how happy we are together now! Will anything ever come to break our happiness again, my dear? Can Heaven be so cruel as to afflict us any more?" ”

“ The young squire looked up with a start as he recognized Talbot, and gave him his hand, with a few straggling words of welcome. Even in that moment Mr. Bulstrode saw that there was perhaps a greater change in John's appearance than in that of Aurora. The Yorkshireman's blue eyes had lost their brightness, his step its elasticity; his face seemed sunken and haggard, and he evidently avoided meeting Talbot's eye. He lounged listlessly away from the forge, walking at his guest's side in the direction of the stable-gates; but he had the air of a man who neither knows nor cares whither he is going. ”

“ It was thus that John Mellish had often reasoned upon the mystery which divided him from his wife. He could not bear to impute even the shadow of evil to her. He could not endure to think of her as a poor helpless woman entrapped into the power of a mean-spirited hireling, who was only too willing to make his market out of her secrets. He could not tolerate such an idea as this; and he sacrificed poor Archibald Floyd's commercial integrity for the preservation of Aurora's womanly dignity. Ah, how weak and imperfect a passion is this boundless love! ”

“ The murder has been done, and the hands are red. The sorrow has been suffered; and however beautiful Happiness may be to us, she can never be the bright virginal creature she once was; for she has passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and we have discovered that she is not immortal.
It is not to be expected, then, that John Mellish and his wife Aurora could feel quite the same in the pretty chambers of the Yorkshire mansion as they had felt before the first shipwreck of their happiness. ”

“ Aurora seated herself at John Mellish's desk, and wrote a few hurried lines upon a sheet of paper that lay uppermost amongst letters and bills.
"My dear Love,"—she wrote,—"I cannot remain here to see you after the discovery which has been made to-day. I am a miserable coward; and I cannot meet your altered looks, I cannot hear your altered voice. I have no hope that you can have any other feeling for me than contempt and loathing. But on some future day, when I am far away from you, and the bewilderment of my present misery has grown less, I will write and explain everything. ”

“ Aurora looked wonderingly at her husband, not at Talbot.
"A new trial?" she said inquiringly.
"You know that the murderer of James Conyers has not yet been discovered?" said Mr. Bulstrode.
"Yes, yes; but what of that?"
"My dear Mrs. Mellish, my dear Aurora! the world is apt to take a morbid delight in horrible ideas. There are some people who think that you are guilty of this crime!" ”

“ Bulstrode went down to the drawing-room, where he found his friend pacing up and down, solitary and wretched.
"The ladies are going to dine up-stairs," said Mr. Mellish, as Talbot joined him. "I have just had a message to say so. Why does she avoid me, Talbot? why does my wife avoid me like this? We have scarcely spoken to each other for days."
"Shall I tell you why, you foolish John?" answered Mr. Bulstrode. "Your wife avoids you because you have chosen to alienate yourself from her, and because she thinks, poor girl, that she has lost your affection. ”

“ She tried to speak, but her voice failed her; and in another moment the door had been dashed open by a strong hand, and her husband stood in the room, holding out his arms and calling to her.
"Aurora! Aurora! my own dear love, my own poor darling!"
She was folded to his breast before she knew that Talbot Bulstrode stood close behind him.
"My own darling," John said, "my own dearest, you cannot tell how cruelly I have wronged you. But, oh, my love, the wrong has brought unendurable torture with it. My poor guiltless girl! ”

“ Mellish could have turned fiercely upon these innocent farmers when they pooh-poohed John's stable, and made light of the reputation of her namesake the bay filly, and declared that no horse that came out of the squire's stables was ever anything better than a plater or a screw.
The journey came to an end, only too quickly, it seemed to Aurora: too quickly, for every mile widened the gulf she had set between herself and the home she loved; every moment only brought the realization of her loss more fully home to her mind. ”

“ The bed you lay upon, the curtains that sheltered you, the pattern of the paper on the walls, the common every-day sounds of the household, coming muffled and far-away to that lonely room in which you hid yourself,—all these bear record of your sorrow, and of that hideous double action of the mind which impresses these things most vividly upon you at the very time when it would seem they should be most indifferent.
But every sorrow, every pang of wounded love, or doubt, or jealousy, or despair, is a fact—a fact once, and a fact for ever; to be outlived, but very rarely to be forgotten ”

“ She was a guilty woman, then; a guilty creature, whom it would be his painful duty to cast out of that pure household. She was a poor, lost, polluted wretch, who must not be admitted into the holy atmosphere of a Christian gentleman's home.
"Mrs. Mellish! Mrs. Mellish!" he cried, "what is the meaning of this? Why do you give me this horrible pain again? Why do you insist upon humiliating yourself and me by such a scene as this?"
"Oh, Talbot, Talbot!" answered Aurora, "I come to you because you are good and honourable. I am a desolate, wretched woman, and I want your help—I want your advice. ”

“ She went down-stairs with Lucy into a little inner room upon the drawing-room floor; a snug apartment, opening into a mite of a conservatory. It was Mr. and Mrs. Bulstrode's habit to breakfast in this cosy little chamber, rather than in that awful temple of slippery morocco, funereal bronze, and ghastly mahogany, which upholsterers insist upon as the only legitimate place in which an Englishman may take his meals. Lucy loved to sit opposite her husband at the small round table, and minister to his morning appetite from her pretty breakfast equipage of silver and china. ”

“ The young husband and wife had spent a quiet day together; going to church in the morning and afternoon, dining alone, and sitting in the twilight, talking happily and confidentially. Mr. Bulstrode was no Sabbath-breaker; and John Mellish had reason to consider himself a peculiarly privileged person, inasmuch as the thorough-breds had been permitted to leave their stables for his service; to say nothing of the groom, who had been absent from his hard seat in the servants' pew at a fashionable chapel, in order that he might accompany John and Aurora to Felden. ”

“ All through the fitful August day, now hot and still, now overclouded and showery, the master of Mellish Park went hither and thither,—now sitting in his study; now roaming out on the lawn; now pacing up and down the drawing-room, displacing, disarranging, and overturning the pretty furniture; now wandering up and down the staircase, lolling on the landing-places, and patrolling the corridor outside the rooms in which Lucy and Aurora sat together making a show of employing themselves, but only waiting, waiting, waiting, for the hoped-for end. ”

“ What if, by some horrible fatality, the guilty man should escape, and the truth never be revealed! For ever and for ever, until her blighted name should be written upon a tombstone, Aurora Mellish must rest under the shadow of this suspicion. Could there be any doubt that the sensitive and highly-strung nature would give way under the unendurable burden; that the proud heart would break beneath the undeserved disgrace? What misery for her! ”