They had met upon the hill-side, upon the very spot where Mabel Harrington rested after her rescue from the Hudson, and the charred trunk of the cedar stood like a pillar of ruined ebony, just behind the woman, with the sunset playing around it, and spotting the rocks behind with flecks and dashes of golden light.
This, with naked trees, and a broken hill towering upward, formed a background to the two persons who had met by appointment, and who always came together with a clash which made each interview a mental and moral storm.
The woman remained silent for a moment after this rude assault, and fixed her dark, oriental eyes with a sort of fascination on the flushed face lifted in audacious rebellion to hers.
"Agnes," she said at last, "I am weary of this rebellion, of this rude questioning. In intrigue, as in war, there can be but one commander, and there must be implicit obedience."
"I am obedient—I have been so from the beginning," answered the girl, yielding to the frown of those eyes, "until you asked me to stand by and witness the triumphs of a rival—to see the man I love better than my own soul, better than ten thousand souls, if I had them, parading his passion for another in my very presence. Till you asked this, I was obedient, but I can endure it no longer. They are torturing me to death!"
"Not to death," said the woman with a strange smile. "Women who love as you can, and as I did, have no power to die. Tortured you may be to the verge of the grave, but never into it. Listen, girl, and learn how charitable and just the world is. When wrong stings the soul into strength, and every access of vitality brings an additional pang to it, while you would gladly call on death as a comforter, and court oblivion as a second heaven, men denounce you for the very strength of endurance that cannot succumb to trouble. The suffering that does not kill, brings forth no compassion. Struggle is nothing—endurance is nothing—it is only those who weakly lie down and perish, that can claim charity of the world, and then it comes too late. With you and I, Agnes, love is destiny. What I have been and am, you will be. Our hearts are strong to endure, sensitive to feel, and quick to resent. Time, alone, divides us two. Where you are passionate, I am strong. Where you would act, I can wait. The fire of my own nature breaks out too vividly in your girlish bosom. It must be suppressed, or quenched altogether. The woman who does not know how to wait and watch, should die of her first love, and let school-girls plant daisies on her grave."
Agnes watched the impetuous movement of those features as the woman spoke, and her own face worked in harmony till no one could have doubted the sympathy existing between them. Her eyes lost something of their fire, and took that deep, smouldering light which springs from a concentration of will. Her arms unconsciously folded themselves on her bosom, and she answered, with the air of a princess—
"I will learn to wait. Only give me some assurance that Ralph Harrington shall not marry that girl."
"He never shall marry her—is that enough?"
"But he loves her, and General Harrington has consented, or almost consented."