Elizabeth had grown very humble by this time. Quarrels may be pleasant in flirtations, but where real love is, they trouble a good heart as sin would torment an angel. After a little struggle, in which pride leaped in fire to her cheeks, while regret filled her eyes with tears, and set her sweet lips trembling like rosebuds in a fall of summer rain, she went down the walk, holding out her pretty hand, like a naughty child, seized with sudden awkwardness, anxious to confess herself in the wrong, but not knowing how to begin.
"Norman," she said, and the little hand fell softly upon his arm, "Norman, I am so sorry!"
The young man started and looked up, as if he had been half asleep till then.
"Sorry, Elizabeth; and for what?"
He spoke naturally, and looked surprised. Anger, even rage, would have been far less cruel than this forgetfulness of words that had wrung her heart to the core. She could not speak, but drew her hand back, looking at him with those large blue eyes slowly filling with anguish.
That look must have aroused him had it really fixed his glance; but on the instant, Barbara Stafford came into the garden alone. A white scarf was wound over her head, in double folds, and there was a look in her face, as she turned it with a bend towards the sunset, which reminded the youth of the features of Beatrice Cenci, which he had once seen and almost wept before, in Rome. He forgot the young girl who hovered like a wounded bird in his path, and went towards the woman.
Elizabeth followed him with her eyes; she saw the smile—that luminous, eloquent smile, with which Barbara greeted the youth: a smile that no human being ever saw to question the woman's beauty afterwards. The tears trembling in her eyes, fired up like diamonds. She dashed them upon the air with a sweep of her hand, and turned away humbled, haughty, and almost heart-broken.
It will be a long time, Norman Lovel, before that girl asks pardon of you again; she is almost ready to scoff at herself for loving you; her foot presses the tessellated floor of that hall with the tread of a queen.
She looked forth from the window of her chamber, and saw them walking together; Norman, her lover, and the strange lady. He was evidently listening to her as she conversed, for his face was turned upon her with a look of absorbing attention, and it brightened eloquently, though he did not smile—the talk seemed too earnest and serious for that. She could not remember the time when he had looked at her with such devotion. Poor child! her heart was sick with jealousy—and of whom?
They walked together till the new moon rose, and hung like a golden sickle over the trees; then they moved quietly towards the house, and Elizabeth heard the lady retreat to her own room, while Lovel wandered off into the grounds, without once glancing up at the window where she stood. How bitterly she began to hate the woman who, without youth or a tithe of her own rare beauty, had taken possession of a heart which had been so completely hers.