“Tell me one thing, Cora, was it any one from Greenhurst that I just saw going round the church.”
“You saw him then,” she said, turning pale, and sinking to her chair. “Oh, Zana!”
I too sunk upon a chair, and we sat gazing into each other’s pale face till both burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MY FATHER’S RETURN.
No human being can comprehend the desolation, the heart sickness, that seized upon me after this interview with Cora. Nothing had been explained between us. I had looked in her face, and saw it bathed with tears and guilty blushes, from which my very soul shrunk back. My love for that girl was so true, so deep—my love for him—it was like uprooting the life within me, the agony of bitter conviction that he was trifling with me—with her perhaps. But the very intensity of my sorrow made me calm, nay, even kind to her. I think at that moment she would have confided in me entirely, had I urged it, for she was deeply moved—but I could not do it! For worlds I would not have heard the details of his miserable perfidy; they would have driven me mad.
My faith in human goodness, which had hitherto been to me like a religion, was from this time broken up. I was adrift on the world, full of doubt, terror, and contempt. Cora, George—where could I look for truth? The wickedness of Lady Catherine seemed noble compared to theirs.
I had no other friends, save the two kind hearts in my own home, and there I fled for shelter as a wounded bird to his nest.
It is said that there is no real love unless respect for its object composes the greater share; but is it a truth? Is it the worthy and good on whom our affections are most lavishly bestowed? The history of every-day life tells us no—the history of my own heart answers no. Amid all the bitter feelings that tortured me, love for the two beings that had wronged me most was still strong in my soul, a pang and curse, but vital as ever.
With all my apparent and real frankness, there was a power of suppression in my nature that no one would have believed. With regard to my own feelings I was always reserved and silent, they were too sacred for every-day handling, and nothing but the inspiration of some generous impulse, or the idea that I could have sensations to be ashamed of, ever won me to confess anything of that inner life which was both my heaven and my torment. Oh, what torment it proved then!
But I was of a nature “to suffer and be strong.” Self-centred in my desperate anguish I went on in life, giving out no visible sign by which those two beings who loved me, Turner and Maria, could guess that I had been so deceived.