“Ah, Clarence.”
How strangely the name sounded. I had never heard it in my life before, and I am sure my poor mother was ignorant that he was called Clarence. This among the rest he had hoarded from her.
“Oh, Clarence, I feel—I have long felt how cruel, how ungrateful, how miserably proud I was—but I, I, do you think I have not suffered?”
Lord Clare looked at her suddenly. An expression of painful surprise came over his pale features.
“Why should you have suffered?” he questioned, almost sternly, “because you pitied the man you had scorned?”
“Because I loved him!” The words seemed wrung from the very depths of her heart. Her face fell forward, and she buried its shame in her hands.
Lord Clare sprang to his feet. A glow of such joy as I have never seen on a human face before or since, transfigured him. His eyes absolutely blazed; and a smile, oh, the glory of that smile poured its sunshine over his features. It lasted but a moment, the next that beautiful joy went out. Some sharp memory convulsed his features, and he dropped back in his seat again. His eyes had fallen upon me.
She looked up and only saw the last miserable expression of his face. A faint groan burst from her lips, and you could see her noble form shrink with a sense of humiliation.
“I know—I know,” she cried, clasping her hands, and making a strong effort to subdue the anguish of disappointment that seized upon her—“my cruelty has done its work—even the poor privileges of friendship cannot be ours.”
“It is too late—too late,” said Lord Clare, turning his eyes almost fiercely upon my little form where it crouched by the wall.