“You,” continued Lady Jane, “brave, noble, generous, had no dread, no false shame. You would have made me lady of this mansion, the partaker of your bright young life. You gloried in the passion that won forgetfulness of all disparity between us, believing that it would secure happiness to us both. You offered me a hand which the proudest lady of England would have gloried in accepting. Listen to me, Clarence, I would at that moment have given up all my after existence, could I have been your wife one year, certain that the love you expressed would have endured—that you would never regret the sacrifice so readily made for me. Still, I refused you—nay, turned from professions of affection that were the sweetest, dearest sounds that ever filled my ear. You were young—I no longer so. You were rich—I a poor dependent on your father’s bounty. I was a coward, I had no courage to brave the whispers which would say that, treacherous to the hospitality of my relative, mercenary, grasping, I had used my experience to entrap the young heir of a rich earldom into an unsuitable marriage. I could not endure that the disparity of our years and my poverty should become subjects of common gossip.”
“How little I cared for that!” said Lord Clare, with a constrained smile.
“I know it—but this very generosity, this self-abnegation frightened me, I could not believe in its permanency. It seemed to me more the thanklessness of youth than a stern, settled purpose. You had forbearance for my maturity, but I, ungrateful that I was, had no faith in your youth.”
“Did you deem love a thing of years?”
“Not now, but then I did! My own feelings shocked and terrified me; they seemed unnatural, I could not forgive my heart that they had found lodgment there. So much more absorbing than anything I had ever known, they seemed like a hallucination. I distrusted the sweet madness that possessed me, and by one rash, wicked act, sought to wrench our souls apart, thinking all the time that your happiness required the effort. I left your father’s house—I—I placed an unloved man between you and me. I was mad, wicked. In one month after, when your father died, and I had not his scorn to dread, I would have given the world—but no matter what or how I have suffered—you are avenged—I am punished.”
“Why should we revert to this?” said Lord Clare, gently. “The past is the past.”
“I have wounded your pride to save mine,” exclaimed Lady Jane, and her eyes sparkled with tears again. “It is your turn now, but if you knew—if you knew all, this bitter humiliation would be some atonement.”
“I would not soothe my wounded pride at your expense, Lady Jane, still I thank you. It is something to know that a passion which cost me so much was not altogether scorned.”
She was about to answer with some eagerness, but the sound of a carriage sweeping round the broad gravel walk to the front entrance, interrupted her. They both listened, looking earnestly at each other. Then she reached forth her hand, and said, smiling through her tears, “Cousin Clarence, we cannot be enemies, that is too unnatural”——
He wrung her hand with a sort of passion, dropped it, and rushed from the room. She stood a moment weeping, then her mouth brightened and curved into a smile, and with a proud air she swept by me, darkening the sunshine with her long, black garments. I followed her with my eyes, creeping on my hands and knees across the threshold that I might see her again, and be sure it was no fairy play I had witnessed. Then I sat down on the carpet, buried my face in the embroidery of my scarlet frock, and began to cry.