A gush of fresh air swept through the open sash, and brought some color to Mrs. Lambert’s face.
“Are you better, dear madam?” said Ivon, approaching the window with tender anxiety.
“Better! No, indeed! I’ve not been ill. It was only the shadows thrown from this yellow drapery. Help me draw the cords. No, no! leave the lace down, a softened light is pleasanter. Now, Ivon, I will not detain you or Miss Spicer from your walk.”
“That is giving us both a polite dismissal,” cried the young lady, laughing. “Well, come along, Mr. Lambert, your maternal ancestor gives permission. I won’t take your arm unless you insist. No one will have a right to think us engaged, if I walk along demurely by myself, not even the pretty——What, frowning! Well, I never will say she’s pretty again—never! never! never!”
CHAPTER XXX.
OLD MEMORIES AND PRESENT STRUGGLES.
It was some moments before Miss Spicer’s voice died away at the front door; and for a long time Mrs. Lambert walked to and fro on that moss-like carpet, treading down its clustering blossoms as if she longed to trample them out of sight forever. The elegant coldness of her manner had vanished entirely; her hands were clenched, her lips moved, uttering nothing but shadowy words, until at last they broke into sound.
“So they will make a lion of him. Even these girls have found out how more than handsome he is; how infinitely above the shallow men they profess to admire. Great heavens! has it come to this? Thirty-nine years of age, and jealous of him now, as I was then! Oh, how I did love him—how I do love him! Can such feelings die? Can the grave bury them? Can a human soul cast them off? And I, I met him with scorn. The madness of that fatal hour seized upon me when he stood before my face, like one from the tomb. How could I look him in the face? Why was it that my pride refused to bow itself, while half my being yearned toward him? What does he think of me? Scorn and loathing! Scorn and loathing! What else can I expect? What else would a sane woman wish? But is this sanity? Will this passion haunt me forever? Even thus, is it not better than the barren life I have led all these years?”
The woman, too restless for continued motion, threw herself on a couch, and buried her hot cheek in its amber cushions, as she had done years before, when love for this one man threw her heart into tumults of tenderness or doubt. Had years done nothing for her then? Had time dug no gulf between them deep enough to terrify her heart from its hungry longing? Had silence, like that of the grave, failed to chill it into indifference?
He had asked none of these questions. Would he ever care to have them answered? Was the heart he had given her, dead? Yes, yes! he had left her to bitter retribution. The passionate reproaches with which she had driven him from her in his first youth, when a keen sense of his poverty and her riches gave a double sting to her cruel words, had been fatal. Her sin against him had been too great.
This woman was not given to weeping, but she cried like a child now. For weeks and weeks she had expected Ross to seek her again. In spite of everything, she had a lingering faith in the love which had seemed immortal, and still trusted in the great nobility which had seemed capable of infinite forgiveness. But he did not come; and now she heard his name uttered by that flighty girl, suddenly, and with flippant ease, as if it were not a thousand times removed from her, or the females she coupled with it.