“Watching me!”
“Twice a week for fourteen years have I sat for an hour in Mrs. Fanning’s west window that overlooks your gardens. Thence, unnoted by everybody, I have noted you, if by happy chance you walked in the garden; and if you did not, noted the house that held you and the man who sheltered your youth.”
“Oswald,”—she felt impelled to speak, “if—if you loved me like this, why did you send me that cruel letter two days after our engagement? Why did you bid me forget you and marry some one else, if you had not forgotten me and did not wish me to release you in order that you might satisfy your own wishes in another direction?”
“Grace, if I could explain myself now I could have explained myself then. Fate, which is oftenest cruel to the most loving and passionate hearts, has denied me the privilege of marriage, and when I found it out——”
“True, you have never married. Cruel, cruel one! Why did you not let me know that you would always live single for my sake; it would have made it possible for me to have lived single for yours.”
The doctor with the love of a lifetime burning in his eyes, shook his head at this, and answered: “That would have shown me to be a selfish egotist, and I did not want to be other than generous to you. No, Grace, all was done for the best; and this is for the best, this greeting and this second parting. The love which we have acknowledged to-night will be a help and not a hindrance to us both. But we will meet again, not very soon, for I cannot trust a strength which has yielded so completely at your first smile.”
“Farewell, then, Oswald,” she murmured. “It has taken the sting from my heart to know that you did not leave me from choice.”
And he, striving to speak, broke down, and it was she who had to show her strength by gently leaving him and finding her own way to the door.
But no sooner had the night blast blowing in from the graveyard struck him, than he stumbled in haste to the threshold, and drawing her with a frenzied grasp from the path she was blindly taking toward the graves, led her from that path to the high road, where Clarke was waiting in some anxiety for the end of this lengthy interview. As the doctor gave her up and saw her taken in charge by her son, he said with a thrilling emphasis not soon to be forgotten by either of the two who listened to them:
“Try every means, and be sure you bid Polly to try every means, to rid yourselves of the bondage of this interloper. If all fails, come to me. But do not come till every other hope is dead.”