"He loves you?"
Her face went white. For a while she said nothing; then in a calm quiet voice, whence all life and feeling, almost all intelligence, seemed to have gone, she answered,
"I think not, my lord."
He laughed. "Leave me," she said again, and he, in grace of what manhood there was in him, turned on his heel and went. She stood alone, there on the terrace.
Ah, if God had let me be there! Then she should not have stood desolate, nor flung herself again on the marble seat. Then she should not have wept as though her heart broke, and all the world were empty. If I had been there, not the cold marble should have held her, and for every sweetest tear there should have been a sweeter kiss. Grief should have been drowned in joy, while love leapt to love in the fulness of delight. Alas for pride, breeder of misery! Not life itself is so long as to give atonement to her for that hour; though she has said that one moment, a certain moment, was enough.
CHAPTER XXIII
A PLEASANT PENITENCE
There was this great comfort in the Vicar's society that, having once and for all stated the irrefutable proposition which I have recorded, he let the matter alone. Nothing was further from his thoughts than to argue on it, unless it might be to take any action in regard to it. To say the truth, and I mean no unkindness to him in saying it, the affair did not greatly engage his thoughts. Had Betty Nasroth dealt with it, the case would doubtless have been altered, and he would have followed its fortune with a zest as keen as that he had bestowed on my earlier unhappy passion. But the prophecy had stopped short, and all that was of moment for the Vicar in my career, whether in love, war, or State, was finished; I had done and undergone what fate declared and demanded, and must now live in gentle resignation. Indeed I think that in his inmost heart he wondered a little to find me living on at all. This attitude was very well for him, and I found some amusement in it even while I chafed at his composed acquiescence in my misfortunes. But at times I grew impatient, and would fling myself out of the house, crying "Plague on it, is this old crone not only to drive me into folly, but to forbid me a return to wisdom?"