"There can be none for me. I had set my heart upon it so that I cannot forget it."
"I know you had, and so had we. Of course there will be sorrow, but it will wear off." He shook his head without speaking. "God is too good," she continued, "to let such troubles remain with us long."
"You think, then," he said, "that there is no chance?"
What could she say to him? How, under the circumstances of Mary's engagement, could she encourage his love for her friend?
"I know that there is none," he continued. "I feel, Mrs. Fenwick, that I do not know what to do with myself or how to hold myself. Of course it is nonsense to talk about dying, but I do feel as though if I didn't die I should go crazy. I can't settle my mind to a single thing."
"It is fresh with you yet, Harry," she said. She had never called him Harry before, though her husband did so always, and now she used the name in sheer tenderness.
"I don't know why such a thing should be different with me than with other people," he said; "only perhaps I am weaker. But I've known from the very first that I have staked everything upon her. I have never questioned to myself that I was going for all or nothing. I have seen it before me all along, and now it has come. Oh, Mrs. Fenwick, if God would strike me dead this moment, it would be a mercy!" And then he threw himself on the ground at her feet. He was not there a moment before he was up again. "If you knew how I despise myself for all this, how I hate myself!"
She would not leave him, but stayed there till he consented to come down with her to the Vicarage. He should dine there, and Frank should walk back with him at night. As to that question of Mr. Chamberlaine's visit, respecting which Mrs. Fenwick did not feel herself competent to give advice herself, it should become matter of debate between them and Frank, and then a man and horse could be sent to Salisbury on Sunday morning. As he walked down to the Vicarage with that pretty woman at his elbow, things perhaps were a little better with him.