It was the eve of my departure from Kirkby-Malhouse that we sat upon the green bank in the garden, she with dark, dreamy eyes looking sadly out over the sombre fells; while I, with a book upon my knee, glanced covertly at her lovely profile and marvelled to myself how twenty years of life could have stamped so sad and wistful an expression upon it.
"You have read much," I remarked at last. "Women have opportunities now such as their mothers never knew. Have you ever thought of going further—of seeking a course of college or even a learned profession?"
She smiled wearily at the thought.
"I have no aim, no ambition," she said. "My future is black—confused—a chaos. My life is like to one of these paths upon the fells. You have seen them, Monsieur Upperton. They are smooth and straight and clear where they begin; but soon they wind to left and wind to right, and so mid rocks and crags until they lose themselves in some quagmire. At Brussels my path was straight; but now, mon Dieu! who is there can tell me where it leads?"
"It might take no prophet to do that, Miss Cameron," quoth I, with the fatherly manner which two-score years may show toward one. "If I may read your life, I would venture to say that you were destined to fulfil the lot of women—to make some good man happy, and to shed around, in some wider circle, the pleasure which your society has given me since first I knew you."
"I will never marry," said she, with a sharp decision, which surprised and somewhat amused me.
"Not marry—and why?"
A strange look passed over her sensitive features, and she plucked nervously at the grass on the bank beside her.
"I dare not," said she in a voice that quivered with emotion.