“Does my little girl expect to find a ‘cunning player,’ who will charm away all the barbarous notions that occasionally lead her astray, and tempt her to wickedness?”
“Verily,—no. The son of Jesse has forsaken his own household, and made unto himself an idol elsewhere; and I—Saul—surrender to Asmodeus.”
Miss Jane laid her hand on the girl’s arm, and said, in a hesitating, troubled manner,—
“Has Ulpian told you?”
“Why should he tell me? My eyes sometimes take pity on my ears,—and seeing very distinctly, save the necessity of hearing. My vision is quite as keen now as when in my anterior existence, I crouched in jungles, watching for my prey. Oh, Miss Jane! if you could look here, and know all that I have suffered during the past three weeks, you would not wonder that the tiger element within me swallows up every other feeling.”
She struck her hand heavily upon her heart, and the old lady was frightened and distressed by the glitter of the eyes and the dilation of the slender nostrils.
“When I came in, I knew from your countenance that you had heard something which you desired to prepare me for,—which you intended to break gently to me. But your kindness is unavailing. The truth crashed in on my heart without premonition; and I saw, and understood, and accepted the inevitable; and since then,—ah, my God! since then—”
Her head drooped upon her bosom, and a groan concluded the sentence.
“Perhaps Ulpian only pities the poor woman’s desolation, and will lose his interest in her when she recovers her health. You know how tenderly he sympathizes with all who suffer, and I dare say it is more compassion than love.”
“What hypocrites we often are, in our desire to comfort those whom we see in agony! Miss Jane, your kind heart is holding a hand over the mouth of conscience, to smother its cries and protests while you utter things in which you know there is no truth. You mean well; but you ought to know 278 better than to expect to deceive me. I understand the difference between love and compassion, and so do you; and Dr. Grey has not kept the truth from you. He has given his heart to that gray-haired, gray-eyed woman,—and if she lives, he will marry her; and then, if there were twenty oceans, I should want them all to roll between us. I tell you now, I can not and will not stay here to see the day that makes that pale gray phantom his wife. I should go mad, and do something that might add new horrors to that doomed and abhorred ‘Solitude,’ that has become Dr. Grey’s Mecca. I could live without his love, but I can not stand tamely by and see him lavish it on another. Some women,—such, for instance, as we read of in novels, would meekly endure this trial, as one appointed by Heaven to wean them from earth; would fold their hands, and grow devout, and romantically thin and wan,—and get sweet, patient, martyr expressions about their unkissed lips; but I am in no respect a model heroine, and it will prove safer for us all if I am far away when Dr. Grey brings his bride to receive your sisterly embrace. If you are lonely, send for Muriel and Miss Dexter, and let them entertain you. Just now, I am not fit company for any but the dwellers in Padalon; so let me go away where I can be quiet.”