He sought to soothe her, but she repelled him. Her features worked convulsively: she walked twice across the room; then stopped opposite to him, and a certain strained composure on her brow seemed to denote that she had arrived at some sudden resolution.
"Wouldst thou ask me," she said, "what cause took me into the streets as the shadows darkened, and enabled me lightly to bear threats at home and risk abroad?"
"Ay, Lucilla: will you tell me?"
"Thou wast the cause!" she said, in a low voice, trembling with emotion, and the next moment sank on her knees before him.
With a confusion that ill became so practised and favoured a gallant, Godolphin sought to raise her. "No! no!" she said; "you will despise me now: let me lie here, and die thinking of thee. Yes!" she continued, with an inward but rapid voice, as he lifted her reluctant frame from the earth, and hung over her with a cold and uncaressing attention: "yes! you I loved—I adored—from my very childhood. When you were by, life seemed changed to me; when absent, I longed for night, that I might dream of you. The spot you had touched I marked out in silence, that I might kiss it and address it when you were gone. You left us; four years passed away: and the recollection of you made and shaped my very nature. I loved solitude; for in solitude I saw you—in imagination I spoke to you—and methought you answered and did not chide. You returned—and—and—but no matter: to see you, at the hour you usually leave home; to see you, I wandered forth with the evening. I tracked you, myself unseen; I followed you at a distance: I marked you disappear within some of the proud palaces that never know what love is. I returned home weeping, but happy. And do you think—do you dare to think—that I should have told you this, had you not driven me mad!—had you not left me reckless of what henceforth was thought of me—became of me! What will life be to me when you are gone? And now I have said all! Go! You do not love me: I know it: but do not say so. Go—leave me; why do you not leave me?"
Does there live one man who can hear a woman, young and beautiful, confess attachment to him, and not catch the contagion? Affected, flattered, and almost melted into love himself, Godolphin felt all the danger of the moment but this young, inexperienced girl—the daughter of his friend—no! her he could not—loving, willing as she was, betray.
Yet it was some moments before he could command himself sufficiently to answer her:—"Listen to me calmly," at length he said; "we are at least to each other dear friends nay, listen, I beseech you. I, Lucilla, am a man whose heart is forestalled—exhausted before its time; I have loved, deeply, and passionately: that love is over, but it has unfitted me for any species of love resembling itself—any which I could offer to you. Dearest Lucilla, I will not disguise the truth from you. Were I to love you, it would be—not in the eyes of your countrymen (with whom such connexions are common), but in the eyes of mine—it would be dishonour. Shall I confer even this partial dishonour on you? No! Lucilla, this feeling of yours towards me is (pardon me) but a young and childish phantasy: you will smile at it some years hence. I am not worthy of so pure and fresh a heart: but at least" (here he spoke in a lower voice, and as to himself)—"at least I am not so unworthy as to wrong it."
"Go!" said Lucilla; "go, I implore you." She spoke, and stood hueless and motionless, as if the life (life's life was indeed gone!) had departed from her. Her features were set and rigid; the tears that stole in large drops down her cheeks were unfelt; a slight quivering of her lips only bespoke what passed within her.
"Ah!" cried Godolphin, stung from his usual calm—stung from the quiet kindness he had sought, from principle, to assume—"can I withstand this trial?—I, whose dream of life has been the love that I might now find! I, who have never before known an obstacle to a wish which I have not contended against, if not conquered: and, weakened as I am with the habitual indulgence to temptation, which has never been so strong as now;—but no! I will—I will deserve this attachment by self-restraint, self-sacrifice."
He moved away; and then returning, dropped on his knee before Lucilla.