While the worthy couple were thus conversing, Susan and her lover, not having finished their conference, had turned back through the winding walk.
“Indeed,” said William, drawing her arm closer to his side, “these scruples, these fears, are cruel to me as well as to yourself. If you were no longer existing, I could be nothing to your sister. Nay, even were she not married, you must know enough of her pride to be assured that I can retain no place in her affections. What has chanced was not our crime. Perhaps Heaven designed to save not only us, but herself, from the certain misery of nuptials so inauspicious!”
“If she would but answer one of my letters!” sighed Susan; “or if I could but know that she were happy and contented!”
“Your letters must have miscarried,—you are not sure even of her address. Rely upon it, she is happy. Do you think that she would a second time have ‘stooped beneath her’”—Mainwaring’s lip writhed as he repeated that phrase—“if her feelings had not been involved? I would not wrong your sister,—I shall ever feel gratitude for the past, and remorse for my own shameful weakness; still, I must think that the nature of her attachment to me was more ardent than lasting.”
“Ah, William, how can you know her heart?”
“By comparing it with yours. Oh, there indeed I may anchor my faith! Susan, we were formed for each other! Our natures are alike, save that yours, despite its surpassing sweetness, has greater strength in its simple candour. You will be my guide to good. Without you I should have no aim in life, no courage to front the contests of this world. Ah, this hand trembles still!”
“William, William, I cannot repress a foreboding, a superstition! At night I am haunted with that pale face as I saw it last,—pale with suppressed despair. Oh, if ever Lucretia could have need of us,—need of our services, our affections,—if we could but repair the grief we have caused her!”
Susan’s head sank on her lover’s shoulder. She had said “need of us,” “need of our services.” In those simple monosyllables the union was pledged, the identity of their lots in the dark urn was implied.
From this scene turn again; the slide shifts in the lantern,—we are at Paris. In the antechamber at the Tuileries a crowd of expectant courtiers and adventurers gaze upon a figure who passes with modest and downcast eyes through the throng; he has just left the closet of the First Consul.
“Par Dieu!” said B——, “power, like misery, makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. I should like to hear what the First Consul can have to say to Olivier Dalibard.”