There was something pitiful in the way this strong man struggled against his fate, in the way he fought against the passion that had half maddened him. When the unflagging round of gayety had tired him he returned home. He was then but the shadow of the young and handsome lord of Aldenmere.
“As well be haunted at home as elsewhere,” he said to himself; “I cannot escape my fate.”
Sometimes a wild impulse came over him, urging him to go to her again, to plead his cause with her, to tell her all the passionate, desolate anguish of the past few months, to pray to her as men pray for their lives.
But he remembered what he had said to her, that if she sent him away he should not return to pray his prayer again. All the pride of his proud race came to his aid. She had accepted his loving words, she had taken a kiss that was sacred as a betrothal from his lips, and she had rejected him.
He would not plead to her again; let his ruin and misery lie at her door; it should never be told that he had stooped as no Alden before him had done.
Yet had she but smiled upon him, he would have knelt like the humblest of slaves at her feet.
CHAPTER XVII.
TWO YEARS AFTERWARD.
Sir Ronald went home again. He found little or no change in that quiet neighborhood. One of the visits he paid was to Mount Severn, where he met with a welcome that would have gladdened any man’s heart. Clarice did not attempt to conceal her delight; her eyes beamed, her face brightened, her hands stole tremblingly into his.
“How long you have been away!” she said. “This is the dreariest summer I can remember.”
Yet it was only two months since he had gone up to London to try whether gayety would cure him.