“A question I might almost have the hardihood to retort, Lady Augusta,” said he, completely taken by surprise.
“As for me,” said she, carelessly, “it is my usual walk every evening. I stroll down to the shore round by that rocky headland, and rarely return before midnight; but you,” added she, throwing a livelier interest into her tone, “they said you were poorly, and so overwhelmed with business it was hopeless to expect to see you.”
“Work follows such men as myself like a destiny,” said he, sighing; “and as the gambler goes on to wager stake after stake on fortune, so do we hazard leisure, taste, happiness, all, to gain—I know not what in the end.”
“Your simile points to the losing gamester,” said she, quickly; “but he who has won, and won largely, may surely quit the table when he pleases.”
“It is true,” said he, after a pause,—“it is true, I have had luck with me. The very trees under whose branches we are walking, could they but speak, might bear witness to a time when I strolled here as poor and as hopeless as the meanest outcast that walks the high-road. I had not one living soul to say, 'Be of good cheer, your time will come yet.' My case had even more than the ordinary obstacles to success; for fate had placed me where every day, every hour of my life, should show me the disparity between myself and those high-born great to whose station I aspired. If you only knew, Lady Augusta,” added he, in a tone tremulous with emotion, “what store I laid on any passing kindness,—the simplest word, the merest look,—how even a gesture or a glance lighted hope within my heart, or made it cold and dreary within me, you 'd wonder that a creature such as this could nerve itself to the stern work of life.”
“I was but a child at the time you speak of,” said she, looking down bashfully; “but I remember you perfectly.”
“Indeed!” said he, with an accent that implied pleasure.
“So well,” continued she, “that there is not a spot in the wood where we used to take our lesson-books in summer, but lives still associated in my mind with those hours, so happy they were!”
“I always feared that I had left very different memories behind me here,” said he, in a low voice.
“You were unjust, then,” said she, in a tone still lower,—“unjust to yourself and to us.”