He answered it at once. He tendered all his gratitude for the kind thoughtfulness that had suggested the letter. He said that such an evidence of interest was inexpressibly dear to him at a moment when nothing around or about him was of the cheeriest. He declared that, going to a far-away land, with an uncertain future before him, it was a great source of encouragement to him to feel that good wishes followed his steps; that he owned, in a spirit of honest loyalty, that few as were the months that had intervened, they were enough to convince him of the immense presumption of his proffer. “You will tell Miss Leslie,” wrote he, “that in the intoxication of all the happiness I lived in at the villa, I lost head as well as heart. It was such an atmosphere of enjoyment as I had never breathed before,—may never breathe again. I could not stop to analyze what it was that imparted such ecstasy to my existence, and, naturally enough, tendered all my homage and all my devotion to one whose loveliness was so surpassing! If I was ever unjust enough to accuse her of having encouraged my rash presumption, let me now entreat her pardon. I see and own my fault.”
The letter was very long, but not always very coherent. There was about it a humility that smacked more of wounded pride than submissiveness, and occasionally a sort of shadowy protest that, while grateful for proffered friendship, he felt himself no subject for pity or compassion. To use the phrase of Quackinboss, to whom he read it, “it closed the account with that firm, and declared no more goods from that store.”
But there was a loose slip of paper enclosed, very small, and with only a few lines written on it. It was to Clara herself. “And so you have kept the slip of jessamine I gave you on that day,—gave you so ungraciously too. Keep it still, dear Clara. Keep it in memory of one who, when he claims it of you, will ask you to recall that hour, and never again forget it!”
This she did not show to May Leslie; and thus was there one secret which she treasured in her own heart, alone.
CHAPTER XXXIV. A WARM DISCUSSION
“I knew it,—I could have sworn to it,” cried Paten, as he listened to Stocmar's narrative of his drive with Mrs. Morris. “She has just done with you as with fifty others. Of course you 'll not believe that you can be the dupe,—she 'd not dare to throw her net for such a fish as you. Ay, and land you afterwards, high and dry, as she has done with scores of fellows as sharp as either of us.”
Stocmar sipped his wine, half simpering at the passionate warmth of his companion, which, not without truth, he ascribed to a sense of jealousy.
“I know her well,” continued Paten, with heightened passion. “I have reason to know her well; and I don't believe that this moment you could match her for falsehood in all Europe. There is not a solitary spot in her heart without a snare in it.”
“Strange confession this, from a lover,” said Stocmar, smiling.