‘Nay, my little girl,’ said he, redoubling his caresses and speaking in his most soothing tone, ‘never weep about it. It grieves me to hurt your feelings, but you desire an impossibility, and I must use strong language to convince you that I cannot grant it.’
‘Oh, don’t refuse me again,’ sobbed Miss Laury. ‘I’ll bear all infamy and contempt to be allowed to follow you, my lord. My lord, I’ve served you for many years most faithfully, and I seldom ask a favour of you. Don’t reject the first request of the kind I have ever made.’
The duke shook his head, and the meeting of his lips, too placid for the firm compression, told that he was not to be moved.
‘If you should receive a wound, if you should fall sick,’ continued Mina, ‘what can surgeons and physicians do for you? They cannot watch you and wait on you and worship you like me, and you do not seem well now. The bloom is so faded on your complexion, and the flesh is wasted round your eyes. Do not look so calmly resolved: let me go!’
Zamorna withdrew his arm from her waist. ‘I must be displeased before you cease to importune me,’ said he. ‘Mina, look at that letter. Read the direction,’ pointing to one he had been writing. She obeyed. It was addressed to, ‘Her Royal Highness, Mary Henrietta, Duchess of Zamorna.’
‘Must I pay no attention to the feelings of that lady?’ pursued the duke, whom the duties of war and the conflict of some internal emotions seemed to render peculiarly stern. ‘Her public claims must be respected whether I love her or not.’
Miss Laury shrunk into herself. Not another word did she venture to breathe. An unconscious wish of wild intensity filled her that she were dead and buried, and insensible to the shame that overwhelmed her. She saw Zamorna’s finger with the ring on it still pointing to that awful name, a name that raised no impulse of hatred: far too high and blessed did the exalted lady seem for that; but only bitter humiliation and self-abasement. She stole from her master’s side feeling that she had no more right to sit there than a fawn has to share the den of a royal lion; and murmuring that she was very sorry for her folly, was about to glide in dismay and despair from the room. But the duke rising up arrested her, and bending his lofty stature over her as she crouched before him folded her again in his arms. His countenance relaxed not a moment from its sternness, nor did the gloom leave his magnificent but worn features as he said:
‘I will make no apologies for what I have said, because I know, Mina, that as I hold you now you feel fully recompensed for my severity. Before I depart I will speak to you one word of comfort which you may remember when I am far away and perhaps dead. My dear girl! I know and appreciate all you have done, all you have resigned, and all you have endured, for my sake. I repay you for it with one coin: with what alone to you will be of greater worth than worlds without it. I give you such true and fond love as a master can give to the fairest and loveliest vassal that ever was bound to him in feudal allegiance. You may never feel the touch of Zamorna’s lips again. There, Mina!’ And fervently and almost fiercely he pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘Go to your chamber; to-morrow you must leave for the west.’
‘Obedient till death,’ was Miss Laury’s answer as she closed the door and disappeared.
• • • • • • •