She held out her hands to him with weeping eyes.
"Adrian," she called, "good-by, my love, good-by!"
And he, all unconscious of the eyes that were bent upon him, turned away, while the darkness and desolation of death fell over the girl who loved him so dearly.
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
Hyacinth had looked upon Adrian. In her simplicity she had believed that with that one look all her fever of pain would vanish. Had it been so? Three days since she had stood in Miss Dartelle's room and watched him from the window; and now she looked like one consumed by some hidden fire. In that great busy household no one noticed her, or possibly remarks would have been made. There was a brilliant flush on the beautiful face, the light in her eyes was unnaturally bright, no lips were ever more crimson. She had slept but little. She had spent the nights in pacing her room, doing battle with her sorrow and her love; she had spent the days in fighting against the physical weakness that threatened to overwhelm her.
"It would have been better," she owned to herself in a passion of despair, "never to have seen him. That one look upon his face has made me more wretched than ever."
"It is all my own fault," she would say again—"all my own fault—no one is in the least degree to blame but myself. I have brought it all upon myself. If I had been content with my home—satisfied with the gifts Heaven had given me—if I had refused to listen to Claude's suggestions—if I had been true to my teachings and true to myself, all this would never have happened—I should have been Adrian's wife. There is no one—no one to blame but myself. I have shipwrecked my own happiness, and all I suffer is just punishment."
Like a vision sent purposely to torture her, there came before her a picture of what might have been but for her folly in consenting to meet Claude. By this time she would have been Adrian's wife, living with him in that grand old house he had described to her, loving and beloved, going sometimes to see Lady Vaughan, and brightening the fair old face by the sight of her own great happiness. All this was impossible now because she had been guilty of a terrible folly. It was all at an end. She had to live her own dreary life, and never while the sun shone or the flowers bloomed would the faintest ray of happiness reach her. What Lady Dartelle had foreseen came to pass. She had so many guests to accommodate that she was obliged to ask Miss Holte to give up her large airy room and take a smaller one on the floor above.