The night was apt to be the worst time with Arthur; and Violet generally found him in the morning in a state of feverish discomfort and despondency that was not easily soothed. Anxious to know how he had fared with his new attendant, she came in as early as possible, and was rejoiced to find that he had passed an unusually comfortable night, had been interested and cheered by Percy’s conversation, and had slept some hours.
Percy’s occupation, in the meantime, was shown by some sheets of manuscript on the table near the fire.
‘I see you have not been losing time,’ said Violet.
‘I fear—I fear I have,’ he answered, as rather nervously he began to gather up some abortive commencements and throw them into the fire.
‘Take care, that is mine,’ exclaimed she, seeing the words ‘Mrs. Martindale,’ and thinking he had seized upon a letter which he had written to her from Worthbourne on Arthur’s business. She held out her hand for it, and he yielded it, but the next moment she saw it was freshly written; before she could speak she heard the door closed, and Arthur sleepily muttered, ‘Gone already.’ Dreading some new branch of the Boulogne affair, she sat down, and with a beating heart read by the firelight:—
‘I can bear it no longer! Long ago I committed one great folly, and should have been guilty of a greater, if you had not judged more wisely for me than I for myself. You did, indeed, act “kindly as ever”; and I have thanked you for it a thousand times, since I came to my senses in the dismal altitude of my “sixieme etage” at Paris.
‘No disrespect to your sister, to whom I did greater injustice than I knew, in asking her to seal my mistake. I threw away a rough diamond because its sharp edges scratched my fingers, and, in my fit of passion, tried to fill up its place with another jewel. Happily you and she knew better! Now I see the diamond sparkling, refined, transcendent, with such chastened lustre as even I scarce dared to expect!
‘These solitary years of disappointment have brought me to a sense of the harshness and arrogance of my dealings with the high nature that had so generously intrusted itself to me. There was presumption from the first in undertaking to mould her, rudeness in my attempts to control her, and precipitate passion and jealousy in resenting the displeasure I had provoked; and all was crowned by the absurd notion that pique with her was love of your sister!
‘I see it all now, or rather I have seen it ever since it was too late; I have brooded over it till I have been half distracted, night after night! And now I can hardly speak, or raise my head in her presence. I must have her pardon, whether I dare or not to ask one thing more. I never was sure that her heart was mine; my conduct did not deserve it, whatever my feelings did. If she accepted me from romance, I did enough to open her eyes! I am told she accepts Lord St. Erme—fit retribution on me, who used to look down on him in my arrogant folly, and have to own that he has merited her, while I—
‘But, at least, I trust to your goodness to obtain some word of forgiveness for me without disturbing her peace of mind. I would not expose her to one distressing scene! She has gone through a great deal, and the traces of grief and care on that noble countenance almost break my heart. I would not give her the useless pain of having to reject me, and of perceiving the pain I should not be able to conceal.