“It is not that she has gone back. She has never changed. It is I who have forfeited her.”
“You!—You!—She has not cast you off?”
“You know how it was, and the resolution by which she had bound herself, and how I was maddened.”
“That! I thought it was all forgiven and forgotten!” cried Rosamond.
“It is not a matter of forgiveness. She put it to me whether it was possible to begin on a broken word.”
“Worse and worse! Why, when you’ve spoken a foolish word, it is the foolishest thing in the world to hold to it.”
“If it were a foolish word!” said poor Frank. “I think I could have atoned for that day, if she could have tried me; but when she left me to judge, and those eyes of sweet, sorrowful—”
“Sweet! Sorrowful, indeed! About as sweet and sorrowful as the butcher to the lamb. Left you to judge! A refinement of cruelty! She had better have stayed away when I told her it was the only chance to save your life.”
“Would that she had!” sighed Frank. “But that was your doing, Rosamond, and what she did in mere humanity can’t be cast back again to bind her against her conscience.”
“Plague on her conscience!” was my Lady’s imprecation. “I wonder if it is all coquetry!”