“Amethyst, love me—I must tell—he came—Tony. Done with? Oh no, no,—it has been burning me up. But I cried out, and there came like a great light in my heart of a sudden, and for a moment I hated him like a fiend; and I escaped, and got to you. But oh—my life to come—my life to come! I can’t be glad that He saved me! But He did!”
She pressed her face into Amethyst’s neck, kissing her with burning lips.
“Christ came between,” she said. “He took me from him.”
The tone of intense conviction awed Amethyst all the more, that it was so quiet and sad. She was greatly shocked at the revelation of Una’s trial, and reproached herself for her failure as guard or guide. Nothing however but tender soothing was possible now, and Una lay quite passive, till her throbbing pulses grew quieter, and at last she seemed to fall asleep.
Then Amethyst stole over to the open window, and looked across the square. The midsummer dawn was stealing over the sky, the sound of the dance music at the ball mingled with the twitter of the London sparrows. She could see the blaze of light in the houses opposite.
Her own fate pressed so upon her that she could scarcely think of Una’s, save with a sort of half-incredulous surprise. If she herself was tempted—if this that she purposed was a sin against herself, no angel with a flaming sword would stop her way.
Was it indeed so? She had been stopped, with the words of self-committal upon her lips, and, in the moment’s pause, had come upon her a revulsion of feeling almost as complete as that which Una had described. Sir Richard’s momentary want of tact in pressing her, the sudden recall of the past by Una’s reference to it—Suddenly all her philosophy, her good sense, and her surface contentment fell away, and over her there came with a rush the thought, the feeling rather, of that other night,—of Lucian’s boyish wooing, of his first kiss, of her own rapturous joy. Her strong nerves gave way, and sinking into a chair she wept silently, but with a passion of anguish, for the days that were gone for ever.
A tap at the door roused her. She hurried to open it, and there stood Tory, who, at her sign of silence, caught her hand and pulled her across the passage into her own room.
“Oh, Amethyst,” she said, “I’ve got something dreadful to tell you. Charles came late to the ball—I saw Carrie looking out for him ever so often—and he talked and laughed loud as he came up-stairs, and I saw Tony and Sir Richard look at each other. But he went up to Carrie and asked her to dance, and they spun about oddly, and knocked up against the wall, and he would have thrown her down, if Tony, who was dancing with Kat, hadn’t somehow caught her; and then Sir Richard took hold of him, and pulled him into the hall, and there was a sort of row and a noise. And oh, Amethyst, he was as tipsy as ever he could be, horrid brute! He might be a bad lot, without disgracing us in that way!”
And Tory stamped her foot, and for once cried hot tears of shame and anger.