She loved him. But she would not yield. And these two forces, both so strong that they bent her and swayed her like torturers—if the strife should begin again between them, as it must if he should go to her entreating, was there not danger (as the Doctor, indeed, had written) that her slender strength would give way entirely? He had never forgotten the feeling in his arms of her inert form as he laid it down that day. He should never be able to overpower—he felt that he should not—that something, something stronger than herself, which he had seen looking from her eyes that day in the orange grove; this would remain unchanged, unconquered, though he should have carried her away from everybody, to the ends of the earth, and though—she loved him.
He buried his face in his hands. No, first of all she must not die. For there was always the chance that Lanse himself might die; this did not seem to him a murderous thought, as it had seemed to Celestine. It came across him suddenly that Lanse would probably be quite willing to discuss it with him; he would say, "Well, you know, I perfectly appreciate how convenient it would be." Lanse had no fear of death. He called it "a natural change;" none but a fool, he said, could fear the natural.
Winthrop got up at last and went to the window. The brilliantly lighted street lay below him, but he was not thinking of New York. He was thinking of that old gray-white house in the South, the house he had been fond of, but whose door was now closed to him, perhaps forever. For, unexplainably, though he hoped for Lanse's death, he had not the slightest expectation of it in reality; both he and Margaret had the sense of a long life before them. There would be no change, no relief; only the slow flight of the long days and years, and that would be all. He came back to his hearth; the fire had died; he sat down and stared at the ashes.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
"How will she appear?" said Mr. Moore. He sat in his arm-chair, his eyes were following the pattern of the red and white matting on the floor.
"'How,' Middleton?" said Penelope, looking up from her knitting reproachfully. "Why, broken-hearted, poor child!"
"Yes, broken-hearted, I fear; broken-hearted," answered Middleton.
Two years had passed since the burning of the house on the point. Mr. Moore was now quite well again, save that he would always be obliged to walk slowly and support himself with a cane. The rectory was more comfortable than it had been in former years, the rector's clerical coat was a better one; but the rector's wife, with that unconsciousness of her own lacks, which, when it is founded (as in this case) upon a husband's unswerving admiration, is not without its charm—the rector's wife was contentedly attired in the green delaine. Penelope indeed had many causes for contentment; it was so delightful to be able to give five-sixths of one's income to the poor.
At the present moment the Moores were listening for the sound of wheels; not the usual rattle, but the muffled grind through sand which came from the roadways of Gracias.