“What, Browning?” he exclaimed. “Does she read him? or does he only ornament her table?” He opened it at the flyleaf. “‘From Rosamond Mearely to herself.’ How delicious!” He explored further, unaware that the owner of the book was watching him and straining her ears to hear his self-communings. “Yes, she reads him, and marks her favourite passages like a girl in her teens——. What’s this?”
There is no good of life but love—but love.
Never you cheat yourself one instant! Love,
Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest.
“Ah ha! ‘Never you cheat yourself.’ With her little pencil she underscores the line, and so confesses to any one who opens the book that she cheated herself when she married Mr. Money-Bags Mearely.” He looked for more self-revelations, and found the passage she had said aloud to herself, there, just before the one bell-note had rolled through the valley.
There have been moments if the Sentinel,
Lowering his halbert to salute the queen,
Had flung it brutally and clasped my knees,
I would have stooped and kissed him with my soul.
Who could have comprehended?
Why no one—but this one who did.
——even now perhaps it comes too late.
“Oh, Rosamond Mearely! Oh, merely Rosamond! ‘Who could have comprehended?’”
He laid the book down, saying her name softly to himself.
“It—it’s all ready,” she called, timidly, hoping that her blush would not be noticed. She did not wish even so charming a vagabond as this midnight visitor to see how his reading of her favourite passages had stirred her. In her own heart, she always held that it was the queen of Villa Rose and not the queen of Browning’s “In a Balcony,” who had first uttered those lines.
“The vagabond thanks Mrs. Mearely profoundly for her kindness. You see I have discovered your name among the treasures of this room.” He helped her take the dishes off the tray and arrange them on the table.
“Mrs. Mearely accepts no thanks for pleasing herself,” she replied, colouring again and refusing to let her eyes meet his, lest he should look through them into her mind and find confirmation of what the pencil marks in the book had told him. She pointed to a chair. “Eat, Vagabond!”
“Will you not share the beggar’s crust?” whimsically.