He stooped down as he spoke and pressed his lips upon her hand, and then turned quickly away. And May looked after him gratefully.
“How good he is!” she thought; “what a noble heart he has! I wonder what made him look so sad.”
But a few minutes later Sister Margaret bustled into the room, and she, also, was full of Mr. Webster’s praise.
“What a thorough gentleman he is!” she said, quite enthusiastically. “Have you known him long, Mrs. Church?”
“For some time,” answered May, and her tone reminded Sister Margaret she had been instructed to ask Mrs. Church no questions regarding her past life.
Yet the good woman naturally felt curious, and had decided in her own mind that Mr. Webster must have been an old lover of the young widow’s, and she began to hope that it might end in a marriage. This was, of course, entirely her own theory, for she had certainly nothing to go on. For she and May were quite a fortnight at Hastings before they either saw or heard anything more of Mr. Webster.
She took comfortable rooms for May overlooking the sea, and the change of scene and fresh air soon began to revive the drooping invalid. And a strange change came over May’s mind also at this time. Sister Margaret had many a sad tale to tell her; tales of forsaken wives and broken hearts. Her experience of life had not lain along its smooth paths. She had trod the rough roads, and the sick and sorrowful had been her daily companions. And listening to her May began to learn that her case was not worse than others; her wound not more terrible than some of her fellow sufferers.
“I loved him too much,” she told herself; “it blinded me, and I believed he loved me as I loved him. But it was not the same.”
She did not even give John Temple his due, for he had not felt for her a brief passion that soon would pass away. He had loved her with a selfish love, no doubt, but with a love that made him put everything else aside for her sake. He thought, also, that she cared for him beyond and above all earthly things; that nothing would have torn her from his side.
She had not realized the shock, the horror of her awakening. It seemed to end everything for her, and now slowly struggling back to life, she told herself that John Temple had never really loved her. She had been his plaything; his “country sweetheart,” as he had often called her in his fond hours of love.