"Does your father disapprove, then?" asks he, more through idleness than a desire to know.
Instinctively he feels that, no matter what obstacles may be thrown in this girl's way, still she will carry her point and marry the man she has elected to love. Nay, will not difficulties but increase her steadfastness, and make strong the devotion that is growing in her heart?
Not until now, this moment, when hope has died and despair sprung into life, does he know how freely, how altogether, he has lavished the entire affection of his soul upon her. During all these past few months he has lived and thought and hoped but for her; and now—all this is at an end.
Like a heavy blow from some unseen hand this terrible news has fallen upon him, leaving him spent and broken, and filled with something that is agonized surprise at the depth of the misfortune that has overtaken him. It is as a revelation, the awakening to a sense of the longing that has been his,—to the knowledge of the cruel strength of the tenderness that binds his heart to hers.
With a slow wonder he lifts his eyes and gazes at her. There is a petulant expression round her mobile lips, a faint bending of her brows that bespeaks discontent, bordering upon anger, yet, withal, she is quite lovely,—so sweet, yet so unsympathetic; so gentle, yet so ignorant of all he is at present feeling.
With a sickening dread he looks forward to the future that still may lie before him. It seems to him that he can view, lying stretched out in the far distance, a lonely cheerless road, over which he must travel whether he will or not,—a road bare and dusty and companionless, devoid of shade, or rest, or joy, or that love that could transform the barrenness into a "flowery mead."
"He that loses hope"—says Congreve—"may part with anything." To Scrope, just now, it seems as though hope and he have parted company forever. The past has been so dear, with all its vague beliefs and uncertain dreamings,—all too sweet for realization,—that the present appears unbearable.
The very air seems dark, the sky leaden, the clouds sad and lowering. Vainly he tries to understand how he has come to love, with such a boundless passion, this girl, who loves him not at all, but has surrendered herself wholly to one unworthy of her,—one utterly incapable of comprehending the nobility and truthfulness of her nature.
The world, that only yesterday seemed so desirable a place, to-day has lost its charm.
"What is life, when stripped of its disguise? A thing to be desired it cannot be." With him it seems almost at an end. An unsatisfactory thing, too, at its best,—a mere "glimpse into the world of might have been."