"Remember," says Gower, sternly, letting each word drop from him as if with the settled intention of imprinting or burning them upon her brain, "I shall never relent about this. You have given me your solemn oath, and—I shall keep you to it! I shall never absolve you from it, as I have absolved you from your first promise to-day. Never. Do not hope for that. Should you live to be a hundred years old, you cannot marry your cousin without my consent, and that I shall never give. You quite understand?"
"Quite." But her tone has grown faint and uncertain. What has she done? Something in his words, his manner, has at last awakened her from the happy dream in which she was reveling.
"Now you can return to your old lover," says Stephen, with an indescribably bitter laugh, "and be happy. For your deeper satisfaction, too, let me tell you that for the future you shall see very little of me."
"You are going abroad?" asks she, very timidly, in her heart devoutly hoping that this may be the reading of his last words.
"No; I shall stay here. But the Court I shall trouble with my presence seldom. I don't know," exclaims he, for the first time losing his wonderful self control and speaking querulously, "what is the matter with me. Energy has deserted me with all the rest. You have broken my heart, I suppose, and that explains everything. There, go," turning abruptly away from her; "your being where I can see you only makes matters worse."
Some impulse prompts Dulce to go up to him and lay her hand gently on his arm.
"Stephen," she says, in a low tone, "if I have caused you any unhappiness forgive me now."
"Forgive you?" exclaims he, so fiercely that she recoils from him in absolute terror.
Lifting her fingers from his arm as though they burn him, he flings them passionately away, and, plunging into the short thick underwood, is soon lost to sight.
Dulce, pale and frightened, returns by the path by which she had come, but not to those she had left. She is in no humor now for questions or curious looks; gaining the house without encountering any one, she runs up-stairs, and seeks refuge in her own room.