Gabrielle gently freed herself from his embrace.
"Do you think it is my own happiness I am seeking? No; what I wish is to be at Arno's side when all are forsaking him, to share his fate--his disgrace, if it must be. That is the only happiness I look for, and of that, at least, no one shall deprive me!"
There was infinite, pathetic tenderness in her words. George's gaze rested sorrowfully, regretfully on the youthful creature who had so quickly learned all a woman's devotion and self-sacrifice. Thus, thus he had dreamily pictured to himself his Gabrielle, in those early days when he had set the joyous merry-hearted child on a pedestal and worshipped her as the ideal of his life! dreamily only, it must be owned, for there had been no true hope in his heart that she would ever soar to such a height. Now his ideal stood embodied before him; and now, in the self-same moment, he learned that she was lost to him for ever.
"Let us part, then," he said, calling up all his self-control. "You are right. With so absorbing a passion in your heart for another, you could not be my wife. After the avowal you have just made, I should have released you without any entreaty on your part. Do not weep, Gabrielle. I have no ill-feeling towards you; I reproach you with nothing. All my enmity is for him who has robbed me of you. You were the joy, the very life of my life. How I shall bear to live on, now that you have left me, I know not. Farewell."
He drew her to him once again, once again he pressed his lips to hers, and then hurried from the house he had entered with such high hopes, now all fatally shattered and wrecked. Gabrielle remained alone, weeping no longer, but with a dull unspeakable aching within her breast, a thrilling sense of pain and loss. She felt that, with George's love, the best and noblest part of her life had gone from her.
CHAPTER XIX.
"Well, thank God this wretched business has come to a satisfactory end at last. It made me desperate to think I was the cause of it. I congratulate you with all my heart on your release, father."
So saying, Max Brunnow warmly embraced his father, who replied with a half smile:
"It was not an altogether unexpected solution of the question. I received a pretty plain hint some time ago from the Superintendent himself."
"But the press has worked valiantly in your behalf," said Max. "All the papers clamoured for a pardon, and from the very first day the public eagerly espoused your cause."