He bent down his head and kissed her forehead: she pressed his faithful hand.
‘And now, dear May, let me speak of a less important object, of myself. I find this borough a mere delusion. Every day new difficulties arise; and every day my chance seems weaker. I am wasting precious time for one who should be in action. I think, then, of returning to Vienna, and at once. I have some chance of being appointed Secretary of Embassy, and I then shall have achieved what was the great object of my life, independence.’
‘This is always a sorrowful subject to me, Arundel. You have cherished such strange, do not be offended if I say such erroneous, ideas on the subject of what you call independence, that I feel that upon it we can consult neither with profit to you nor satisfaction to myself. Independence! Who is independent, if the heir of Dacre bow to anyone? Independence! Who can be independent, if the future head of one of the first families in this great country, will condescend to be the secretary even of a king?’
‘We have often talked of this, May, and perhaps I have carried a morbid feeling to some excess; but my paternal blood flows in these veins, and it is too late to change. I know not how it is, but I seem misplaced in life. My existence is a long blunder.’
‘Too late to change, dearest Arundel! Oh! thank you for those words. Can it, can it ever be too late to acknowledge error? Particularly if, by that very acknowledgment, we not only secure our own happiness, but that of those we love and those who love us?’
‘Dear May! when I talk with you, I talk with my good genius; but I am in closer and more constant converse with another mind, and of that I am the slave. It is my own. I will not conceal from you, from whom I have concealed nothing, that doubts and dark misgivings of the truth and wisdom of my past feelings and my past career will ever and anon flit across my fancy, and obtrude themselves upon my consciousness. Your father—yes! I feel that I have not been to him what nature intended, and what he deserved.’
‘O Arundel!’ she said, with streaming eyes, ‘he loves you like a son. Yet, yet be one!’
He seated himself on the sofa by her side, and took her small hand and bathed it with his kisses.
‘My sweet and faithful friend, my very sister! I am overpowered with feelings to which I have hitherto been a stranger. There is a cause for all this contest of my passions. It must out. My being has changed. The scales have fallen from my sealed eyes, and the fountain of my heart o’erflows. Life seems to have a new purpose, and existence a new cause. Listen to me, listen; and if you can, May, comfort me!’