Sigrid gladly assented, and the next day both Mrs. Boniface and Cecil drove to the little house at Vauxhall. Roy brought Sigrid down to the carriage, and with a very happy, satisfied feeling introduced her to his mother, and watched the warm meeting with Cecil.
“I can’t think what would have become of Frithiof if it had not been for all your kindness,” said Sigrid. “Your son has practically saved his life, I am sure, by taking care of him through this illness.”
“And the worst is over now, I hope,” said Mrs. Boniface. “That is such a comfort.”
At the first moment Sigrid had fallen in love with the sweet-natured, motherly old lady, and now she opened all her heart to her, and they discussed the sad cause of Frithiof’s breakdown, and talked of past days in Norway, and of the future that lay before him, Cecil listening with that absolute command of countenance which betokens a strong nature, and her companions little dreaming that their words, though eagerly heard, were like so many sword-thrusts to her. The neat brougham of the successful tradesman might have seemed prosaic enough, and an unlikely place in which to find any romance, but nevertheless the three occupants with their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears, were each living out an absorbing life story. For every heart has its own romance, and whether living in the fierce glare of a palace, in the whirl of society, in a quiet London suburb, or in an East-end court, it is all the same. The details differ, the accessories are strangely different, but the love which is the great mainspring of life is precisely the same all the world over.
“What makes me so miserable,” said Sigrid, “is to feel that his life is, as it were, over, though he is so young: it has been spoiled and ruined for him when he is but one-and-twenty.”
“But the very fact of his being so young seems to me to give hope that brighter things are in store for him,” said Mrs. Boniface.
“I do not think so,” said Sigrid. “That girl has taken something from him which can never come again: it does not seem to me possible that a man can love like that twice in a lifetime.”
“Perhaps not just in that way,” said Mrs. Boniface.
“And besides,” said Sigrid, “what girl would care to take such love as he might now be able to give? I am sure nothing would induce me to accept any secondary love of that kind.”
She spoke as a perfectly heart-whole girl, frankly and unreservedly. And what she said was true. She never could have been satisfied with less than the whole; it was her nature to exact much; she could love very devotedly, but she would jealously demand an equal devotion in return.