It was not that Guy did not love me. Oh no! I knew he did. It was not even that I did not stand first in his love. I was ready to yield that place to Lady Sybil. Perhaps I should not have been quite so ready had it been to any one else. But—there was the sting—he did not love me as I loved him. He could do without me.
And I could have no comfort from sympathy. Because, in the first place, the only person whose sympathy would have been a comfort to me was the very one who had distressed me; and in the second place, I had a vague idea underlying my grief that I had no business to feel any; that every body (if they knew) would tell me I was exceedingly silly—that it was only what I ought to have expected—and all sorts of uncomfortable consolations of that kind. Was I a foolish baby, crying for the moon?—or was I a grand heroine of romance, whose feelings were so exquisitely delicate and sensitive that the common clay of which other people were made could not be expected to understand me? I could not tell.
Oh, why must we come out of that sweet old world where we walked hand in hand, and were all in all to each other? Why must we grow up, and drift asunder, and never be the same to one another any more?
Was I wicked?—or was I only miserable?
About the last item at any rate there was no doubt. I sat, thinking sad thoughts, and trying to see my work through half-dimmed eyes, when Lady Judith spoke again.
"Helena," she said, "grief has two voices; and many only hear the upper and louder one. I shall be sorry to see thee miss that lower, stiller voice, which is by far the more important of the two."
"What do you mean, holy Mother?" I asked.
"Dear heart," she said, "the louder voice, which all must hear, chants in a minor key, 'This world is not your rest.' It is a sad, sad song, more especially to those who have heard little of it before. But many miss the soft, sweet music of the undertone, which is,—'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.' Yet it is always there—if we will only listen."
"But a thing which is done cannot be undone," said I.
"No," she answered. "It cannot. But can it not be compensated? If thou lose a necklace of gilt copper, and one give thee a gold carcanet instead, hast thou really sustained any loss?"