It is my life at thy feet I throw,
To step with into light and joy!
Not a power of life but I’ll employ—
Browning.
“Gryphynshold! Take me to Gryphynshold! that is the most remote of all the manors left me by my father. Take me there, for I wish to go as far as possible from all the people I ever knew before!” said Gloria, in reply to David Lindsay’s suggestion that he should convey her to some one of her houses as to a place of refuge.
They were still sitting together, where we left them, in the private parlor of the hotel, on the afternoon of the day of their marriage.
They were now conversing in a quiet and friendly manner on the subject of their approaching departure, for they had resolved to leave Washington the same evening.
Gloria was much more composed now than she had ever been since the hour of her marriage; for David Lindsay had assured her that he should never presume on the position she had given him, even to enter her presence uninvited.
She had, from their childhood up, always loved and trusted him, and now that he had given her this promise, she implicitly believed him, and dismissed all her disquieting doubts.
David Lindsay, meanwhile, magnanimously repressed all exhibition of the bitter mortification and sorrow he experienced. He knew his little playmate too well to blame her. He knew her better than any one else in the world— better than she knew herself. The poor little hunted and helpless fawn had flown to him for refuge, and he would succor her in the way she pleased, not in the way he had wished.