“Why, surely, if you go, Mr. Lindsay must escort you himself.”
“Mr. Lindsay has business that will compel his return North as soon as he sees me settled in my home,” coldly replied Gloria.
David Lindsay’s fine face flushed, and then grew pale.
“Well, I suppose, such a big estate as yours, ma’am—for I am told that Gryphynshold is but a small portion of it, and that the bulk of it is in Maryland—will require a deal of attention, not to say what the gentleman’s own affairs may call for; but one would think you would have settled all that before you came down here, so as not to be separated so soon again. It seems such a pity,” said the housekeeper, sympathetically.
Gloria did not reply, and David Lindsay could not.
“Well, I didn’t sit down here to idle away my time. I must go to the linen room and see to getting out the things to make up the beds—though, dear me, when I come to think of how long they have been packed away in the cedar chests, I don’t believe they will be fit for use, for yellowness and closeness,” said the housekeeper, getting up to leave the room.
“I will go with you,” said Gloria, rising to follow Mrs. Brent, for her sensitive conscience and sympathetic spirit made her dread a tête-à-tête with David Lindsay almost as much as she had ever dreaded one with her uncle; not that she thought, for one instant, that the pure-hearted and noble-minded young fisherman would ever, under any temptation, or for any reason, break his word to her, or take the slightest unfair advantage of his position towards her.
She knew that he never would do that. She knew also that he would never plead for the love that she was unwilling to give him; that he would never invoke her pity by any look or tone expressive of the disappointment and humiliation, the sorrow and distress he really suffered, and which she intuitively knew that he suffered. No, but she was afraid of herself. She could trust David Lindsay utterly, but she could not trust herself.
She had loved David Lindsay from their childhood up; but she had never been “in love” with him, or with any one, and she had never wished to marry him, or any other; but driven by the very spite and stress of fate, she had married him, and immediately afterwards realized what a mad, fatal, irreparable error she had committed in uniting her fate to that of one so utterly unfitted by birth, position and education to be her husband!
Yet there were moments now when the memory of their lifelong, innocent, childish affection for each other melted her heart to tears; when the contemplation of his magnanimity filled her mind with admiration; when all that was best in her own nature bridged the gulf between them, and almost impelled her hands and lips and voice to go where her spirit had gone before.