“Your room,” she resumed, and then she hesitated, holding the candle in her hand and looking down on the floor—“your room is the one over the dining-room. You will find everything prepared there for your comfort.”
“I thank you—very much,” answered the young man, in a low and broken voice.
“Good-night,” she said, still hesitating.
“Good-night, lady dear.”
“God—bless—you, David Lindsay,” she added, faltering.
“And you, too! God bless you, Gloria,” he answered.
She went out of the room; but as she turned to shut the door, she caught sight of his face. It wore a look of weary sorrow, such as he never would have willingly permitted her to see; and suddenly she sat down her candle on the hall bench, ran back into the room, threw her arms around his neck and kissed his forehead, sobbing forth the words:
“Oh, David Lindsay, I am so sorry—so sorry! But I can’t help it. Indeed, I can’t, dear David Lindsay!”
With a look of ineffable tenderness, he put his arm around her waist and drew her close to his heart, and would have returned her kiss, but she suddenly broke from him, and ran out of the room. She caught up her candle from the hall table, flew up stairs to her own chamber, shut the door, and flung herself down on the bed in a passion of tears.
“Oh-h-h! what a hard, cold, proud wretch I am! What a cruel, wicked, unnatural monster! But I cannot help it! I cannot! I don’t want to be married—I do not. I love David Lindsay! I do love him, dearly, dearly, dearly; I always did love him better than anybody else in the whole world. Ah! who is so good and grand as he is, within himself? No one that I ever saw in this world. No one that I ever read of. But I don’t want to be his wife! I don’t want to be anybody’s wife! Oh, I wish I had stayed at the Sacred Heart, with the quiet sisters there!”