When sinners can find no other excuse for sin, they plead fate.
Alexander, sitting and gazing dreamily into the lights and shadows of his glowing coal fire, said to himself that fate had set itself against his union with Anna, and fate had thrown Drusilla into his arms. He recalled the facts that his wedding with Anna, twice fixed, had been twice stopped by the hand of death; that Anna did not love him, and did love Richard Hammond: that he himself did not love Anna, but loved Drusilla; that Drusilla loved him, and had most innocently suffered reproach and injury on his account; that he had striven to overcome his passion for the beautiful orphan, even to the extent of taking her to school with the full intention of leaving her there, but that she had been repulsed and thrown back upon his charge.
He had decided that in all this was the irresistible hand of fate. This and many other arguments he used to persuade himself that it would be altogether right for him to give up his cousin Anna, and take to his bosom the beautiful orphan Drusilla.
And this would have been right, if he had only chosen to do it in the right way. If he had written to his betrothed and told her all that he told himself, there is no doubt that she would have gladly released him from his engagement; and then if he had asked Drusilla to be his wife, and had married her in the face of all the world, his course would have been upright and honorable. But he did none of these things. Alexander Lyon was proud, and he wished to satisfy his love, without sacrificing his pride, so he resolved that his marriage with the late housekeeper’s daughter, should be a strictly secret one.
Having made up his mind, he arose and walked into the drawing-room, where he found Drusilla still slowly pacing up and down the floor.
“Why, you restless little creature! One would think your thoughts had been as perturbed as my own. Come, now! tell me truly, what you are dreaming of,” said Alexander, possessing himself of her hand, and drawing her down by his side on the sofa.
Something in his look and manner, something that she had never seen there before, startled and almost terrified her. For the first time, in all their association, a swift, hot blush swept over her face and neck, crimsoning both, so that Alexander, already half mad with love, thought her more beautiful and bewitching than ever.
“Come now! of what were you thinking?” he persisted.
“Indeed, I do not know; I have forgotten;—of nothing, I believe; I was not thinking; I was—trembling,” faltered the girl.
“Trembling, my darling? Why should you tremble? No evil shall come near you while I live,” said Alexander, tenderly. “Come, tell me why you were trembling?”