“Oh, Hugh!” she said, in broken accents, “if you knew where this rack screws and strains my heart-strings most. To think that one whom I always loved and honored with a passionate enthusiasm as the very first in human excellence—but no more of that! Not my lips shall breathe one word of blame, though all earth and heaven cry shame on his memory!” said Garnet, as her dark eyes smoldered and flashed and sank again, as she breathed, in heart-broken tones: “No more of that! Oh, God, that I could say to my thoughts, as to my tongue, ‘No more of that’!”
And, scarcely heeding her lover, she arose, threw back her falling hair, pressed both hands upon her bosom, and passed out of the room.
It was late in the evening before he saw her again. He went into the library after the lamps were lighted and found her sitting at one of the reading tables, with her head bowed down upon her folded hands. He went and sat by her, saying:
“Garnet, dearest, do not keep your thoughts and troubles all to yourself; let me share them. Come, come,” he continued, caressing her, “this is unkind! I have had a very solitary day.”
“A solitary day! I wish you joy of it! Mine has been ‘peopled with the furies.’ Oh, Hugh, even in my wild infancy I was such an ambitious child! Though, Heaven knows, there was nothing around me to foster ambition, unless it were the want of everything, and the study of fairy tales! Oh, Hugh! if the little wild water-witch of the isle was ambitious——”
“‘The woman, gifted with beauty, talent, wealth, and largest liberty, is a hundred times more so,’ you would say,” said Hugh. “But, Garnet, do you know there is an ambition more noble than all others—that of moral greatness! Garnet, you have the opportunity granted to few—the opportunity of moral heroism!”
“Oh, Hugh, before I saw you I had great schemes! great schemes!”
“I know it, dear Garnet; but they did not demand the great moral force required of you to-day.”
“But since you came, Hugh——” Here her voice broke down and she dropped her head upon the table for a few minutes. Then, lifting it up again, she held her veil of ringlets back, and said: “But since you came, Hugh, all schemes have given place to one. I had been living in such a golden dream, dear Hugh! Oh, listen! You know when we were two poor children, obliged to pick our frugal meal of maninosies from the beach, and I, inspired by the ‘Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,’ would be talking my wild, childish talk about sudden riches and fairy grandmothers, you said you had a fairy in your head who could convert the sand and clay into gold-dust and precious gems.”
“Yes, I remember. It was when I dreamed of being an agriculturist.”