If she were to have to live within a stone’s throw of him, not only always loving, always longing, but conscious that the same feelings which drew her heart toward him were forever drawing him toward her.
Mabin began to cry softly. And then the application of the story to her own case caused her thoughts to take another turn; and she asked herself, with the generous Quixotism of her youth and her loyal nature, whether she ought not to wish for, to encourage, the process by which Rudolph’s love was being diverted from herself, the uninteresting, awkward girl without any history, to the unhappy lady around whom there clung the romance of a tragedy.
These questions, which had indeed risen in her mind before, but which had now acquired a new force with her extended knowledge, were entirely consistent with the bent of Mabin’s mind. Accustomed from her childhood to consider others rather than herself, and inclined by her own modesty to underrate her deserts as well as her attractions, she found it easy, not indeed to stifle her own feelings, but to control them. She told herself that she would show Rudolph no more petulance, no more “childish” jealousy or curiosity; and if, as seemed inevitable, he found that he had made a mistake in thinking he cared for herself, she would be the first to wish him happiness with a more attractive bride.
Perhaps it showed rather a touching sense of her own devotion to her lover, that Mabin never once doubted his power to console Mrs. Dale for all her troubles, nor that lady’s readiness to be comforted by him.
And it was while these thoughts were fresh in her mind that Mabin, turning the angle in the path toward the kitchen-garden, came face to face with Rudolph.
Meeting him at such a moment, it was not surprising that she stopped short, turned first red, then white, and presented to his view a countenance so deeply impressed with a sort of shy alarm, that the young man was rather puzzled as to the kind of greeting he might expect.
Recovering herself quickly, Mabin wisely put off explanations by dashing straight into an exciting subject:
“Oh, do you know,” she asked in a hurried, constrained voice, “that I have had to leave poor Mrs. Dale to that dragon? Oh yes, I know who she is now; I know who they both are. Mrs. Dale herself has told me that, told me everything;” added Mabin, in answer to an interrogative and puzzled look which she detected on his face.
Rudolph looked dubious.
“Everything?” he repeated doubtfully.