“Let me go with you,” she cried. “Let me but go and lie in your closet that I may be near, if you should call.”
Clorinda put her hands upon her shoulders, and stooping, kissed her, which in all their lives she had done but once or twice.
“God bless thee, poor Anne,” she said. “I think thou wouldst lie on my threshold and watch the whole night through, if I should need it; but I have given way to womanish vapours too much—I must go and be alone. I was driven by my thoughts to come and sit and look at thy good face—I did not mean to wake thee. Go back to bed.”
She would be obeyed, and led Anne to her couch herself, making her lie down, and drawing the coverlet about her; after which she stood upright with a strange smile, laying her hands lightly about her own white throat.
“When I was a new-born thing and had a little throat and a weak breath,” she cried, “’twould have been an easy thing to end me. I have been told I lay beneath my mother when they found her dead. If, when she felt her breath leaving her, she had laid her hand upon my mouth and stopped mine, I should not,” with the little laugh again—“I should not lie awake to-night.”
And then she went away.
CHAPTER XIV—Containing the history of the breaking of the horse Devil, and relates the returning of his Grace of Osmonde from France
There were in this strange nature, depths so awful and profound that it was not to be sounded or to be judged as others were. But one thing could have melted or caused the unconquerable spirit to bend, and this was the overwhelming passion of love—not a slight, tender feeling, but a great and powerful one, such as could be awakened but by a being of as strong and deep a nature as itself, one who was in all things its peer.
“I have been lonely—lonely all my life,” my Lady Dunstanwolde had once said to her sister, and she had indeed spoken a truth.
Even in her childhood she had felt in some strange way she stood apart from the world about her. Before she had been old enough to reason she had been conscious that she was stronger and had greater power and endurance than any human being about her. Her strength she used in these days in wilful tyranny, and indeed it was so used for many a day when she was older. The time had never been when an eye lighted on her with indifference, or when she could not rule and punish as she willed. As an infant she had browbeaten the women-servants and the stable-boys and grooms; but because of her quick wit and clever tongue, and also because no humour ever made her aught but a creature well worth looking at, they had taken her bullying in good-humour and loved her in their coarse way. She had tyrannised over her father and his companions, and they had adored and boasted of her; but there had not been one among them whom she could have turned to if a softer moment had come upon her and she had felt the need of a friend, nor indeed one whom she did not regard privately with contempt.