“Were you here when I entered?” he inquired.
“Yes; I was standing in the recess of the window, and the curtain concealed me. I should have spoken to you, but as I perceived you were preoccupied, I was afraid to disturb you, and did not intend to move until you had left the boudoir, but your ears are so quick that you detected me. I wish,” she continued, in a timid, faltering voice, “your brow did not wear so deep a shade, or that I were in any degree able to remove it.” As she spoke; she drew nearer to him, and leaned her arm on the back of the chair on which he was sitting.
Kindness and affection are never so much prized as when we have suffered injustice at the hands of one we love. Words cannot console at such a moment: but sympathy—the conviction that another heart feels for and with us, is able in some degree to do so. Whatever faults Arabella Crofton might possess,—and that they were neither few nor light no one was better aware than Harry Coverdale,—the truth and strength of her regard for him he did not doubt. Deeply, fondly, earnestly as he loved his wife, he must have been more than mortal had he not perforce contrasted the levity (to use the mildest term) and unkindness of her on whom he thus lavished his whole treasure of affection, with the ready sympathy, the watchful tenderness of one who, if she had been all evil, nay, if she had not possessed in some degree unusual generosity of character, might have hated him with a strength proportioned to the regard she now appeared to feel towards him. Men are constitutionally denied the relief which the gentler sex derive from tears; but if, when a woman would weep, a man of deep, strong feeling can be sufficiently softened to give vent to his sorrow in words, the effect is somewhat analogous. Harry’s heart was full to overflowing, and Arabella’s well-timed sympathy caused the torrent of his grief to burst forth.
“Why does she try me thus!” he said; “it is, it must be, mere want of thought; she is wilful, I see it, as clearly as I see and know that it was my culpable neglect which first made her so; but this is a hard punishment for even so gross a fault! If she knew how her cold looks and hard words pain me—how it grieves, destroys me to be forced to deny her anything—to feel it my duty, as I perceive it to be now, to oppose her slightest wish! And then to see her doing things which may give those who do not know her truth and purity as I do, occasion to slander her—Arabella, it maddens me!” he pressed his hand to his forehead to still its throbbing; but when his companion appeared about to attempt to console him, he resumed, abruptly—“Don’t speak; you cannot defend her—her conduct admits of no defence, and I will not hear her blamed! Neither can you advise me; as far as action goes, my course is clear—I shall take her out of town tomorrow; and as I cannot have it out with that scoundrel D’Almayne, or the weak, ungrateful boy he is ruining, without compromising her, I must postpone the day of reckoning with them—it will come sooner or later, that is all clear enough; but that is not the point”—here words failed him, and covering his eyes with his hand, he relapsed into his former gloomy silence.
Arabella Crofton was a woman of strong passions, and naturally of strong impulses also, but these she had learned in great measure to control; thus her manner was usually quiet and collected, and she both spoke and acted according to a rule laid down by herself for her own guidance, and tending towards some definite end. But when, as in the present instance, she was actuated by any overpowering feeling, she was for the moment completely carried away by it, and would act for good or evil, as the impulse which controlled her was a right or wrong one, even in direct opposition to her own plans and intentions. She disliked Alice most heartily, and she had many—we cannot say “good,” but sufficient—reasons for doing so; yet she sympathised so strongly with Harry’s grief at the idea that his wife was encouraging the attentions of Lord Alfred Courtland, that—believing, as she did honestly, Alice to be merely amusing herself, possibly for the sake of annoying her husband, but evidently not from any deep feeling for her admirer—she could not help trying to comfort him.
“Do not afflict yourself so deeply,” she said; “I cannot bear to see you suffer thus! Believe me, you think too seriously of this matter; Mrs. Coverdale is only amusing herself with this foolish, infatuated young man. I am as certain as if I were in her confidence that she does not really care for him; the very openness with which she accepts his attentions proves that it is so; as soon as she has left the gaieties and frivolities of town, she will forget his very existence.”
“She may forget him,” was the bitter reply; “but will she ever forget the cause which has driven her to encourage him—which has forced her to seek amusement in all these heartless gaieties and follies? will she ever forget the time when, pursuing my own selfish pleasures, I left her, day after day, alone—she who had always been accustomed to live in a cheerful family, will she ever forget my neglect, and restore to me that love without which life has no longer a charm for me—that love which I once possessed, and which, God help me! I fear I have alienated for ever!”
“Yes, she will,” was the eager reply; “if she ever loved you, she loves you still; real, true love never dies: it would be better for some of us if time could efface feeling!”
The evident emotion with which she uttered these last words touched Harry’s kind heart, and, regarding her with a look of pitying interest, he rejoined—
“Poor Arabella! you too have had much sorrow to contend with; and no one can lament more deeply than I do the share I have had in increasing it. Mine is a strange fate!—love that I cannot return is lavished and wasted on me, and the only affection I pine for, I have alienated by my own rash and inconsiderate conduct!”