“Do, dear mother,” cried the girl, laughing. “Say next week, or next year, sweetest of mothers, or—best of all—say that he had better come by and by, and then add, in the true style of Mr. Garrick, that 'by and by is easily said.'”
CHAPTER XXX.
As he went to his chambers to dress before going to dine with the Dillys in the Poultry, Goldsmith was happier than he had been for years. He had seen the light return to the face that he loved more than all the faces in the world, and he had been strong enough to put aside the temptation to hear her confess that she returned the love which he bore her, but which he had never confessed to her. He felt happy to know that the friendship which had been so great a consolation to him for several years—the friendship for the family who had been so good and so considerate to him—was the same now as it had always been. He felt happy in the reflection that he had spoken no word that would tend to jeopardise that friendship. He had seen enough of the world to be made aware of the fact that there is no more potent destroyer of friendship than love. He had put aside the temptation to speak a word of love; nay, he had prevented her from speaking what he believed would be a word of love, although the speaking of that word would have been the sweetest sound that had ever fallen upon his ears.
And that was how he came to feel happy.
And yet, that same night, when he was sitting alone in his room, he found a delight in adding to that bundle of manuscripts which he had dedicated to her and which some weeks before he had designed to destroy. He added poem after poem to the verses which Johnson had rightly interpreted—verses pulsating with the love that was in his heart—verses which Mary Horneck could not fail to interpret aright should they ever come before her eyes.
“But they shall never come before her eyes,” he said. “Ah, never—never! It is in my power to avert at least that unhappiness from her life.”
And yet before he went to sleep he had a thought that perhaps one day she might read those verses of his—yes, perhaps one day. He wondered if that day was far off or nigh.
When he had been by her side, after Colonel Gwyn had left the house, he had told her the story of the recovery of her letters; he did not, however, think it necessary to tell her how the man had come to entertain his animosity to Baretti; and she thus regarded the latter's killing of Jackson as an accident.