“I could not help loving him, though I knew it was sin; if there is shame in confessing it, I can not feel it yet. I wish I had told him—once—how dearly I loved him; I shall never be able to whisper it to him now, and I dare not write it. No, he will not forget me as he has forgotten others; but he will hate me, and call me false, and fickle, and cold. Cold—if he could only read my heart! I never read it myself till now, when we must be parted forever.”
Is it pleasant, think you, to listen to such words as these, uttered by the woman that you have worshiped, even if it be hopelessly, for years? Men have gone mad under lighter tortures than those that Mark Waring was then forced to endure. But he knew that it was the extremity of her anguish that had hardened for a season Cecil’s gentle, generous, nature, and made her heedless of the pain she inflicted. So he answered in a slow, steady voice, such as we employ when trying to calm the ravings of a fever-fit:
“Hush! you speak wildly. My presence here does you no good. You may think of me as hardly as you will; perhaps time will soften your judgment; if not—I shall still not repent to-night’s work. I will come for your letter at the moment of your departure. Good-night; I pray that God may help you now, and guard you always.” He raised her hand and just touched it with his lips, with the same grave courtesy that had marked his manner when they parted last, 59 three years ago, and in another second Cecil was alone again.
She was not long in recovering from her bewilderment; and when Mrs. Danvers returned she was perfectly collected and calm. It is not worth while recording Bessie’s noisy expressions of astonishment and delight, nor describing Dick Tresilyan’s way of receiving notice of the sudden change in their plans. His stolid composure was not greatly disturbed thereby; he muttered, under his breath, some sulky anathemas on “women who never knew their own minds;” but this was only because he considered a growl to be the form of protest suitable to the circumstances and due to his masculine dignity. On the whole, he was rather glad to go. It had become evident, even to his dull comprehension, that great mischief was brewing somewhere, and for days he had been in a state of hazy apprehension—as he expressed it, “not seeing his way out of it at all.” So he set about his part of the preparations for their exodus with a right good will. Neither will we give the details of Cecil’s parting with la mignonne. The latter was so rejoiced at the idea of her friend’s being out of harm’s way that she did not question her much as to the reasons for such an abrupt departure: it was not till afterward that she learned that it had been brought about by the influence of Waring. It is unnecessary to mention that the adieus were not accomplished without a certain amount of tears; but they were all shed by Fanny Molyneux. Cecil dared not yet trust herself to weep. She took a far more formal farewell of Mr. Fullarton, and the chaplain did not even venture a parting benediction.
The heavy traveling-chariot, with its hundred cunning contrivances, is packed at last, and Karl, the accomplished courier, wiping from his blonde mustache the drops of the stirrup-cup, touches his cap with his accustomed formula, “Zi ces dames zont brêtes?” Mark Waring leans over the carriage door to say “Good-by:” the hand he presses lies in his grasp, unresponsive and unsympathetic as a splinter from an iceberg. His sad, earnest look pleads in vain, for there is no softening or kindness in Cecil’s desolate, dreamy eyes. The road on which they are to travel is the same for some leagues as that along which Royston Keene must return, and she is thinking, divided between hope and fear, if there may not be a possibility of their meeting. The wheels move, and hasty farewells are waved, and Mark stands there half stupefied, unconscious of any thing but a sense of lonely wretchedness. The one solitary link that still binds him to Cecil Tresilyan will be severed when the letter is delivered that he holds in his hand.
As the carriage swept round the corner of the terrace, it passed close to the spot where Armand de Châteaumesnil sat basking in the sunshine. The invalid lifted his cap in courteous adieu, but his face grew dark, and his shaggy brows were knit savagely.
“On l’a triché donc, après tout,” he muttered; “Sang Dieu! les absens ont diablement tort.” Sunk as she was at that moment in gloomy meditations, Cecil never forgot that the last object on which her eyes lighted in Dorade was the blasted wreck of the crippled Algerian.
Molyneux and his wife stood silent till their friends were quite out of sight, then Harry turned slowly round and gazed at his mignonne. He knew that the same thought was in both their minds, for her sweet face was paler than his own. (Neither of them guessed at the truth, and they saw in Mark Waring nothing more than an old acquaintance of the Tresilyans.)
“Royston will be here in four hours,” he said, “and who will tell him this? I dare not.”
Fanny feigned a carelessness that she was far from feeling.