‘Yes, yes,’ said Caterina, stamping her foot, and turning away her head; ‘don’t tell me what I know already.’
There was a voice speaking in Caterina’s mind to which she had never yet given vent. That voice said continually, ‘Why did he make me love him—why did he let me know he loved me, if he knew all the while that he couldn’t brave everything for my sake?’ Then love answered, ‘He was led on by the feeling of the moment, as you have been, Caterina; and now you ought to help him to do what is right.’ Then the voice rejoined, ‘It was a slight matter to him. He doesn’t much mind giving you up. He will soon love that beautiful woman, and forget a poor little pale thing like you.’
Thus love, anger, and jealousy were struggling in that young soul.
‘Besides, Tina,’ continued Captain Wybrow in still gentler tones, ‘I shall not succeed. Miss Assher very likely prefers some one else; and you know I have the best will in the world to fail. I shall come back a hapless bachelor—perhaps to find you already married to the good-looking chaplain, who is over head and ears in love with you. Poor Sir Christopher has made up his mind that you’re to have Gilfil.’
‘Why will you speak so? You speak from your own want of feeling. Go away from me.’
‘Don’t let us part in anger, Tina. All this may pass away. It’s as likely as not that I may never marry any one at all. These palpitations may carry me off, and you may have the satisfaction of knowing that I shall never be anybody’s bridegroom. Who knows what may happen? I may be my own master before I get into the bonds of holy matrimony, and be able to choose my little singing-bird. Why should we distress ourselves before the time?’
‘It is easy to talk so when you are not feeling,’ said Caterina, the tears flowing fast. ‘It is bad to bear now, whatever may come after. But you don’t care about my misery.’
‘Don’t I, Tina?’ said Anthony in his tenderest tones, again stealing his arm round her waist, and drawing her towards him. Poor Tina was the slave of this voice and touch. Grief and resentment, retrospect and foreboding, vanished—all life before and after melted away in the bliss of that moment, as Anthony pressed his lips to hers.
Captain Wybrow thought, ‘Poor little Tina! it would make her very happy to have me. But she is a mad little thing.’
At that moment a loud bell startled Caterina from her trance of bliss. It was the summons to prayers in the chapel, and she hastened away, leaving Captain Wybrow to follow slowly.