“You do not take me by surprise, my lady. I have of course been looking forward for some time to my loss and your gain. The world is full of little deaths—deaths of all sorts and sizes, rather let me say. For this one I was prepared. The good summer land calls you to its bosom, and you must go.”
“Come with me,” cried Clementina, her eyes eager with the light of the sudden thought, while her heart reproached her grievously that only now first had it come to her.
“A man must not leave the most irksome work for the most peaceful pleasure,” answered the schoolmaster. “I am able to live—yes, and do my work, without you, my lady,” he added with a smile, “though I shall miss you sorely.”
“But you do not know where I want you to come,” she said.
“What difference can that make, my lady, except indeed in the amount of pleasure to be refused, seeing this is not a matter of choice? I must be with the children whom I have engaged to teach, and whose parents pay me for my labour—not with those who, besides, can do well without me.”
“I cannot, sir—not for long, at least.”
“What! not with Malcolm to supply my place?”
Clementina blushed, but only like a white rose. She did not turn her head aside; she did not lower their lids to veil the light she felt mount into her eyes; she looked him gently in the face as before, and her aspect of entreaty did not change.
“Ah! do not be unkind, master,” she said.
“Unkind!” he repeated. “You know I am not. I have more kindness in my heart than my lips can tell. You do not know, you could not yet imagine the half of what I hope of and for and from you.”