“Good-bye—for ever, perhaps—good-bye!”
Then came the hurrying sound of steps on the dewy grass at the side of the road, and the speaker was gone, leaving Mary leaning out of the window, excited and trembling violently, while her heart beat in the stillness of the night as if it were the echo of the hurried pace rapidly dying away.
“It could not be—it could not be,” she sighed at last, as she left the window to prepare for bed. “And yet he loves me so dearly. But why should he say that?”
She stopped in the middle of the room, and the words seemed to repeat themselves—
“Good-bye—for ever, perhaps—good-bye!”
The tears fell fast as she felt that it was so like John Grange in his manly, honourable way of treating their positions.
“He feels it all so terribly that it would be like tying me down—that it would be terrible for me—because he is blind.”
She wiped her eyes, and a bright smile played about her lips, for there, self-pictured, was a happy future for them both, and she saw herself lightening the great trouble of John Grange’s life, and smoothing his onward course. There was their happy home with her husband seeing with her eyes, guided always by her hand, and looking proud, manly, and strong once more as she had known him of old.
“It will only draw us closer together,” she said softly; “and father will never refuse when he once feels it’s for my happiness and for poor John’s good.”
But the smile died out as black clouds once more rose to blot out the pleasant picture she had formed in her mind; and as the mists gathered the tears fell once more, hot, briny tears which seemed to scald her eyes as she sank upon her knees by the bedside and buried her face in her hands.