Chapter Forty One.
The Bridegroom’s Return.
“Oh, Hallett!” I cried, catching his hand, as the poor fellow sat blankly gazing before him in his mute despair. “It is a mistake; she could not be so wicked.”
“Wicked!” he said with a curious laugh. “Was it wicked, after all her promises—my forgiveness—my gentle, loving words? I was a fool. I believed that she was weaning herself from it all, and trying to forget. A woman would have read her at a glance; but I, a poor, mad dreamer, always away, or buried in that attic, saw nothing, only that she was very quiet, and thin, and sad.”
“Did she tell you that she would go, Hallett?” I asked, hardly knowing what I said.
“No, Antony,” I replied, in a dreary tone.
“Did you have any quarrel?”
“No; not lately. She was most affectionate—poor child! and her heart must have been sore with the thought or what she was about to do. Only this evening, before I went up into the attic to dream over my invention, she crept to my side, put her little arms round my neck, and kissed me, as she used when she was a tiny child, and said how sorry she was that she had given me so much pain. Antony, lad,” he cried passionately, “I went up to my task to-night a happy man, thinking that one heavy load was taken off my shoulders, and that the future was going to be brighter for us both. For, Antony, in my cold, dreamy way, I love her very dearly, and so I have ever since she was a little wilful child.”
He sat gazing at me with such a piteous expression in his face that his words went to my heart, and I heard Mary give quite a gulp.