"I'm only too happy; but I--I--I'm thinking of the future."
"Don't think of the future. The present is our only concern. When I think of the future, I feel as though I should go mad. The future! My God! Let me banish it from my thoughts. Help me to forget it. You alone can!"
And even in that whisper, which reached Hilda's ears, there was an impassioned and infinite tenderness which pierced her heart.
"Oh God!" she thought, "how he loves her! And I--what hope have I?"
"What blessed fortune was it," resumed Lord Chetwynde, "that led me to you here in Florence--that brought us both here to this one place, and threw us again into one another's society? When I left you at Marseilles I thought that I had lost you forever!"
The lady said nothing.
But Hilda had already learned this much--first, that both were English. The lady, even in her whisper, showed this. Again, she learned that they had met before, and had enjoyed one another's society in this way. Where? At Marseilles. Her vivid imagination at once brought before her a way in which this might have been done. She was traveling with her husband, and Lord Chetwynde had met her. Probably they had sailed in the same steamer. Possibly they had come all the way from India together. This now became her conviction.
"Have you forgotten Marseilles?" continued Lord Chetwynde. "Do you remember our last sail? do you remember our last ride?"
"Yes," sighed the lady.
"And do you remember what I said?"