'Because all men who know you must love you, though I hope it is to be your destiny, your strength, to love but one. Yet, Alison, what agony it must be to love you as I do, and only to lose you after all.'
This unfortunate speech, though meant to be a loving compliment by Goring, seemed but the echo of the forebodings that were in the heart of Alison, and she wept heavily while he strained her to his breast and kissed her, not once but many times, and she hung or lay passive in his embrace like a dead weight, while the hearts of both were full of a kind of passionate despair—their future seemed so much without hope—their present menaced by so much turmoil and opposition.
'My darling, my darling,' exclaimed Goring, when at last he released her, 'whatever happens I shall never, never give you up.'
So they parted at last, to meet at their trysting place on the second day ensuing, and Alison, as she hurried homeward, and passed amid the dark shadows of the star-lighted garden, looked fearfully round her with dilated eyes, while her spirit quailed in dread of seeing defined through the gloom what she saw, or thought she saw, before, and hastened into the house, closing the door softly, yet swiftly behind her, as if pursued by something unseen.
Duty detained Goring at the camp during the intervening day, but on the following, full of more lover-like anxiety than ever, with a hundred things to say, to ask, and to hear, hopes to suggest, and comforting speeches to make, he sought the beeches, and waited there till all hope died out.
Alison did not come; the day was cold; the wind bleak and keen as the very last of the damp brown leaves were swept away with it, and at last he turned aside with a heavy heart.
The next day and the next brought the same result. She failed to meet him, and dismay filled his heart lest she might be ill. She was delicate and fragile, and the last night they met she was terribly shaken and excited by the untoward episode of the morning and her superstitious terror of the evening.
From the moment Bevil Goring met and knew Alison Cheyne, his heart had gone out of his own keeping, and never returned to it again. His love for her had become deep and intense, but, strange to say, did not seem a hopeful one, unless fortune changed suddenly with him. It was useless to expect it would do so with her family now.
His position was good; his family name unimpeachable. He bore a high reputation in his regiment as a brave and well-trained officer, and one well used to command; but his means were certainly not what he should ask a wife of Alison's culture to share, nor in any way were they equal to the ambition and dire necessities of the bankrupt baronet of Essilmont.
After some more days of agonising delay and anxiety, Goring resolved to proceed to Chilcote House, and endeavour to discover if aught ailed Alison, or how it was that she had ceased to come to their meeting-place as usual.