'How dull my life is with him, kind though he tries to be,' thought the girl; 'we have not a thought, feeling, or inspiration in common. When with Evan, it seemed all inspiration, and thoughts came and went so fast. He always brought bright ones to me.'
He was her first and only love—the love that leads a girl to see only ideal perfection in the object so beloved. Their passion had been like the diva in of a mid-summer night, and now they were to meet never more—never more!
She recalled the words of the song he was wont to sing to air of 'Rousseau's Dream'—
'See the moon o'er cloudless Jura
Shining in the loch below;
See the distant mountain towering
Like a pyramid of snow.
'Scenes of grandeur, scenes of childhood,
Scenes so dear to love and me!
When we roam by bower or wild wood,
All is lovelier when with thee!
And, as she touched the piano, his voice seemed to come to her ear again.
'Eveline!' she would murmur, dreamily, 'he called me Eveline—his own—yes, I can hear his voice plainly now—plainly I heard it at Dundargue, and on that last evening at Maviswood.'
Then her eye would fall on her wedding-ring, and a kind of shiver passed over her.
She strove to read, but that was almost impossible; her mind wandered from the story, or sometimes certain passages struck her painfully. In a novel ('Out of Court') one ran thus:—'she married him; she ceased to love him, and she died, which, on the whole, was a better fortune than generally befalls the women who make this irretrievable stumble on the threshold of life.'
'Oh! would I but die too; but I am too young, and too strong!' she thought bitterly. 'Our hearts choose for us, in spite of us, and I chose Evan.'