"Women have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love."
Long, long did poor Lilian grieve and weep, and mourn in the solitude of her gloomy home.
She endured all the complicated agony of endeavouring to rend from her heart its dearest and most wonted thoughts—the hopes and affection she had fostered and cherished for years. No woman ever died for love but the heroine of a romance; so Lilian of course survived it; a month or two beheld her again tranquil and calm, though very sorrowful and subdued in spirit, for time cures every grief.
The bitter sentiment of insulted pride and mortified self esteem which often come so powerfully to the aid of the deserted, and enable them to triumph over the more tender and acute reflections, were kindled and fanned and fostered by the artful sophistry of Annie, who, with her real condolences, threw in such nice little soothing and flattering inuendoes, mingled with condemnations of Walter, and pretended rumours of his marriage, the beauty and gallantries of his French wife, whom some called a countess and others a courtesan, that Lilian first learned to hear her patiently and then with indignation.
With these were mingled occasional praises of Clermistonlee, managed with great tact, for Annie was cunning as a lynx, and never failed to flank all her arguments with the powerful one, how necessary it was for the restoration of her own honour, that she should receive the roué lord as her husband.
Poor Lilian, though these advices stung her to the soul, learned at last to hear and to think of them with calmness, and (shall we acknowledge it?) to say at last, "that it might be."
With something of that fierce sentiment of desperation and revenge which, like a gage thrown down to fate, makes the ruined gamester place his last stake on the turn of a card, she began deliberately to school herself into thinking of Clermistonlee as her future husband; and though in reality poverty was the real cause of it, Lady Craigdarroch failed not to impress upon Lilian how much he was reformed, how penitent he was, and for three years past had never been engaged in any piece of frolic or wickedness, and wound up by asserting that a reformed rake made the best husband.
What love and perseverance could never accomplish, revenge achieved at last.
"Alas! the love of women, it is known,
To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
For all of theirs upon the die is thrown
And if 'tis lost, life hath no more to bring."
Long and assiduous were the exertions, the arguments and artifices of Annie, and long and fearful was the struggle that tortured the heart of Lilian, ere she would consent to receive Clermistonlee as her suitor.