But she knew that no word of hers could give to Nita Wellfield her husband’s love. She felt, she had gathered from a hundred unconscious little touches and admissions in Avice’s letters, that Jerome, like herself, was not free. He loved her–Sara: yet sometimes she could weep, and wish it were not so. Oftener she felt a half-contemptuous satisfaction in the knowledge that he had not been able to cast aside her power over him with his promises to her. But oftener still she had the feeling, which she instinctively felt to be a far more dangerous one, of a restless wonder what would happen if they were to meet; a wonder that sometimes grew into something nearly akin to a longing. Before this feeling she trembled, trying to release herself from it, but it had a trick of seizing her unawares, and mastering her. And it was in such moments that she felt what a slight division lay between her present calm, monotonous existence, and the great abyss opening under the feet of those who yield to reckless impulses, or to what are euphoniously called ‘ungovernable passions.’
Such thoughts, and her meditations upon Avice’s letters, ran like a key-note through her mental life at that time–tinctured all her thoughts, her reading, her work; for since she had begun to believe that she was never to paint again, she had had resort to needle-work, and was copying some curious old Flemish lace, under the tutelage of a nun from a neighbouring cloister. Under her auspices, too, she had discovered some poor in and around the town, and not only poor, but ignorant; and she found some occupation in helping and teaching them.
‘That high-and-mighty Miss Ford turned lace-maker and sister of charity–buried alive in the dullest place in the world, and crying her eyes out from pure Langeweile, because she has displeased her husband, who is jealous, and has shut her up there!’
Such was the account given by Frau Goldmark (who had a cousin in Lahnburg, with whom she corresponded) to that very Fräulein Waldschmidt who had been disabled by scarlet fever from taking a share in the tableaux vivants. When it is remembered what language Frau Goldmark had formerly used in speaking to Sara Ford of this very young lady, it becomes almost impossible for an impartial mind to acquit her entirely of a spirit of time-serving.
Sara had been pacing about the terrace for a long time, now and then reading over again portions of Avice’s letter, and anon lost in her own mournful reflections. At last, raising her eyes as she turned in her walk, she saw Falkenberg’s figure advancing towards her. The first impulse that rushed across her mind was to conceal the letter she held in her hand, after which she found herself blushing hotly at the idea of doing so, and thinking, with a sudden prophetic fear, that it would be an evil day–if ever it should dawn–on which she could not meet his eyes. The uncomfortable sensation remained, however, that she had been cherishing wrong thoughts–thoughts best described by the hackneyed term ‘improper.’
She advanced to meet Falkenberg, and held out her hand to him. She wished she could have smiled and looked glad to see him, in answer to the long and wistful look he gave her; but she felt more unhappy, more constrained in his presence than ever, and it was with a look of profound gravity that she greeted him.
‘You did not expect to see me?’ said he.
‘I always feel that you may or may not come any day,’ said Sara.
‘You are better. So your letters have told me–so you look,’ said he.
‘Better–I am well in body,’ she rejoined; and as she spoke, the same look of deep dejection returned–to her eyes the same cloud as that which of late had constantly been there.