His leaving without explanation, and without a word at parting, was not only a blow to the girl’s soft and tender dreams of love returned, but it struck at her pride, and brought her down to the abject thing at which she had seemed to rate herself in her thoughts of the greatness and glory of Lionel Hammerton.
There might have been something like the aping of humility in this girl’s love; in her own estimation she had been as nothing compared with him, to whom she had given up her secret soul; but, trodden upon and slighted, she rose up, conscious of her own beauty, and with a sense of her own deserts, burning with wounded pride.
“He treats me with contempt and indifference, Phœbe,” she said, casting the newspaper upon the floor, and trampling upon it. “Let him; he shall have scorn for scorn, contempt for contempt. Does he think that a woman’s heart is to be trampled upon because of lowly birth? Does he think true love and English chivalry have exclusive inheritance amongst the titled and the wealthy? Does he think I am a poor silly country girl, with a weak, pliable nature, that will bend and adapt itself to whatever may turn up in a jog-trot country life? He shall see; he shall see.”
With this Amy Somerton swept out of the room like an enraged queen, who counted her subjects by millions.
“Poor Amy, she has read too much poetry of late, and thought it all true,” said Phœbe, the big tears rolling down her fair cheek. “Whatever will become of us all! I am sure my head swims with the thought of all the dreadful things that have taken place. My poor dear father!” then she exclaimed, and the next minute she had burst into his room, and flung herself upon his neck.
“Dear, dear father,” she said, “do bear up; perhaps it is not true; perhaps he has repented, and all may come right again,” said Phœbe, smoothing the merchant’s grey hair; but she felt how hopeless was Richard’s case notwithstanding.
Mr. Tallant submitted to his daughter’s caresses, and his mind was suddenly carried back to the days of his second wife. In the midst of great trouble and distress of mind the thoughts will often ramble to times and things altogether apart from the immediate cause of your mental anxiety. Mr. Tallant thought of the wife whom he had loved so dearly, and then wondered that no likeness remained of her in his child.
“You are not quite ruined, perhaps, father,” said the girl, by-and-by; “we can go and live in some quiet little place, where we shall be unknown.”
“Ruined, my love,” said the merchant, with a faint smile, “what made you think of that?”
“That great sum of money which you paid, father—so nobly, so like your true self,” said the girl, with a look of admiration shining through her tears.