“Don’t speak of it, Phœbe, love,—I have thought of that and everything, and have resolved. Beside, my love, it is not fitting we should discuss the question. I am betrothed; in a few short weeks I shall be a wife.”
“It is because you have those few weeks in which you might still change your determination that I venture to ask you, supposing Lionel Hammerton were to return and renew his former attentions, and offer you marriage,” said Phœbe.
“I should not believe in his sincerity,—I would rather be beyond his reach. I could fain hope that he might feel a passion for me, that he might all of a sudden love me; that he might feel some of the pangs I have felt. No, Phœbe, if he were at my feet this moment I might smile and let him sue; but I should not love him,—I should not prefer him to his elder brother with the title;—oh, no! all that romantic sentiment is over!—I should prefer to be a countess in possession rather than in reversion. And now we have said enough about this. I wanted to talk to you and ask you all sorts of questions, and you have literally turned the tables upon me by putting me through a most romantic catechism. I have answered you to the best of my ability and with perfect sincerity; so now, pray, be content, and let us talk of laces, and ribbons, and orange blossoms, and glacé, and poult de soie; of bridesmaids, and Hanover Square, and matrimonial responsibilities.”
And Amy rattled away and laughed at Phœbe’s sober face, and kissed her fair forehead, as joyously as if she were about to marry her first love; but when she was alone in her bedroom, she flung herself down and sobbed aloud.
Why had heaven given her all those warm passions, that deep capacity to love, and set the idol before her, and let all her love go for naught? This was the burden of the burning thoughts which Phœbe’s conversation had aroused.
“Alas! the love of woman! it is known
To be a lovely and a dangerous thing.”
It is questionable whether Byron really knew in his soul much about the true and pure love of woman, though he has described its dangerous and passionate phases so well. It is a lovely and a dangerous thing, undescribable and unfathomable. “All that has been written in song, or told in story, of love and its effects, falls far short of its reality. Its evils and its blessings, its impotence and its power, its sin and its holiness, its weakness and its strength, will continue the theme of nature and of art, until the great pulse of the universe is stilled.”
O, how she had loved this man! And he knew it! Here was the bitter sting that wounded the poor, stricken woman; that stirred all her woman’s pride, and made her almost hate herself that she had confessed so much—made her hate him, or fancy she hated him, the more for having wiled her secret from her.
Love, jealousy, pride, and woman’s modesty, all seemed to pronounce in her mind against the man whom she had loved so wildly; and Pride inflicted the fiercest pangs of all in the woman’s wounded sense of unrequited Love.