"Why, so she is!"
To be so near him and yet so far apart, was too great a torment. My heart swelled as if it would burst. Stung at his cruel indifference, I rose, and without looking back I went up to Kate, sat down on the lowly cushion at her feet, and thus silently relinquished the place which had been mine so long.
Miriam Russell was now acknowledged as the betrothed of Cornelius. She was twenty-six, and independent both in her means and in her actions. Her aunt declared "that she had made a very bad match, and that she was throwing herself away on a handsome, penniless Irishman, whose artful sister was at the bottom of it all."
This speech was repeated to Miss O'Reilly, and brought on a great coolness between her and her tenant. Kate resented especially the reflection on her brother. Without letting him know what suggested the remark, she observed to him in my presence—and it was the only comment on his engagement I ever heard her make—
"Cornelius, Miss Russell has some property, but I trust you will not think of marriage before you have won a position."
"No, indeed," he replied, reddening, and throwing back his head half indignantly.
I now never went near Cornelius unless when sent by Kate. At first I had hoped he would miss me, but sufficient companionship to him was the charmed presence which haunts the lover's solitude; he asked not why I staid away, and pride forbade me to return.
Passion had seized on him, and she absorbed all his faculties save one: he remained faithful to Art. He was a most enamoured lover, but not even for his mistress did he leave his easel, or lose an hour of daylight. She did not put him to a test, of which it was plain that, of his own accord, he would never dream. Every moment he could spare he gave to her; evening after evening he handed over my lessons to Kate, and left us to go next- door: he was still kind, but somehow or other the charm had departed from his kindness.
Several weeks had thus elapsed, when Miriam was suddenly summoned to the sick bed of an aged relative, who dwelt in a retired village twenty miles away. Cornelius seemed to feel this first separation very much. He sighed deeply when the hour struck that usually led him to his beloved, opened his cigar-case, and smoked what, if he had used a pipe, might have been termed the calumet of sorrow. But he was not one of those inveterate smokers who, from the clouds they raise around them, can look down on the tribulations of this world with Olympic serenity. When his cigar was out, he brought forth no other, and half sat on the sofa with a most ennuy? aspect. Kate had gone up to her room, complaining of a bad headache. I sat reading by her vacant chair, in that place which had become the type of my altered destiny.
"Daisy!" all at once said Cornelius.