Content for the moment with the touch of daily torture which was the atonement exacted for past disloyalty, he lifted the poor soul from despair to delight by the utterance of three words, accompanied by a laugh as mirthless as musical,—
“Happy Felix, rather.”
“Is he to marry her?” and Olivia fronted him, glowing with a sudden joy which made her lovely as well as brilliant.
“Who else?”
“Yourself.”
“I!” and the word was full of a bitterness which thrilled every nerve the woman had, for an irrepressible regret wrung it from lips sternly shut on all complaint, except to her.
“Why not?” she cried, daring to answer with impetuous warmth and candor. “What woman would not be glad to serve you for the sake of the luxury with which you would surround her, if not for the love you might win and give, if you chose?”
“Bah! what have I to do with love? Thank Heaven my passions are all dead, else life would be a hell, not the purgatory it is,” he said, glancing at his wasted limbs, with an expression which would have been pathetic, had it not been defiant; for that long discipline of pain had failed to conquer the spirit of the man, and it seemed to sit aloof, viewing with a curious mixture of compassion and contempt the slow ruin of the body which imprisoned it.
With an impulse womanly as winning, Olivia plucked a wine-dark rose from the trellis nearest her, and, bending towards him, laid it in his hand, with a look and gesture of one glad to give all she possessed, if that were possible.
“Your love of beauty still survives, and is a solace to you. Let me minister to it when I can; and be assured I offer my little friend as freely as I do my choicest rose.”