'Why do you tell me he must have changed if God had spared him?' she added. 'Why do you find it so hard to imagine that he might have gone on loving me? Am I so degraded a creature in your eyes?'
'I am quite ready to believe that you are a very noble girl,' answered Maurice, 'worthy a better lover than my poor friend. But you are Miss Elgood, of the Theatre Royal, Eborsham, and he was Squire Penwyn, of Penwyn. Time would not have changed those two facts, and might have altered his way of looking at them.'
'Don't tell me that he would have changed,' she cried, passionately. 'Let me think that I have lost all—love, happiness, home, wealth, all that any woman ever hoped to win. It cannot add to my grief for him. It would not take away from my love for him even to know that he was fickle, and would have grown tired of me. Those two days were the only happy days of my life. They will dwell in my mind for ever, a changeless memory. I shall never see the sunshine without thinking how it shone once upon us two on Eborsham racecourse. I shall never see the moonlight without remembering how we two sat side by side watching the willow branches dipping into the river.'
'A childish love,' thought Maurice; 'a young heart's first fancy; a fabric that would wear out in six months or so.'
'Happy days will come again,' he said, gently. 'You will go on acting, and succeed in your profession. You are just the kind of girl to whom genius will come in a flash—like inspiration. You will succeed and be famous by and by, and look back with a sad, pitying smile at James Penwyn's love, and say to yourself with a half-regretful sigh, 'That was youth!' You will be loved some day by a man who will prove to you that true love is not the growth of a few summer hours.'
'I should like to be famous some day,' the girl answered, proudly, 'just to show you that I might have been worthy of your friend's love.'
'I fear I have offended you by my plain speaking, Miss Elgood,' returned Maurice, 'but if ever you need a friend, and will honour me with your confidence, you shall not find me unworthy of your trust. I have not a very important position in the world; but I am a gentleman by birth and education, and not wanting in some of those commonplace qualities which help a man on the road of life; such as patience and perseverance, industry and strength of purpose. I have chosen literature as my profession; for that calling gives me the privilege I should be least inclined to forego, liberty. My income is happily just large enough to make me independent of earning, so that I can afford to write as the birds sing—without cutting my coat according to any other man's cloth. If ever you and your father are in London, Miss Elgood, and inclined to test my sincerity, you may find me at this address.'
He gave Justina his card—
Mr. Maurice Clissold,