There was a terrible cowardice in this. Olivia Arundel shrank from marrying a man she did not love, prompted by no better desire than the mad wish to wrench herself away from her hated life. She wanted to fling the burden of responsibility in this matter away from her. Let another decide, let another urge her to do this wrong; and let the wrong be called a sacrifice.
So for the first time she set to work deliberately to cheat her own conscience. For the first time she put a false mark upon the standard she had made for the measurement of her moral progress.
She sank into a crouching attitude on a low stool by the fire–place, in utter prostration of body and mind, when John Marchmont had left her. She let her weary head fall heavily against the carved oaken shaft that supported the old–fashioned mantel–piece, heedless that her brow struck sharply against the corner of the wood–work.
If she could have died then, with no more sinful secret than a woman's natural weakness hidden in her breast; if she could have died then, while yet the first step upon the dark pathway of her life was untrodden,––how happy for herself, how happy for others! How miserable a record of sin and suffering might have remained unwritten in the history of woman's life!
* * * * *
She sat long in the same attitude. Once, and once only, two solitary tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly down her pale cheeks.
"Will you be sorry when I am married, Edward Arundel?" she murmured; "will you be sorry?"
[CHAPTER IX.
"WHEN SHALL I CEASE TO BE ALL ALONE?"]
Hubert Arundel was not so much surprised as might have been anticipated at the proposal made him by his wealthy neighbour. Edward had prepared his uncle for the possibility of such a proposal by sundry jocose allusions and arch hints upon the subject of John Marchmont's admiration for Olivia. The frank and rather frivolous young man thought it was his cousin's handsome face that had captivated the master of Marchmont Towers, and was quite unable to fathom the hidden motive underlying all John's talk about Miss Arundel.
The Rector of Swampington, being a simple–hearted and not very far–seeing man, thanked God heartily for the chance that had befallen his daughter. She would be well off and well cared for, then, by the mercy of Providence, in spite of his own shortcomings, which had left her with no better provision for the future than a pitiful Policy of Assurance upon her father's life. She would be well provided for henceforward, and would live in a handsome house; and all those noble qualities which had been dwarfed and crippled in a narrow sphere would now expand, and display themselves in unlooked–for grandeur.