“Only because from the hour when your beauty and sweetness began to grow into my mind I have been your lover, and nothing else—your adoring lover. I cannot change my fervent hope for the poor name of friend. I can never again dare be to you what I have been in this happy season last past, unless you will let me be more than I have been.”
“Alas!”
Only that one word, with a sorrowful shake of the graceful head, covered with feathery ringlets in the dainty fashion of that day, so becoming in youth, so inappropriate to advancing years, when the rich profusion of curls came straight from Chedreux, or some of his imitators, and baldness was hidden by the spoils of the dead.
“Alas!”
No need for more than that sad dissyllable.
“Then I am no nearer winning this dear hand than I was at Fareham House?” he said heartbrokenly, for he had built high hopes upon her kindness and willing companionship in that Arcadian valley.
“I told you then that I should never marry. I have not changed my mind. I never can change. I am to be Henriette’s spinster aunt.”
“And Fareham’s spinster sister?” said Denzil. “I understand. We are neither of us cured of our malady. It is my disease to love you in spite of your disdain. It is your disease to love where you should not. Farewell!”
He was gone before she could reply. The livid anger of his face, the deep resentment in his voice, haunted her memory, and made life almost intolerable.
“My sin has found me out!” she said to herself, as she paced the garden with the rapid steps that indicate a distempered spirit. “What right has he to pry into the depths of my mind, and ferret out all that there is of evil in my nature? Well, he goes the surest way to make me hate him. If ever he comes here again, I will run away and hide from all who know me. I would rather be a farm-servant, and rise at daybreak to work in the fields, than endure his insolence.”