“Dearest, there was one reason, and a powerful one,” answered George Greswold firmly, meeting the appealing look of her eyes with a clear and steady gaze. “My first marriage is a sad remembrance for me—full of trouble. I did not care to tell you that miserable story, to call a dreaded ghost out of the grave of the past. My first marriage was the one great sorrow of my life, but it was only an episode in my life. It left me as lonely as it found me. There are very few who know anything about it. I am sorry that young man should have come here to trouble us with his uninvited reminiscences. For my own part, I cannot remember having ever seen his face before.”
“I am sorry you should have kept such a secret from me,” said Mildred. “It would have been so much wiser to have been candid. Do you think I should not have respected your sad memories? You had only to say to me ‘Such things were; but let us not talk of them.’ It would have been more manly; it would have been kinder to me.”
“Say that I was a coward, if you like; that I am still a coward, where those memories are concerned,” said Greswold.
The look of agony in his face melted her in a moment. She threw herself on her knees beside his chair, she and the dog fawning upon him together.
“Forgive me, forgive me, dearest,” she pleaded, “I will never speak to you of this again. Women are so jealous—of the past most of all.”
“Is that all?” he said: “God knows you have little need. Let us say no more, Mildred. The past is past: neither you nor I can alter it. Memory is inexorable. God Himself cannot change it.”
“I will contrive that Mr. Castellani shall not come here again, George, if you object to see him.”
“Pray don’t trouble yourself. I would not have such a worm suppose that he could be obnoxious to me.”
“Tell me what you think of him,” she asked, in a lighter tone, anxious to bring back the easy mood of every-day life. “He seems very clever, and he is rather handsome.”
“What do I think of the trumpet-ash on the verandah yonder? A beautiful parasite, which will hold on anywhere in the sunshine. Mr. Castellani is of the same family, I take it—studies his own interests first, and chooses his friends afterwards. He will do admirably for Riverdale.”