Did he love her as he had loved her before those slow years of severance? Yes. Her lightest word thrilled him. He thought of the change in her with unspeakable dread; but he knew that it would not change his heart. Lovely or unlovely she would still be Antonia, the woman he adored. A footman came in to light the candles.
"This half darkness is very pleasant, madam," Stobart said hurriedly. "Do you desire more light?"
"I am expecting a friend to take tea with me, and I can hardly receive her in the dark. You may light the candles, Robert."
There were six candles in each of two bronze candelabra on the mantelpiece, and two more in tall silver candlesticks on the writing-table. Stobart sat looking down at the fading embers, and did not lift his eyes till the servant had left the room. Then, as the door shut, he looked up and saw Antonia watching him in the bright candlelight.
He gave a sudden cry, in uncontrollable emotion, and burst into tears. "You—you are not changed!" he cried, as soon as he could control his speech. "Oh, madam, I beseech you not to despise me for these unmanly tears! but—but I was told——"
"You were told that the disease had used me very cruelly; that I should be better dead than such a horrid spectacle," she said. "I know that has been the talk of the town—and I let them talk. I have done with the town."
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, starting up from his chair and walking about the room in a tumult of emotion. "Thank God, it was a lie that old woman told me. It would have broken my heart to know that your divine charity had cost you the loss of your beauty."
His eyes shone with wonder and delight as he looked at her. She was greatly changed, but in his sight not less lovely. Her bloom was gone. She could no longer dazzle the mob in Hyde Park by her vivid beauty. She was very pale, and her cheeks were hollow and thin. Her eyes looked unnaturally large, and her hair, once so luxuriant, was clustered in short curls under a little lace cap.
"Oh, so far as that goes, sir, I renounce any claim I ever had to rank among beauties," she said, amused at his surprise. "Through the devoted care of a friend I was spared the worst kind of disfigurement; but as I have lost my complexion, my figure, and my hair, I can no longer hope to take any place among the Waldegraves and Hamiltons. And I have done with the great world and its vanities."
"Then you will give yourself to that better world—the world of the true believer; you will be among the saved?"