“That is so. Perhaps I am unreasonable. Good-by, my beloved. Will you call me back soon?”
“Clarence, you are not going? How can you?”
“I must. Do not ask me to remain, under the circumstances, unless it is to make you my wife. I cannot.”
He pressed her to his heart in a long, tender embrace. He arose, and gazed at her sweet face so sadly, that she felt a pang of keen distress and apprehension.
“Clarence, do not look at me so sadly. Please remain until papa comes. Do not go. You might never see him.”
“I must, or I will lose the steamer. Farewell, my own sweet love.”
He clasped her to his heart, and wildly covered her face with kisses. Then, without daring to look back, hurried out of the room into the hall, across the piazza and down the garden-path to the gate, where his phæton had been left by Victoriano, after having taken Everett home.
“She must naturally hesitate to marry the son of a man who can act and has acted as my father did. I cannot blame her. I ought to respect her for it. Oh, pitying God! how wretched I am! Farewell, happiness for me.”
Muttering this short soliloquy, Clarence drove quickly down the incline leading to the main road.
When the last sound of his footsteps died away, a feeling of utter desolation rushed upon Mercedes. The silence of the house was appalling. In that silence it seemed to her as if a life of lonely misery was suddenly revealed. To lose Clarence, was to lose happiness forevermore. Shocked and terrified at her loneliness, with no hope of seeing him again, she rushed out and ran to the gate, calling him. She saw that he was driving fast, and would soon be crossing the dry bed of the brook to take the main road. Once there he would be too far to hear her voice. She ran out of the gate and turned to the right into a narrow path that also led to the main road, going across the hill through the low bushes and a few elder trees near the house, thus cutting off more than half the distance. Loudly she called his name, again and again, running in the narrow path as fast as her strength allowed. She heard the sound of the phæton's wheels as they grated harshly on the pebbles of the brook, and then all was silent again.