“Alice, I know you cannot be my wife—I do not expect it now, but I want you here all the same. Promise that you will stay, at least until my rival claims you.”
Alice neither looked up nor moved, only sobbed piteously, and this more than aught else helped Hugh to choke down his own sorrow for the sake of comforting her. The sight of her distress moved him greatly, for he knew it was grief that she had so cruelly misled him.
“Alice, darling,” he said again, this time as a mother would soothe her child. “It hurts me more to see you thus than your refusal did. I am not wholly selfish in my love. I’d rather you should be happy than to be happy myself. I would not for the world take to my bosom an unwilling wife. I should be jealous even of my own caresses, jealous lest the very act disgusted her more and more. You did not mean to deceive me. It was I that deceived myself. I forgive you fully, and ask you to forget that to-night has ever been. It cut me sorely at first, Alice, to hear you tell me so, but I shall get over it; the wound will heal.”
He said this falteringly, for the wound bled and throbbed at every pore, but he would comfort her. She should not know how much he suffered. “The wound will heal. Even now I am feeling better, can almost see my way through the darkness.”
Poor Hugh! He mentally asked forgiveness for that falsehood told for her. He could not see his way through,—his brain was giddy, and his soul sick with that dull dreadful pain which is so hard to be borne, but he could hide his misery, for her sake, and he would.
“Please, don’t cry,” he said, stooping over her, and lifting her tenderly up. “I shall get over it. A man can bear better than a woman, and even if I should not, I would rather have loved and lost you, than not to have known and loved you at all. The memory of what might have been will keep me from much sin. There, darling, let me wipe the tears away, let me hear you say you are better.”
“Oh, Hugh, don’t, you break my heart. I’d rather you should scorn or even hate me for the sorrow I have brought. Such unselfish kindness will kill me,” Alice sobbed, for never had she been so touched as by this insight into the real character of the man she had refused.
He would not hold her long in his arms, though it were bliss to do so, and putting her gently in the chair, he leaned his own poor sick head upon the mantel, while Alice watched him with streaming eyes and an aching heart which even then half longed to give itself into his keeping. She did not love him with a wife-like love, she knew but she might in time, and she pitied him so much. And Hugh had need for pity. He had tried to quiet her; had said it was no matter, that he should get over it, that he need not care, but the agony it cost him to say all this was visible in every feature, and Alice looked at him with wondering awe as he stood there silently battling with the blow he would not permit to smite him down.
At last it was Alice’s turn to speak, hers the task to comfort. The prayer she had inwardly breathed for guidance to act aright had not been unheard, and with a strange calmness she arose, and laying her hand on Hugh’s arm, bade him be seated, while she told him what she had to say. He obeyed her, sinking into the offered chair, and then standing before him, she began,
“You do not wish me to go away, you say. I have no desire to go, except it should be better for you. Even though I may not be your wife, I can, perhaps, minister to your happiness; and, Hugh, we will forget to-night, and be to each other what we were before, brother and sister. There must be no particular perceptible change of manner, lest others should suspect what has passed between us. Do you agree to this?”