“That is all,” she said, “except good-bye to you, in whom I must always be interested because Jack loved you.”
She held out her hand, which Elithe took mechanically and dropped quickly. She did not like to be reminded of Jack’s love. It hurt her almost as much as the message she was taking to Paul, who was waiting anxiously for her.
CHAPTER XL.
FAREWELL.
“What did she say? Is she coming? Did she send me a note?” Paul asked eagerly, knowing the answer before Elithe could give it.
He was in the Smuggler’s room, which, luxuriously as it had been fitted up, was a prison still. All the world was a prison and would be as long as he lived as he was living now.
“I can’t bear it much longer. I believe I’d rather die or work in the convict’s garb, with the hope of being eventually free,” he had said many a time, with a growing conviction that he should ultimately give himself up in spite of his mother’s assertions that the real culprit would in time be found, or he gotten out of the country to a foreign land, where she and his father would join him, and, perhaps, Clarice.
She always pronounced that name hesitatingly, for she doubted the girl who had shown so little sympathy for her lover. Did Paul doubt her, too? Possibly, although he made every excuse for her, while the hunger in his heart grew more and more intense to see her and hear her say she loved him and would one day be his wife if he were ever free from the taint upon his name. If he had killed Jack by accident, as so many believed, he would never have thought of offering her his love a second time; but he had not killed Jack, and there was nothing but the disgrace of his arrest and trial, and, perhaps, punishment, standing between them. Would she overlook all that, as he would have done had she been in his place? He hoped so, and waited anxiously the return of Elithe.
“Will she come?” he repeated, and, sitting down beside him, Elithe told him the particulars of her interview with Clarice, while Paul listened without a word or a sign that he heard or cared.
“Thank you, Elithe,” he said, when she finished, and, getting up, began to walk the room rapidly.
She knew he wanted to be alone, and, bidding him good-bye, went out and left him with his sorrow and disappointment.