“I don't believe it. It's not in me to go mad about anything with a masked face and a marble heart. If I loved any woman—which, thank Fortune! at this present time I do not—and she had the bad taste not to return it, I should take my hat, make her a bow, and go directly and love somebody else made of flesh and blood, instead of cast iron! You know the old song, Ormiston:
'If she be not fair for me
What care I how fair she be!'”
“Kingsley, you know nothing about it!” said Ormiston, impatiently. “So stop talking nonsense. If you are cold-blooded, I am not; and—I love her!”
Sir Norman slightly shrugged his shoulders, and flung his smoked-out weed into a heap of fire-wood.
“Are we near her house?” he asked. “Yonder is the bridge.”
“And yonder is the house,” replied Ormiston, pointing to a large ancient building—ancient even for those times—with three stories, each projecting over the other. “See! while the houses on either side are marked as pest-stricken, hers alone bears no cross. So it is: those who cling to life are stricken with death: and those who, like me, are desperate, even death shuns.”
“Why, my dear Ormiston, you surely are not so far gone as that? Upon my honor, I had no idea you were in such a bad way.”
“I am nothing but a miserable wretch! and I wish to Heaven I was in yonder dead-cart, with the rest of them—and she, too, if she never intends to love me!”
Ormiston spoke with such fierce earnestness, that there was no doubting his sincerity; and Sir Norman became profoundly shocked—so much so, that he did not speak again until they were almost at the door. Then he opened his lips to ask, in a subdued tone:
“She has predicted the future for you—what did she foretell?”