With a desperate effort to resign himself, he at length replies:—
“Dear Gwen! for I must still call you—ever hold you so—my life hereafter will be as one who walks in darkness, waiting for death—ah, longing for it!”
Despair has its poetry, as love; oft exceeding the last in fervour of expression, and that of George Shenstone causes surprise to Gwen Wynn, while still further paining her. So much she knows not how to make rejoinder, and is glad when a fanfare of the band instruments gives note of another quadrille—the Lancers—about to begin.
Still engaged partners for the dance, but not to be for life, they return to the drawing-room, and join in it; he going through its figures with a sad heart and many a sigh.
Nor is she less sorrowful, only more excited; nigh unto madness, as she sees Captain Ryecroft vis-à-vis with Miss Powell; on his face an expression of content, calm, almost cynical; hers radiant as with triumph!
In this moment of Gwen Wynn’s supreme misery—acme of jealous spite—were George Shenstone to renew his proposal, she might pluck the betrothal ring from her finger, and give answer, “I will!”
It is not to be so, however weighty the consequence. In the horoscope of her life there is yet a heavier.