During the interval of darkness Herbert had neither stirred nor spoken; and after the harsh rejoinder to which, in the bitterness of her pique, the young Creole had given words, it was not her place to continue the conversation.
Pained though Herbert was by his cousin’s reply, he nevertheless remembered his indebtedness to her—the vows he had made—the proud proffer at parting. Was he now to repudiate the debt of gratitude and prove faithless to his promise? Was he to pluck from his breast that silken souvenir, still sheltering there, though in secret and unseen?
True, it was but the memorial of an act of friendship—of mere cousinly kindness. He had never had reason to regard it in any other light; and now, more than ever, was he sure it had no higher signification.
She had never said she loved him—never said a word that could give him the right to reproach her. On her side there was no repudiation, since there had been no compromise. It was unjust to condemn her—cruel to defy her, as he had done.
That she loved another—was that a crime?
Herbert now knew that she loved another—was as sure of it as that he stood upon the Jumbé Rock. That interrupted tableau had left him no loop to hang a doubt on. The relative position of the parties proclaimed the purpose—a proposal.
The kneeling lover may not have obtained his answer; but who could doubt what that answer was to have been? The situation itself proclaimed consent.
Bitter as were these reflections, Herbert made an effort to subdue them. He resolved, if possible, to stifle his spleen; and, upon the ruin of his hopes, restore that relationship—the only one that could now exist between himself and his cousin—friendship.
With a superhuman effort he succeeded; and this triumph of virtue over spite, backed by the strongest inclinings of the heart, for a moment solaced his spirit, and rendered it calmer.
Alas! that such triumph can be only temporary. The struggle upon which he was entering was one in which no man has ever succeeded. Love undenied, may end in friendship; but love thwarted or unreciprocated, never!