With a look of some disappointment she turned away, and I slid the bolt, with a trembling hand, between me and the outer world. But not between me and conscience, not between me and memory, not between me and remorse. I had thought, when once I am alone, this misery will vent itself in tears—this insufferable pain will yield to the relief of solitude and quiet. But I did not know with what I had to deal. I did not estimate what foes I had invoked—what remorse and regret were to be my comrades through the slow hours of that night.
With suicidal hand, it seemed to me, I had shut myself out forever from peace, forever from all chance of happiness. Nothing now but misery: the past, a sin and guilt to recall; the future, weariness but to imagine. The promise I had given was to me as irrevocable and sacred as the marriage vow itself; and self-reproach only riveted the fetters more hopelessly, as I remembered the manly love of which I was so unworthy. To draw back now, would but add perjury to my sins, and deal undeserved misery to the man I had deceived. No, hypocrisy became a duty now; he should never know the agony that I had wrestled with when I had first looked my engagement in the face. He should never know how the first hours of it had been blackened. But oh! plead repentance, I will bury this hateful secret in my heart; I will only live to serve him; I will make him happy; I will be a true and faithful wife.
True? questioned a voice within me; and with a miserable groan I hid my face, and owned that I must leave truth at the threshold of this new relation. I must enter it with a dead love in my heart, a false vow on my lips.
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
"Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around—
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear
Till death, like sleep, might steal on me."
SHELLEY.
"How late you have slept, Miss!" said Kitty, as she hurried up in answer to my bell. "I have been expecting you would ring for the last hour. Did you know, Miss, they are all at breakfast?"
"It will not take me many minutes," I said, sitting down for her to braid my hair. Kitty was in a desperate hurry this morning; her fingers trembled so she could hardly manage the heavy braids.
"The other young ladies are down some time ago," she said, with a sharp look at me in the glass. "I suppose if they were tired, they would get up this morning out of politeness to Mr. Viennet, as he goes away at ten, and he might think rather hard of it if they didn't take the trouble to come down in time to say good bye to him."
Encouraged, perhaps, by the color that suffused my face, she went on: "As for him, he's been up since daybreak, walking up and down the hall, and on the piazza, and starting and changing color every time a door opened or any one came on the stairs. I don't believe he wants to go away very much."