So, in spite of his entreaties, she took back her promise, and set society caviling as much as it had done at her divorce. She did not care. She was growing indifferent to everything now that she had found Darling and lost her again in death.
So it happened that as time went by she lost heart and hope, sickening of a vague disease without a name, the slow loss of interest in life that had nothing left to make it dear.
She lay ill on her bed at last, and the old family physician came and shook his head and said it must be nervous prostration.
“It is a breaking heart,” she replied wearily.
“No, no.”
“I tell you yes,” she cried. “It was too cruel a blow, finding Darling and losing her again as I did. I have never recovered from it. The thorn has been in my heart always, and I can never recover.”
“You should have married the duke. It would have diverted your mind to wear a coronet.”
“It would only have wearied me,” she replied, and the look in her great, languid, dark eyes made his old heart ache. “You may spare your pills and potions, doctor. They cannot cure me, for I do not wish to get well. I am reaping the crop of pain I sowed in my passionate youth, and I am weary of life!”
“You should have married another man and forgotten that episode,” he said; but she turned her face to the wall with a stifled moan:
“I could not forget!”