“They hate me—all of them; they will never forgive me for being the daughter of an actress, instead of a Barry. Perhaps if they knew that my father was Sir Edward Trueheart’s son, they would respect me more. But I shall not tell them. I can be proud, too; and if they can not love me and forgive me for myself, I will keep my pleasant secret.”
Florine looked at her narrowly.
“Madame, I can not help thinking you look worse every time you leave your room. I am sure you are not strong enough to bear company,” she said, with pretended solicitude.
“I believe you are right, Florine,” Molly answered, with sudden bitterness, and she resolved that she would not go among them again as long as she could help it.
Florine fostered the resolve. She made Molly believe she was sicker than she was. She excluded every one from the room, declaring that her mistress was nervous and could not bear company. Even the Truehearts were, without Molly’s knowledge, denied admittance.
Her craft had a different effect from what she intended.
The report of Molly’s illness began to soften Cecil’s obdurate heart.
His love, which had been smothered but not destroyed by the discovery of her falsity, began to burn again with its pristine warmth and ardor, augmented by sympathy with her illness, loneliness, and her delicate condition of health.
He tried at first to beat down this reviving tenderness, this exquisite pity, and to keep up the old feud; but the memory of the past, when they had loved each other so well, pleaded now for the lonely, humbled, neglected wife.
“How happy we were, and how quickly the time passed. I shall never be so happy again,” he said to himself, sadly, and there came over him, in the words of the poet, a yearning