But, oh, how altered to herself! She felt
That weariness which hath but outward part
In what the world calls pleasure, and that chill
Which makes life taste the bitterness of death.”
Mrs. Maxwell would never forget to her dying day how surprised she was that bright May afternoon when the elegant Van Lew carriage, with its liveried coachman, stopped before the cottage gate, while the footman handed out a graceful figure in deep mourning, who came slowly up the walk and knocked timidly on the door.
As she gazed from the window, her heart swelled with bitterness toward the beautiful girl who had been so cruel to poor Rolfe. The memory was still fresh in her mind of that night when her handsome boy had taken her into his confidence and told her so sadly that his bride’s father had persuaded her to forsake him.
“Do not think unkindly of her, dear mother. She was so young and thoughtless, she scarcely knew her own mind, I suppose, and her haughty father probably bullied her into giving me up,” he said, touching the truth nearer than he knew in his anxiety to shield Viola from his mother’s natural resentment.
Then, despite her opposition to his plans, he had gone away to Cuba, and she had read in the papers afterward of the dangerous illness of Viola, but it did not at all soften her heart that was aching in sympathy with her son’s pain. Though she was one of the best women in the world, she could not help thinking most bitterly:
“It will be no great loss if she dies, the cruel coquette!”
Then came occasional letters from Rolfe, always full of interest for her motherly heart, and she was glad that he seemed to have forgotten in his absorbing work the painful episode of his marriage, since he never mentioned Viola’s name. She, on her part, preserved the same silence in her replies, never alluding to the fact that the young girl lay ill unto death of brain fever.