She was cruelly wounded, for she had cherished a private conviction that he was yielding to her fascinations, and the belief made her very happy, though she had not acknowledged to her own heart yet that she found him more attractive than any man she had ever met, Florian not excepted.
How much pique and vanity had to do with her emotion it is hard to say. If Desha had yielded weakly to her sway, she might have despised him. We ever prize the unattainable. It is
“The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the day for the morrow.”
Her capricious heart, thus repulsed by Desha’s assumed indifference, turned back awhile to Florian with renewed tenderness, finding in his devotion a balm for her wounded pride.
Feeling her enforced stay in the house until her strength returned most irksome, she welcomed with pleasure the frequent fond letters of her betrothed, though they were very despondent in tone.
Florian wrote that his father’s condition was most unsatisfactory. His partial paralysis did not yield to treatment, and he remained in a dying condition, which might terminate at any moment in his demise, or there was a remote possibility of his lingering many weeks in this unhappy state. Under the circumstances, Florian being the only son, it was quite impossible for him to leave Carlsbad. He must remain with his parents, divided between love and duty, his heart distracted with anxiety and grief.
“Ah, my darling, if you would but have come with me, how much happier I should have been!” he wrote most plaintively; adding: “Do you know that your letter was most cruel? It was filled up with my friend Desha and the handsome unknown who saved your life. Ah, my love, do not let either of these men steal you from me, for the loss of you would wreck my life! I do not care to hear about them. It is news of you, dearest, for which my lonely heart is hungry. If you could see me looking at your beautiful photograph and kissing it over and over, you would pity me and write some sweet loving words to show that you have not forgotten me in my enforced exile from your side!”
Viola’s heart was touched by the pathos of the poor fellow’s letter, and she brought out his photograph and looked at it with tender eyes, saying, as she often did:
“Poor fellow, how he loves me! He has a warm, true heart!”