"Lady," he said, "your lands lie burnt
And waste: to meet your foe
All fear: this have I seen and learnt.
Say that it shall be so,
And I will go."
* * * *
And there the sunset skies unseal'd
Like lands he never knew,
Beyond to-morrow's battlefield
Lay open out of view
To ride into.
—D. G. ROSSETTI.
This was something new—something for which Felix, unused to women, to society, to youth and charm, was oddly unprepared. Was that Rona? That young immortal, with faintly blooming cheeks, elastic tread, and all those burnished locks? As frequently happens to girls of her age, she had grown considerably taller during the weeks of her illness.
The young man gazing at her felt his heart shaken by a pain which was worse than anything he had suffered yet. He was a skulking fugitive, a disgraced man, one who had taken dark oaths against society and authority, and was seeking to flee from the men who would have held him to them. What link was there between him and Veronica Leigh?
He bitterly recalled the proverb, "Necessity makes strange bed-fellows." Necessity had obliged the maiden, in the throes of her desperate struggle for liberty, to trust herself to him for a few short hours. Those hours had changed the face of the world for him. For her they were no doubt already half-forgotten. She had, as it were, set her foot upon his neck to climb out of the pit. Here she was once more, seated at her ease among the elect, safe, cherished, and no more in need of her slum companion. He thought of the kindly, peremptory, half-patronizing letter he had written to her, and grew hot all over to think that he had dared.
The figures of the three were disappearing down the drive together. He crept into the summer-house, where there were not so many pea-sticks as usual, sat down upon the dusty bench, and let his head drop into his hands. There was a swelling at his throat as if he must choke. The air was full of the tossing chimes, which, as he sat there, changed to the monotonous stroke of the five minutes bell. It was a knell, ringing for him, he thought—the knell of Felix Vanston, now forever dead and lost.
Ask her to run away and marry him, upon a pound a week!
Only in that bitter moment did he realize that he had meant to beg and pray her to do so.
One sometimes has no measure by which to gauge height, except the violence of one's fall.