Poor Felix! He let himself go, in that letter, as only a young man in his first love can fling himself prone upon the love he imagines in the beloved one.
There was, in the girl, no passion to kindle at the breath of his: the unveiled vehement thing almost paralyzed her with apprehension.
In her first panic fear she wrote and bade him never so to address her again. Did he not realize that her letters might be overlooked? Miss Rawson might reasonably, naturally expect to be shown her letters from her brother. They must be such as she could produce if necessary—the kind of letter a brother might write to a sister.
Felix never admitted, even to himself, how cruelly this reproof flung him back upon himself. Her appeal touched his tenderest feeling, and overwhelmed him with self-reproach. He answered meekly, abjectly, imploring forgiveness for his rashness, vowing never so to offend again; and inclosing more money than he could conveniently spare that she might have all she needed.
Veronica graciously accepted both the apology and the remittance.
She was not at that time old enough to see how the mere acceptance of his money bound her to him. But it was not long before this dawned upon her—this, and many other things.
She was a girl of fine intelligence, and she took full advantage of all the culture put within her reach. Her mind developed apace. She read books, she saw plays. The world as it is began to emerge before her vision, heretofore bounded by convent walls; and soon she saw clearly that a girl under seventeen has no right to promise herself in marriage. She knew that she had given a promise that meant nothing. She formed, in her secret heart, an Ideal of marriage, which was not in the least like the gaunt young man, with the hunted eyes, who had implored her to be true to him. Looking back upon the little scene in the arbor she could not but think that he had taken an unfair advantage of her gratitude and friendlessness. By the end of her first vacation the thought of her secret engagement was a millstone round her neck.
She still kept to her habit of writing to him. He stood for something in her life, after all. He was sympathy, kindness, a creature to whom she could turn for fellow-feeling in joy or trouble. He was as interested as she in her powers of mind, in her improvement in languages, her music, and her reading. He wrote more and more hopefully of his own prospects. Always he kept to her commands, and his letters might have been shown to anybody. Yet sometimes there breathed through them a current of feeling which sent a chill foreboding through her. What was she to say when at last he came to claim her promise—she who knew she had nothing to give?
Her obligation to him weighed upon her far more heavily than her debt to Mr. Vanston. She became deeply, feverishly anxious to earn her own living. She had a record of every remittance that David had ever sent, that one day she might repay him.
Her own complete change of mind encouraged her to hope at times that he might have changed his. It seemed impossible that he, a grown man, in a world full of women, could remain faithful to the memory of a girl whom he had only seen two or three times—a girl of whom he knew so little.