CHAPTER XXX
THE TREACHERY
"Doubt you if, in some such moment
As she fixed me, she felt clearly
Ages past the soul existed,
Here an age 'tis resting merely,
And hence fleets again for ages,
While the true end, sole and single,
It stops here for, is this love-way,
With some other soul to mingle?
"Else it loses what it lived for,
And eternally must lose it;
Better ends may be in prospect,
Deeper blisses (if you choose it);
But this life's end and this love-bliss
Have been lost here; doubt you whether
This she felt, as looking at me,
Mine and her souls rushed together?"
—ROBERT BROWNING.
Melicent only came down to Clunbury for one day the following week; and Mr. Helston was with her. The week after, she came for two days, and brought Brenda.
This was not the result of any scheme of self-defence; it simply happened in the ordinary course of events.
For she no longer disliked Hubert. Her mental attitude had changed.
The enlightenment which his simple and sparing speech had brought to her had been a veritable shock. She saw herself again as she had been at the time of his early devotion—the despised Cinderella, the half-grown slattern, the insolent, self-absorbed little upstart. Her own dulness of perception and ingratitude began to show themselves to her in a strong light. She marvelled at his constancy, and stood amazed at his insight. He had seen her, not as she was, but as she might be. It was she who had been blind.
So she thought of him: and yet, at the bottom of her mind, lurked a mysterious reluctance to go down to Lone Ash again.
She wrote to Lance more affectionately than she had ever done. She told him she meant to be less hard, more unselfish, to do her best to respond to the affection he lavished upon her.