“Dear me! And there is some one else whose mind will want tranquilizing by this time. Sergius is waiting in the drawing-room for you all this while.”
I would fain have been excused from meeting “Sergius” just then, for I knew I must be even more unpresentable than usual. But madame was inexorable, and a minute later I was tête-à-tête with a man in whose company I had begun of late to feel remarkably uncomfortable. It was strange that I should begin to avoid the presence of the only individual of the opposite sex whose lengthened absence was distasteful to me, and that I should become gauché and dull in the society of the one being whose conversation afforded me most happiness. And yet, when I come to think of it, there was nothing strange about it, after all, though I did not understand myself at the time.
I know now that I loved Sergius Volkhoffsky with a passion so great that I dreaded a betrayal of my feelings to others, with the consequent humiliation that I thought would be inevitable. He was handsome; I was ugly. He seemed to me to be one of the cleverest men under the sun, while I felt the acquirements of which I had formerly been so proud to be little more than a rudimentary education. Thanks to his prudent foresight, he had lost but a small proportion of the wealth which he had inherited from his father. And I was a penniless girl, whom disagreement with her family had compelled to go forth to earn her own livelihood.
No wonder I felt miserable when I pictured the different fate that might have been mine, had I but possessed a fair share of nature’s bounties, and no wonder that I shrank, in anticipation, from the joyless existence foreshadowed in an unloved future.
I had truly loved my old earl. But my love was based entirely on gratitude and esteem. Such love is honest, honorable and pleasant to behold. It is also lasting and durable, if permitted to flow on in a gentle, uninterrupted current. But if its possessor be of an ardent nature it is as easily dispelled by a sudden passion as is froth on the surface of the breakers, and I know now how feeble is the love born of gratitude compared to the love one feels for one’s ideal. There are some women so constituted that passion is powerless to assail them, and upon the whole, it is well for them that it should be so, for their lives run on in quiet, contented grooves that afford them every satisfaction.
But ask the woman of a more ardent nature if she would barter her hopes and dreams and possible disappointments for the humdrum existence associated in her mind with quiet affection, and she will answer emphatically in the negative. It was so with me now. Having once seen and known Sergius Volkhoffsky, I could but marvel how I could ever have contemplated marrying a man old enough to be my grandfather. Having arrived at this state of mind, my recollections of my past disappointments lost all their bitterness, and I could but feel thankful that my passion for Sergius, vain as it seemed, was not of an unlawful nature, since I had as yet made vows of allegiance to no other man.
But I was not thinking of all this in detail when I entered the room in which Sergius had been waiting so long for me.
“I am sorry,” I said, “that I was not here to receive you when you asked for me. I am also very curious to know the nature of the business which could actually make you wait half an hour and more to see me.”
He sprang up to greet me, his pleasant smile and warm hand-clasp being enough to dispel the most obstinate spirits. His glance, too, was so ardent that I felt the color rush to my cheeks, and instinctively lowered my eyelids, that he might not see what power he had over my feelings.
“I have not been dull while you were out. My friends have taken care of that. But I have that to say to you which made me very impatient for your arrival. Now that you are here, I am not in such a hurry to disburden myself, lest I be sent away in disgrace. But, first, tell me what I have been doing to offend you lately.”