"How cruel I was to leave him like that," she said to herself, reproachfully; "without a word, or so much as a look, of consolation—for, if I suffer, has not he suffered too!"
She forgot that he had asked her for nothing; she only knew that, little enough as she had to give him, she had withheld that little from him.
"What must he think of me?" she repeated to herself, in dismay. "How heartless and how cold I must be in his eyes to have parted from him thus without one single kind word. I might, at least, have told him that I was grateful for the love I cannot take. I wonder," she continued, half aloud to herself, "I wonder what it is like to be loved by Maurice——" She paused again, this time leaning against the wicket-gate that led out of the park into the high road.
A little smile played for one instant about her lips, a soft, far-away look lingered in her dreaming eyes for just a moment—just the space of time it might take you to count twenty; she let her fancy carry her away—where?
Ah, sweet and perilous reverie! too dear and too dangerous to be safely indulged in. Vera roused herself with a start, passing her hand across her brow as though to brush away the thoughts that would fain have lingered there.
"Impossible!" she said aloud to herself, moving on again rapidly. "I must be a fool to stand here dreaming—I, whose fate is irrevocably fixed; and I would sooner die than alter it. The best match in the county, it is called. Well, so it is; and nothing less would satisfy me. But—but—I think I will see him once again, and wish him good-bye more kindly."
CHAPTER XVI.
"POOR WISDOM."
No; vain, alas! the endeavour
From bonds so sweet to sever,
Poor Wisdom's chance against a glance
Is now as weak as ever!