"I did not love her as I shall love you," he hastened to avow--and in the moment's fervour it may be that he thought he spoke truth. "Had I known you better then, I might never have chosen her."
"Yet see how you love her child!"
"And I will passionately love any that may be born to you, Charlotte," he whispered. But the very remark, had Mr. St. John been cool enough or wise enough to analyze it, might have told him that her heart, even now, before she was anything to him, was shaken by jealousy of the child. He was neither cool nor wise just then.
He bent his head lower and lower; he murmured vows of everlasting tenderness; he suffered his face to rest against hers, as it had once rested against that of his dying wife. She resisted not. But when a host of intruders came flocking in, she raised her haughty head, and swept on with a scornful step, as she resigned the infant into the arms of its nurse.
George St. John had loved his wife with the fresh, rapturous feelings that he could never know again; and he loved her memory. Yet, here he was, ere ten short months had elapsed, willing to swear to another that she was the first who had awakened true passion in his heart! But Caroline Carleton had faded from his sight, and Charlotte Norris stood before him in all her beauty. It is the way of man; ay, and often of woman. To remain faithful to the dead is not in man's nature.
The fête was over, and they were driving home--Mrs. Darling and her daughter. To judge by the manner of the two ladies, one might have thought it was the mother who had received so momentous a proposal; not the daughter. Charlotte sat quiet and calm, leaning back in her corner of the chariot; Mrs. Darling was flushed, restless, evidently disturbed. Mr. St. John had said to her a word of enlightenment in parting, and it startled her out of her equanimity.
"Charlotte," she began--and not until they were drawing near the end of their homeward road, and the village of Alnwick was left behind them, did she speak--"Charlotte, I hope I misunderstood Mr. St. John?"
Charlotte lifted her eyes. "I do not know to what you allude, mamma. In what do you hope you misunderstood Mr. St. John?"
"He hinted to me that he should call tomorrow to speak to me about you. Charlotte, it will be of no use: I cannot let you marry Mr. Carleton."
"Please not to call him by that name," was the quiet rejoinder.