It happened to be the handkerchief they had picked up that first morning in the painting-room. Rose talked on, in the recklessness of her spirits; and Adeline sat, drinking-in her words.
"She did this for him, I have not the least doubt. Look how elaborately it is worked, even to the finishings of the crest. It is her hair, Sarah Beauclerc's."
A random assertion. Rose neither knew nor cared whether she was right. In her present humour she would have stood to anything. It is possible: not likely, but barely possible: that she had stumbled on a bit of fact. Mr. St. John remained supremely indifferent, denying nothing. She talked on in her access of gaiety.
"This is his favourite handkerchief: I have noticed that. The others are marked with ink. I dare say she gave the handkerchief, as well as marked it. Let it alone, Mr. St. John: I shall show it round, if I like. A rather significant present from so lovely a girl! But it's known she was folle after him. He reciprocated the compliment then: he was always at the dean's. I don't know how it may be now," she added, after a pause, and there was a significant meaning in her tone as she looked to Adeline. Then, with a saucy glance at Mr. St. John, she sang out, in her clear, rich voice, to a tune of her own,
"It is well to be off with the old love,
Beore you are on with the new."
Adeline rose, and passed quietly into the drawing-room, her step self-possessed, her bearing calm: the still exterior covers the deepest suffering. But Mr. St. John suspected nothing.
"Rose," he said, quoting a French axiom, "vous aimez bien à rire, mais rien n'est beau que le vrai."
"Ah," she answered, with another, "ce n'est pas être bien aise que de rire." Perhaps the deepest truth she had uttered that evening.
With outward calmness there, but oh! the whirlwind of despairing agony which shook Adeline's frame as she sank down by the bedside in her own chamber! That in one short minute, desolation so complete should have swept over her heart, and she be able to endure it and live! I tell you no false story: I am writing of one of those sensitive hearts which must thus suffer and be shaken. To have given up her whole love to one, in a passion little short of idolatry; to have forgotten early ties and kindred in the spell of this strong devotion--and now to be told there was another to claim his vows, another to whom they had first been offered!