When he perfectly understood her, understood that there was no hope, the burst of reproach that came from him was terrible. Yet might it not be excused? He had parted from her on the previous night in the full expectation that she would be his wife: now could he think otherwise after all that had occurred, and the concluding promise of M. de Castella? Yet now, without preface, without reason, she told him that she renounced him for his rival. A reason, unhappily, she dared not give.
Oh, once more, in spite of her resistance, Mr. St. John held her to his heart. He spoke to her words of the sweetest and most persuasive eloquence; he besought her to fly with him, to become his beloved wife. And she was obliged to wrest herself from him, and assure him that his prayers were wasted; that she was compelled to be more obdurate than even her father had been.
It was a fault, you know, of Mr. St. John's to be hasty and passionate, when moved to it by any great cause; but perhaps a storm of passion so violent as that he gave way to now, had never yet shaken him. His reproaches were keen: entirely unreasonable: but an angry man does not weigh his words.
"False and fickle that you are, you have never loved me! I see it all now. You have but led me on, to increase at the last moment the triumph of de la Chasse. It may have been a planned thing between you! Your true vows have been given to him, your false ones to me."
Adeline placed her hands on his, as if imploring mercy, and would have knelt before him; but he held her up, not tenderly.
"If I thought you did not know your words are untrue, it would kill me," she faltered. "Had we been married, as, until this day, I thought and prayed we should be, you would have known how entirely I love you; how the love will endure unto death. I can tell you this, now, because we are about to separate, and it is the last time we must ever be together in this world. Oh, Frederick! mercy! mercy!--do not profess to think I have loved another."
"You are about to marry him."
"I shall marry him, hating him; I shall marry him, loving you; do you not think I have enough of misery?"
"As I am a living man," spoke Mr. St. John, "I cannot understand this! You say your father told you to choose between us?"
"I feel as if I should die," she murmured; "I have felt so, at times, for several weeks past. There is something hanging over me, I think," she continued, passing her hand across her forehead, abstractedly.