"For one thing, I tell you, I did not know where to write. For another, Adeline would not have let me. She had an idea that you did not care to come to her--that you perhaps would not, if summoned. And I"--Rose paused a moment, and angrily compressed her repentant lips--"I could wish my tongue had been bitten out for a share I took in the past. There's not the least doubt that one ingredient in Adeline's cup of bitterness was worse than all the rest--the thought of Sarah Beauclerc."
He uttered an exclamation.
"And of your love for her. And I say I wish Sarah Beauclerc had been smothered, and I with her, if you like, before I had ever breathed her name to Adeline. But for that, but for deeming that she was your true love, and would some time be your wife, Adeline would have sent to the far ends of the earth after you for a parting interview."
He sat, leaning his head upon his fingers, looking into the fire.
"What a miserable business it seems altogether! Nothing but cross-purposes, the one with the other. Sarah Beauclerc!"
"Are you still engaged--perhaps at a moment like this I may be pardoned for asking it--to Sarah Beauclerc?"
"I never was engaged to Sarah Beauclerc. I had once a sort of passing fancy for her; I don't know that it was more. I have had no thought of her, or of any one else, since I parted from Adeline."
"In a letter I had from London, not very long ago," resumed Rose, slowly, "your name was coupled with Miss Sarah Beauclerc's. It said you were her shadow."
"Who said it?"
"Never mind. It was a lady."