'I believe so,' she said coldly. 'Good-night, Mr. Brooklyn. I must go in.
There!—that's the stage coming down hill.'
He went to tell the driver to set down his bag at the house by the bridge, and then he walked down the hill after the little rumbling carriage, his hands thrust into the pockets of his blue flannel coat.
'She's not going to marry him!—I'll bet anything she's not! She's a girl of the right sort—she's a brick, she is!'—he said to himself in a miserable, a savage exultation, kicking the stones of the road furiously down hill, after the disappearing diligence. 'So that's how a woman looks when her heart's broken!—Oh! my God—Eleanor!—my poor, poor Eleanor!'
And before he knew what had happened to him, the young fellow found himself sitting in the darkness by the roadside, grappling with honest tears, that astonished and scandalised himself.
* * * * *
Next day he was still more bewildered by the position of affairs. Eleanor was apparently so much better that he was disposed to throw scorn on his own burst of grief under the starlight. That was the first impression. Then she was apparently in Manisty's charge. Manisty sat with her, strolled with her, read to her from morning till night. Never had their relations been more intimate, more affectionate. That was the second impression.
Nevertheless, that some great change had taken place—above all in Eleanor—became abundantly evident to the young man's quickened perception, before another twenty-four hours had passed away. And with this new sense returned the sense of irreparable tragedy. Eleanor stood alone—aloof from them all. The more unremitting, the more delicate was Manisty's care, the more tender was Lucy's devotion, the more plainly was Brooklyn aware of a pathetic, a mysterious isolation which seemed already to bring the chill of death into their little company.
The boy's pain flowed back upon him, ten-fold augmented. For seven or eight years he had seen in Eleanor Burgoyne the woman of ideal distinction by whom he judged all other women. The notion of falling in love with her would have seemed to him ridiculous. But his wife, whenever he could indulge himself in such a luxury, must be like her. Meanwhile he was most naïvely, most boyishly devoted to her.
The sight of her now, environed as it were by the new and awful possibilities which her state suggested, was a touch upon the young man's nature, which seemed to throw all its energies into a fiery fusion,—concentrating them upon a changed and poignant affection, which rapidly absorbed his whole being. His pity for her was almost intolerable, his bitterness towards Manisty almost beyond his control. All very well for him now to be the guardian of her decline! Whatever might be the truth about the American girl, it was plain enough that while she could still reckon on the hopes and chances of the living, Eleanor had wasted her heart and powers on an egotist, only to reap ingratitude, and the deadly fruit of 'benefits forgot.'
What chafed him most was that he had so little time with her; that Manisty was always there. At last, two days after his arrival, he got an hour to himself while Manisty and Father Benecke were walking, and Lucy was with the Contessa.