[CHAPTER V.]
ONE OF MANY.
“‘It is good when it happens,’ say the children,
‘That we die before our time.’”
E. B. Browning.
WHEN Geneviève woke the next morning, the sun—the beautiful morning sun of an English June—was shining into her room. Her first thought was of gladness.
“What a fine day!” she said to herself. “I shall go out as soon as breakfast is over; I am sure Mr. Fawcett will be out early this morning.”
But suddenly the occurrences of the previous day returned to her recollection. Mr. Fawcett, what was he?—her own all but acknowledged lover, the rich, handsome young Englishman, whom long ago she had pictured as her future husband? Ah! no, all that was at an end. What could he ever be to her now? He, the betrothed of her cousin Cicely,—he, who she now knew had never cared for her as she had imagined, had only been amusing himself at her expense.
Yet she found it difficult to believe he did not care for her, she recalled his looks and words and tones, and dwelt on them till she almost persuaded herself that his engagement to Cicely was repugnant to him; that she, and not her cousin, was in possession of his heart. She knew that he admired her beauty, and she hardly understood the difference between a feeling of this kind and a higher, deeper devotion. She recalled the depression of Cicely’s manner the evening before, and her own suspicion as to its cause, and again a slight uncomfortable sensation of self-reproach passed through her, but again she checked it quickly.
“It is not my fault,” she said to herself; “if Mr. Fawcett thinks me prettier than Cicely I cannot help it. I have not interfered with my cousin’s fiancé, I knew not he was engaged to her, they never told me; it is their fault, not mine.”
And though yesterday, when she had learnt the real state of things from her aunt, she had felt, in the first blush of her disappointment and mortification, as if she could never speak to Mr. Fawcett again, as if she would be thankful to go away home to Hivèritz at once, and forget all her English experiences,—she now began to think she would like to meet Trevor, to see how he bore himself to her now that she knew all, perhaps even to hear his own account of things, possibly even—who could say?—his assurance of the depth of his hopeless regard for her, his soft whispers of regret that they had not met till “too late.”