“Very well,” she said, “I will not write it. Not to-day.”
Cicely saw that she had gained her point. She left the room without saying any more. And no letter was written by Geneviève that afternoon. She sat in her room crying till it grew dark, and by dinner-time had succeeded in making herself as miserable looking a little object as could well be imagined, so that poor Mrs. Methvyn said in her heart, that if it were not for the disappointment to Caroline, her daughter’s absence would hardly be a matter of regret.
Cicely had no time to spare for crying; and tears, she was beginning to find, are, for the less “med’cinable griefs,” a balm by no means so easy of attainment as for slighter wounds.
“I think my tears are all frozen,” she said to herself with a sigh, as she folded and sealed the last of her letters. She sat for a moment or two gazing at the address before she closed the envelope, as if the familiar words had a sort of fascination for her.
“I wonder if it is the last time I shall ever write to him,” she said to herself. “When—when he is Geneviève’s husband, there can surely never be any necessity for our coming in contact with each other. Yet people grow accustomed to such things I have heard, and my suffering cannot be unprecedented. Ah, what a sad thing life becomes when one’s trust is broken! Far, far sadder than death!” And after all, two or three large tears rolled slowly down her cheeks and dropped upon the white paper.
This was the letter.
“Greystone,
“October 25th.
“My dear Trevor,—I should like to see you alone to-morrow. Will you call here between two and three in the afternoon? I have deferred asking you to come till now, because I thought it best that you should thoroughly understand that I, in what I have determined to do, am not acting hastily or impulsively.
“Your affectionate cousin,