She shook her head. "Who knows? even if my message had reached you, you would not have solved the problem! Of what use would it be? Can a heart incapable of love become more lovable if you learn that it has very natural reasons for being contrary to nature? A whim, a fit of obstinacy, a childish caprice--a refractory character like Katharine the shrew is not hopeless, since we need not once for all make a cross against it and go our way. But the child of a forced love, the fruit of a girl's bartered life--what can be hoped for, what aid can avail in such a case?"
"And this--this is what I should have learned if my poor Balder had survived that day. Oh! eternal Gods!"
"Yes indeed," she nodded with a bitter smile. "I thought you would have taken pity on the poor monster and have borne with her for a time. I hoped so for three days. Then, as I said, I thought: 'he's right'--and came here with the old countess."
"Horrible!" he exclaimed, wiping his brow, on which drops of cold perspiration were standing. "And so I--none other than myself--blind and unsuspecting as I was--and your letter, which I did not understand--the three days respite--"
"Calm yourself, my friend. It's not your fault; the threads of fate were too delicately spun. Even if you had come, who knows whether I might not still be here? True, if I had known then, what I know now--"
"What, Toinette, what!"
She hesitated a moment, then with closed eyes and her delicate brows contracted in an expression almost threatening in its sternness, said slowly and softly: "That my womanly nature would some day awake, that the hour would come when, like every other lonely creature I should long for a happy love--and that I then should belong to a man, of whom my soul knows nothing, and who would force me to drain to the dregs the sorrowful cup that broke my mother's heart!" She sank down upon a moss covered stone beside the road, and buried her face in her hands.
Edwin stood before her; he did not feel the rain, which now began to fall in heavy drops, did not pick up her gloves, which had slipped from her lap and lay on the wet ground; he made no reply to little Jean's question whether he should close the carriage, except to wave the intruder away with his hand. All his thoughts were absorbed in the one emotion of pity he felt for the woman once so deeply loved, who across the gulf of years had suddenly once more approached so near him, as if naught had even come between them.
"My poor dear friend," he faltered at last, "be calm, compose yourself, you're no longer alone. I am here, I--" His voice died away. How false and powerless was everything he could say. Toinette suddenly rose, shook back her hair, as we do when reminded that we must hold up our heads, and said with a forced smile:
"I believe we're getting wet. The little discomforts of life have their use; they cause annoyance and compel a division even in the midst of great sorrow. Give me your arm again, and open the umbrella. Ten paces farther on is a beech wood, where the foliage is so thick that we might quietly await a deluge. To be sure, my velvet dress is ruined, and I'm not yet 'duchess' enough not to regret it. However, it can be replaced. If there were nothing else--but come, come, you're standing as still as a statue."