“If you thought that Lorraine was unworthy of you, you could make up your mind to forget him, I hope.”
“I never could do such a thing, because I never dream it of Hilary. He is my better in every way. From feeling myself unworthy of him, I might perhaps try to do without him; but as to forgetting him—never!”
“Not even if he forgot you, Mabel?”
“He cannot do it,” she answered proudly. “He has promised never to forget me. And no gentleman ever breaks a promise.”
“Then Hilary Lorraine is no gentleman. He has forgotten you; and is deeply in love with a Spanish lady.”
Kind and good brother as he was, he had told his bad news too abruptly in his indignation. Mabel looked up faintly at him; and was struck in the heart so that she could not speak. But the first of the tide of a sea of tears just moved beneath her eyelids.
“Now, come in to supper, that’s a dear,” whispered Gregory, frightened by the silent springs of sorrow. “If you are not at the table, poor darling, everything will be upside down, and everybody uncomfortable.” He spoke like a fool, confounding coarsely her essence and her instincts. And perhaps some little turn of contrast broke the seals of anguish. She looked up, and she smiled, to show her proper sense of duty; and then (without knowledge of what she did) she pressed her right hand to her heart, and leaned on a rail, and fell forward into a torrent of shameless weeping. She was as a little child once more, whose soul is overwhelmed with woe. And all along the hollow hedges went the voice of sobbing.
“Now, do shut up,” said Gregory, when he had borne it as long as a man can bear. “What is the good of it? Mabel, now, I thought you had more sense than this. After all, it may be false, you know.”
“It is not false; it is what I have felt. You would not have told me, if it had been false. It has come from some dreadfully low mean person, who spies him only too accurately.”
“Now, Mabel, you are quite out of yourself. You never did say nasty things. There is nobody spying Lorraine at all. I should doubt if he were worth it. Only it is well known in the regiment (and I had it on the best authority) that he—that he——”