“It will always be a puzzle to me and Imogen,” said Mrs. Bruce, “how, with all that money at your disposal, you should ever have run the risks you did in this gipsy business, with the people we found you with, or would have done, if you had remained a few days longer with them. You didn’t want to learn their language, like Borrow—what other reason could there be?”
“My dear Mrs. Bruce,” he replied, “you have been so good, considerate, and friendly to me, that I must make a clean breast of it. I have already told Imogen all there is to tell of a by no means uncommon event in a man’s life, when one of your adorable, yet fatal sex is mixed up with it.”
“I see, I understand, the ‘eternal feminine’; we have not many romances of the kind in these quiet hills, but of course they are not wholly unknown, even in our sequestered lives. You are going to tell me of your tragedy.”
“It was not far removed from the ordinary run of such adventures, though there might easily have been a catastrophe. I was young, I said it was seven years ago, since which I have industriously wasted life’s best gifts, in trying to forget her. Beautiful, yes, as a dream maiden! a recognised queen of society, flattered, worshipped, wherever her fairy footsteps trod; but vain, ambitious and false as the Lorelei, or the mermaiden, that lures the fated victim. More than one man had thrown life, character, or fortune at her feet, unavailingly. I had heard this, but with the reckless confidence of youth, I heeded not. I met her at the quiet country house of a relative; men being scarce, she condescended to play for so poor a stake as the heart of a younger son, an undistinguished lover’s existence, and she won!
“How could it be otherwise? She turned the full battery of her charms upon the undefended fort. We rode together, we fished the trout stream, more dangerous still. We read in the old library, morning after morning, and here my not unmarked university career served me well, as I thought. I had been reading aloud from a novel of the hour, when, looking up suddenly I saw a light in her eyes, which gave me hope, more than hope. I took her hand, I poured out protestations, entreaties, vows of eternal love; whatever man has distilled from the inward fires of soul and sense, under the alembic of love at white heat, I found words for and poured into her not unwilling ear.
“She was visibly agitated. Her cold nature, serenely lovely as she always was, seemed to kindle into flame under the fire of my impetuous avowal. I gained her other hand, I threw myself on my knees before her, and drew her down to the level of my face. I clasped her yielding form, and kissed her lips with soul-consuming ardour. To my surprise, she made no resistance, her colour came and went, she might have been the veriest country milkmaid, surprised into consent by her rustic lover’s eagerness. ‘You are mine, say you are mine for ever!’ I whispered into her shell-like ear as her loosened hair fell over her cheek.
“‘Yours,’ she said in a low intense murmur, ‘now and for ever.’ Then gently, disengaging herself from my arms, ‘This is a foolish business. I confess to being rather unprepared, but I suppose we must consider it binding?’
“‘Binding,’ said I, shocked at the alteration of her tone and manner. ‘To the end of the world, and afterwards, in life, in death, my heart is yours unalterably—to wear in true love’s circlet or to break and cast beneath your feet.’
“‘Poor Val!’ said she, smoothing my hair with her dainty jewelled fingers, ‘yet women have played false before now to their promises, as fondly made, and men’s hearts have not been broken. They have lived to smile, to wed, to enjoy life much as usual—or old tales are untrue.’
“‘Do not jest,’ said I, ‘a man’s life—a woman’s heart, are treasures too precious to win—too perilous to lose; say you are not in earnest?’