It was from Mrs. Maberley that I heard all about Mr. Hamilton's disappointment, and why he had not married. When he was about eight-and-twenty he had been engaged to a young widow.
'She was a beautiful creature, my dear,' observed the old lady; 'the colonel said he had never seen a handsomer woman. She was an Irish beauty, and had those wonderful gray eyes and dark eyelashes that make you wonder what colour they are, and she had the sweetest smile possible; any man would have been bewitched by it. I never saw a young man more in love than Giles: when he came here he could talk of nothing but Mrs. Carrick: her name was Ella, I remember. Well, it went on for some months, and he was preparing for the wedding,—there was to be a nursery got ready, for she had one little boy, and Giles already doted on the child,—when all at once there came a letter from his lady-love; and a very pretty letter it was. Giles must forgive her, it said, she was utterly wretched at the thought of the pain she was giving him, but she was mistaken in the strength of her attachment. She had come to the conclusion that they would not be happy together, that in fact she preferred some one else.
'She did not mention that this other lover was richer than Giles and had a title, but of course he found out that this was the case. The fickle Irish beauty had caught the fancy of an elderly English nobleman with a large family of grown-up sons and daughters. My dear, it was a very heartless piece of work: it changed Giles completely. He never spoke about it to any one, but if ever a man was heart-broken, Giles was: he was never the same after that; it made him hard and bitter; he is always railing against women, or saying disagreeable home-truths about them. And of course Mrs. Carrick, or rather Lady Howe, is to blame for that. Oh, my dear, she may deck herself with diamonds, as they say she does, and call herself happy,—which she is not, with a gouty, ill-tempered old husband who is jealous of her,—but I'll be bound she thinks of Giles sometimes with regret, and scorns herself for her folly.'
Poor Mr. Hamilton! And this had all happened about six or seven years ago. No wonder he looked stern and said bitter things. He was not naturally sweet-tempered, like Max; such a misfortune would sour him.
'All well,' I said to myself, as I went up to bed, 'it is perfectly true what Longfellow says, "Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary"; but it is strange that they both have suffered. It is a good thing, perhaps, that such an experience is never likely to happen to me. There is some consolation to be deduced even from my want of beauty: no man will fall in love with me and then play me false.' And with that a curious feeling came over me, a sudden inexplicable sense of want and loneliness, something I could not define, that took no definite shape and had no similitude, and yet haunted me with a sense of ill; but the next moment I was struggling fiercely with the unknown and unwelcome guest.
'For shame!' I said to myself; 'this is weakness and pure selfishness, mere sentimental feverishness; this is not like the strong-minded young person Miss Darrell calls me. What if loneliness be appointed me?—we must each have our cross. Perhaps, as life goes on and I grow older, it may be a little hard to bear at times, but my loneliness would be better than the sort of pain Mr. Hamilton and Max have endured.' And as I thought this, a sudden conviction came to me that I could not have borne a like fate, a dim instinct that told me that I should suffer keenly and long,—that it would be better, far better, that the deepest instincts of my woman's nature should never be roused than be kindled only to die away into ashes, as many women's affections have been suffered to die. 'Anything but that,' I said to myself, with a sudden thrill of pain that surprised me with its intensity.
All this time through the long cold weeks Elspeth had been slowly dying. Quietly and gradually the blind woman's strength had ebbed and lessened, until early in March we knew she could not last much longer.
She suffered no pain, and uttered no complaint. She lay peacefully propped up with pillows on the bed where Mary Marshall had breathed her last, and her pale wrinkled face grew almost as white as the cap-border that encircled it.
At the commencement of her illness I was unable to be much with her. Susan and Phoebe Locke had thoroughly engrossed me, and a hurried visit morning and evening to give Peggy orders was all that was possible under the circumstances; but I saw that she was well cared for and comfortable, and Peggy was very good to her and kept the children out of the room.
'Ah, my bairn, I am dying like a lady,' she said to me one day, 'and it is good to be here on poor Mary's bed. See the fine clean sheets that Peggy has put me on, and the grand quilt that keeps my feet warm! Sometimes I could cry with the comfort of it all; and there is the broth and the jelly always ready; and what can a poor old body want more?'