“I will go, Miss Carew, and I ask you to remember that through life, in good and evil fortune, you have no more loving and loyal friend than Gervase Orme, your faithful servant. Time will not change nor alter me. It was too great fortune for me to deserve it.”
Before she could speak he was gone, and she heard in a dream the door close behind him. One of his gloves had fallen to the ground and was still lying at her feet. She caught it up and pressed it passionately against her bosom. She was now able to read her own heart in all its depth and fulness; standing there with her eyes fixed on the door through which he had departed, she saw the greatness of the sacrifice she had made. She felt that moment that she stood utterly alone, closed out from all love and sympathy. She had believed that she had become resigned, and that she had succeeded in mastering her feelings, but they had burst out afresh and with a fervour and passion that terrified herself. “Oh! God,” she cried, “how I love him!”
Throwing herself in the chair from which she had risen, and burying her face in her hands, she gave way to her sorrow, feeling all the while that she dare not reason with herself, for however much she suffered she determined that she would not break her faith. She would bring herself to love De Laprade; love him as she honoured and admired him, the loyal and courteous gentleman, who treated her rather as a goddess than as a woman.
She did not hear the footsteps coming from the open window; she was thinking at the moment of how she could meet her betrothed with an air of gaiety. Then a hand was laid lightly on her shoulder and she looked up. De Laprade was standing over her, with a pleasant smile playing about his lips. His face was pale and his voice trembled a little when he spoke, but only for a moment; otherwise his manner was free and pleasant, with something of his old gaiety in it.
“I am a dull fellow, Cousin Dorothy,” he said, “but a dull fellow sometimes awakens, and I have aroused myself. I have been sleeping for weeks, I think, with dreams too, but poof! they are gone. You have been weeping--that is wrong. The eyes of beauty should ever be undimmed.”
She did not answer him, and he sat down on the chair beside her, taking Orme´s glove from her lap where it lay, and examining the embroidery critically. “Monsieur Orme is a pretty fellow, and I have much regard for him. I am going to make you very happy, my cousin.”
“I am not----”
“Nay, I know what you would say. But I have a long story to tell, so long that I know not how to begin, nor how to make an end. It will be easier by what you call a parable.”
Dorothy looked at her lover curiously. For some time his old manner of jesting with something of gay cynicism about it had disappeared, but all at once it had returned with something else she did not recognize. He could not have learned her secret, for she had guarded that too carefully, but her woman´s instinct warned her that perhaps after all he had guessed the truth.
“There was once,” he went on, “a prodigal who spent his youth in his own way; he drank, he diced, he knew not love nor reverence; no law, but that poor thing that men call honour. But it was well he knew even that. So far, he did not think, for he had no mind nor heart. He only lived for pleasure. Then he found that he had spent his fortune, burst like a bubble, gone like a dream, and his friends--they were many--left him to beg with his outstretched hands, and turned their faces as he passed them on the way. But he had grown old, and loved pleasure and the delights of riotous living. Then there came to him a great good fortune--to him unworthy, beggared, disgraced. He seized it eagerly and he thought--what will men think?--that he would again be happy. It was not to be. He carried with him the stain of his early riot, the shame of his sinful life, the thoughts that will not die, the habits, even, he could not alter. His fortune hung heavily about his neck and pressed him down to the ground. He knew that it was of priceless value, but it was not for him. Then being a wise prodigal, he said: ‘I am selfish. This cannot make me happy. I will place it in the hands of another who will know how to use it rightly, and so rid me of my load.´ And he gave the treasure to another, and then went away and the world saw him not any more. There, my cousin, is my story. Monsieur La Fontaine must look to his laurels.”