"Ah! It is not always a blessing to realise one's dream!"
The words broke from me involuntarily, and were spoken to myself rather than to my companion. But he answered the remark with a touch of sadness in his tone.
"That is a bitter speech to come from your lips," he said, softly. "I hope you do not speak from your own experience."
"Oh! I suppose people's experiences are very much alike," I replied, with an attempt at lightness. "There is always the inevitable disenchantment when we have fairly entered our promised land."
He sighed, and there was a brief silence.
"It is a kind of disenchantment I shall never know," he said at last. "All that I have known is the weary march across the desert, the gnawing hunger and burning thirst. Even if the Canaan is less fair than our fancies, it must, at any rate, be sweeter than the endless waste of sand."
At that moment I sincerely pitied William Greystock.
"But why must your life be a weary march?" I asked, forgetting my usual cold caution in his presence. "Why should there not be a Canaan for you as well as for others?"
"Can you ask? No, Mrs. Hepburne, I will not sadden you with any story of myself and my lot. Believe me, my greatest desire is to see you and Ronald happy. I have no stronger interest in life than this."
I was beginning to believe in him. The sight of those two figures strolling ahead of us under the trees had begun to confuse my powers of judgment. I ceased to remember, at that moment, the William Greystock who had come to Lady Waterville's; the hard, bitter man, whose true nature had been revealed to me in many little ways, and who had never yet, in spite of apparent friendship, rendered any real service to Ronald. It seemed to be a new and softer Greystock who was walking by my side, and speaking in this quiet, melancholy voice.