"Known what?" I asked, involuntarily.
"That you would have had to bear the neglect—the humiliation you have borne to-day! Forgive me if I have spoken too plainly. I always lamented your marriage, knowing as I did that Ronald had given away his heart before he ever knew you. Now, perhaps, you can understand why those who loved you best so bitterly regretted the sacrifice you made in bestowing yourself on him."
Oh, if I had not been so weak and spent, I might have answered him as a wife who had a true sense of her own dignity! But I was exhausted in body and confused in mind.
"Who are those who loved me best?" I said, clasping and unclasping my hands. "It seems to me sometimes that the only person who ever loved me was my grandfather. And I wish, with all my heart, that I could follow him!"
[CHAPTER XIV.]
STRICKEN.
THERE was a silence after I had spoken those incautious words. I heard my companion breathing quickly; but when he spoke again, it was in a quiet voice.
"We all wish sometimes to follow those who are gone," he said, taking up the latter part of my sentence. "Their love seems the only real love; everything pure and true seems to have passed away with them."