"All but one," she answered tremulously; "I brought then because you bade me—but you were so angry then—let me take them back?" and she clutched them eagerly. "At least we may wait, David—we don't know yet; I do suspect that Lewis Lewis—he shuns me as if he was conscious of some wickedness; he's as horrid to me as his master—the thought of his master—I do forbode something awful from that man! It was but just before I heard you brushing among those great low branches, in your coracle, that I fancied I saw him stealing, as if to watch, or perhaps waylay you; but I am full of dismal thoughts."
He had not the heart to force his letters, so reluctantly resigned, from her chilly hand. But he held in his what was calculated to inspire pain quite as poignant. In the fond admiration of her fancy's first object, she had vehemently longed for a portrait of that rather singular face—a long oval, with lofty forehead, already somewhat corrugated by habits of deep thought, in his lonely night-loving existence; its mixture of passion, dumb poetry, its constitutional or adventitious profound melancholy, ever present, till his countenance gradually lighted up, after her coming and her animating discourse, like some deep gloomy valley growing light as the sun surmounts a lofty bank, gleaming through its pines. She had forced him to take a piece of money for procuring this so desired keepsake, and every time they met, she had fondly hoped to have the little portrait put into her hand. Now, instead, he presented the unused money—would she retain the image of a sweetheart in the home of her stern and lordly husband? Her heart confessed that she must no longer wish for it—but it sunk within her at the thought, how soon that innocent would be a guilty wish; and when he surprised her with the money so suddenly, she involuntarily shuddered, forebore to close her hand upon it, let it slide from her palm, and murmured only with her innocent plaintiff voice, "I shall never have your picture now—never!" And then she dejected her eyes to the little parcel of letters, written, received, kissed, and kept, like something holy, so long in vain; and all the charming hopeful hours in which each was found, when some longer absence had given to each a deeper interest, and higher value—those hours never to return, came shadowing over her mind, memory, and soul, and a lethargy of despairing grief imposed a ghost-like semblance of calm on her whole figure, and her face slowly assumed a deadly paleness, even to the lips, visible even by the moon. David grew alarmed, relapsed into the full fondness of former hours, folded the dumb, drooping, and agonized young woman in his arms, to his bosom! without her betraying consciousness, and yet she was not fainting; she stood upright, and her eyes, though fixed as if glazed, still expressed love in their almost shocking fixedness.
The young man grew terrified. "Look up! speak to me! Winifred, dear Winifred, my own Winifred, in spite of all!" he broke forth. "Smile at me, my dearest, once more, and keep these foolish letters you so value, keep them all." And he thrust them into her passive hand.
Aroused by his words and action, poor Winifred, starting with a gasp, wildly kissed the little packet, and thanked him by an embrace more passionate than her prudence or modesty would have permitted, had they been happy.
"And my portrait—my ugliness in paint, and on ivory too, dearest, you shall have yet, as you desire it," he added, forcing pleasantry; "only do not fall into that frightful sort of trance again."
He little knew what deadliness of thoughts, almost of purpose, had produced that long abstracted fit. The most exemplary prudence (the result of a sound mind and heart) had characterised this young woman till now. While yet at home, her bodily activity surprised her parents. Their means having been long but low, they had little help in their dairy and small farming concerns. She often surprised her mother with the sight of the butter already churned, the ewes already milked, or the cheeses pressed, when she arose. She was abroad in the heavy dews of morning, when the sun at midsummer rises in what is properly the night, regarded as the hour of rest—abroad, happy and cheerful, calling the few cows in the misty meadows. Nor did this habit of early rising prevent her indulging at night her one unhappy habit—romance-reading; a pleasure which she enjoyed through the kindness of many ladies of the town of Cardigan, who afterwards established her in her school at K——. They supplied her with these dangerous volumes that exalted passion—love in excess—above all the aims and pursuits of life: represented her who loves most madly as most worthy of sympathy; and even, too often, crowned the heroine with the palm of self-martyrdom—making suicide itself no longer a crime or folly, but almost a virtue, under certain contingencies.
When poverty increased, the activity of her powerful intellect was brought into display, as much as her personal activity had been, in devising resources. She had acquired some skill in drawing, through the kindness of the neighbouring gentry, and she improved herself so far as to execute very respectable drawings of the ruins of Kilgerran Castle, on her own river, and other fine scenes of Wales; and these were sold for her (or rather for her parents) by others, at fairs and wakes, where she never appeared herself. When residing at the village, her wheel was heard in the morning before others were stirring, and at late night, after every other one was still. Her little light, gleaming in the lofty village, espied between the hanging trees, was the guiding star of the belated fisher up the narrow goat's-path which led to the village, who could always obtain light for his pipe at "Miss Bevan's, the school," when not a casement had exhibited a taper for hours. But the evil of all this wear and tear of mind and body was, that it maintained an unnatural state of excitement in the one, and of weakness (disguised by that fever of imagination) in the other. Sleep, the preserver of health and tranquillity of mind, was exchanged for lonely emotions excited by night reading. She was weeping over the dramatist's fifth act of tragedy, or the romancist's more morbid appeals to the passions, while nature demanded rest. Then an accidental meeting with the young harper—he recovering a book she had dropped into the Tivy out of her hand, from having fallen asleep through exertion, and restoring it with a grace quite romance-hero like—produced a new era, and new excitement—that of the heart. Thenceforth, she became "of imagination all compact," however her strong sense preserved her purity and virtue. But no more dangerous lover could be imagined than such a loose hanger-on, rather than member, of society as David the Telynwr—for his nature was hers; except, perhaps, in virtuous resolution, he was a female Winifred. Yet he possessed a romantic "leaning, at least, to virtue's side."
This was oddly exemplified now, (to return to their present position;) for as soon as her partial recovery had removed his alarm, he grew cold, and almost severe in his manner, and broke forth—
"So, then, Winifred would willingly pore over the love-letters of a sweetheart while under a husband's roof! She thinks this beauty enough for him—she would reserve her thoughts, wishes, every thing else, for his old rival;—every thing but what a ring, and a few words, makes his right by law, the poor husband is to leave to any old sweetheart that may come prowling round his gates! That's gross! Is it not, Winifred?"
Alas! the heart-broken young woman had been meditating on far other issue to their brief attachment! On death!—death on her wedding-day, as the only means of preserving at once her father's liberty and her own virtue; for her reading had taught her that marriage, where the mind and heart were so wholly engaged elsewhere, was no better than legalised prostitution. With a look of dark intensity of meaning, Winifred broke her lengthened silence, saying hollowly—