“Then we must part without it,” said Henry carelessly. “I leave here to-morrow, and shall visit Europe before I return. It may be years—it may be forever that I shall be absent.”
“Why—Harry—you jest,” said his companion, struggling to appear composed, although she felt how cold and pale her cheek had grown. “I never heard of this before. You are not in earnest,” and she laid her soft white hand—that hand, whose touch made every nerve of Ashton thrill—on her lover’s arm, looking up into his face with her dark, and now melting eye. But the chord had been stretched until it had snapped, and her influence over Ashton was gone. He half averted his head, as he answered coldly,—
“I do not jest, especially with a friend.”
The tone, the emphasis, the manner, all stung the pride of Mary. She felt that his censure was just, and yet she spurned it. Her hand fell from his arm, and emulating his own coldness, she said,—
“Then I will not ask you to stay. But as it is late, and you will have your preparations to make, I will not intrude on your time,” and curtesying, she withdrew.
“And this is the being in whom I had garnered up all my heart’s best affections,” exclaimed Ashton, when he found himself alone. “This the divinity I have adored with a fervor no mortal bosom ever yet felt, and she could talk, heartlessly talk of the merest trifle, when she saw that my whole heart was bound up in her. Oh! would we had never met. But my delusion is over. I will fly. Mary! Mary! little did I dream that my love would meet with such a return.”
Mary hurried to her chamber, and locking the door, she flung herself upon the bed, and burst into a flood of tears. How bitterly she reproached herself that her momentary coquetry had lost her the love of the only being for whom she cared. She did not disguise from herself her affection; she could scarcely tell why she had yielded to the impulse of that fatal moment; but she felt that she had lost irretrievably the esteem and the affections of her cousin. She would have given worlds to have recalled the last hour. Even now she might, by seeking him, and throwing herself at his feet, perhaps, regain his love. She rose to do so. But when her hand was on the lock she thought that he might spurn her. She hesitated. In another moment her pride had regained the mastery.
“No—I cannot—I dare not. He will turn away from me. He will despise me. Oh! that I had never, never said those idle words,” and flinging herself again on the bed, she wept long and bitterly.
Mary appeared that evening at the supper table, but in the cold and averted looks of Ashton, she saw only new causes for pride. The evening passed off heavily. As the time came for retiring, Henry approached her to bid her farewell. She thought her heart would burst her boddice, but commanding her emotion by a violent effort, she returned his adieu as calmly as it was given.
And they parted, both in seeming carelessness, but one at least in agony.