I paused at the door, looked for the last time on Forrester, and noiselessly leaving the room, descended the stairs. In the next moment I was out again on the bleak heath.
V.
On my return, I found Astræa pacing up and down the room in a state of nervous irritation at my long absence. Her usual self-command was broken down. The grace and dignity that once imparted to her an aspect of calmness and power, were gone. Isolation was doing its work upon her! Isolation and the feeling of banishment and disgrace which we struggled with darkly in our minds, but which were slowly and surely destroying our confidence in ourselves, and our trust in the future.
She was impatient to hear what I had to relate to her, yet was so ruffled by it, that she constantly interrupted me by exclamations of scorn and anger. The suggestion of our separation, and the subsequent guardianship of the dwarf, which I stated simply, without coloring or comment, affected her differently. She looked at me in silence, as I slowly repeated the words of Forrester, her lips trembled slightly, and a faint flush spread over her face and forehead. There was a great conflict going on, and I could see that her strength was unequal to it. Gradually the flush deepened, and tears sprang into her eyes. I shall never forget it! A sob broke from her, and crushing up her face in her outspread hands with a wildness that almost terrified me, she exclaimed:
"I never was humiliated till now! never till now! till now! O God! what have I done that this bitterness should come upon me?"
"Astræa! for Heaven's sake do not give way to these violent emotions. After all, what does it come to?"
She threw back her head with an expression of fierce reproach in her eyes, and replied:
"Disgrace! You do not feel it. You are safe, free, unscathed; but I—I—and this is what women suffer who sacrifice themselves as I have done!"
"Come, you are nervous and desponding, Astræa. Why do you talk of suffering? No
body has the power to inflict suffering upon you now."