Gay guests had filled the house with festal light and sound one winter's night, and when the last bright figure had vanished from the threshold of the door, I still stood there, looking over the snow-shrouded lawn, hoping to cool the fever of my blood, and case the restless pain that haunted me.
I shut out the keen air and wintry sky, at length, and silently ascended to the diverted rooms above. But in the soft gloom of a vestibule my steps were stayed. Two figures, in a flowery alcove, fixed my eye. The light streamed full upon them, and the fragrant stillness of the air was hardly stirred by their low tones.
Effie was there, sunk on a low couch, her face bowed upon her hands; and at her side, speaking with impassioned voice and ardent eyes, leaned Alfred Vaughan.
The sight struck me like a blow, and the sharp anguish of that moment proved how deeply I had learned to love.
"Effie, it is a sinful tie that binds you to that man; he does not love you, and it should be broken,—for this slavery will wear away the life now grown so dear to me."
The words, hot with indignant passion, smote me like a wintry blast, but not so coldly as the broken voice that answered them:—
"He said death alone must part us two, and, remembering that, I cannot listen to another love."
Like a guilty ghost I stole away, and in the darkness of my solitary room struggled with my bitter grief, my newborn love. I never blamed my wife,—that wife who had heard the tender name so seldom, she could scarce feel it hers. I had fettered her free heart, forgetting it would one day cease to be a child's. I bade her look upon me as a father; she had learned the lesson well; and now what right had I to reproach her for listening to a lover's voice, when her husband's was so cold? What mattered it that slowly, almost unconsciously, I had learned to love her with the passion of a youth, the power of a man? I had alienated that fond nature from my own, and now it was too late.
Heaven only knows the bitterness of that hour;—I cannot tell it. But through the darkness of my anguish and remorse that newly kindled love burned like a blessed fire, and, while it tortured, purified. By its light I saw the error of my life: self-love was written on the actions of the past, and I knew that my punishment was very just. With a child's repentant tears, I confessed it to my Father, and He solaced me, showed me the path to tread, and made me nobler for the blessedness and pain of that still hour.
Dawn found me an altered man; for in natures like mine the rain of a great sorrow melts the ice of years, and their hidden strength blooms in a late harvest of patience, self-denial, and humility. I resolved to break the tie which bound poor Effie to a joyless fate; and gratitude for a selfish deed, which wore the guise of charity, should no longer mar her peace. I would atone for the wrong I had done her, the suffering she had endured; and she should never know that I had guessed her tender secret, nor learn the love which made my sacrifice so bitter, yet so just.