Something of actual despair rung from his voice, he bowed his face with its pained expression, and Honor believed him sincere, perhaps, after all the man was beside himself she thought, he who had never before made the most pardonable breach of etiquette or courtesy.
The jealousy that was the evident cause of his strongest utterance, was perhaps, what any woman can forgive her lover's rival most easily, for it gives a spice to love, so with a little appeal to her womanly sympathies, Honor thawed out, and answered his miserable self-condemnations in forgiving but reserved terms.
"Do not trouble yourself so," she said half consolingly. "I assure you, your words have had no effect in the world on me; if I thought differently of you, they would have meant more, but as it is, console yourself that you have injured no one half so much, as you have yourself."
The ambiguous words deceived him—he looked gladly up and exclaimed—
"You are an angel, Honor!" but he had not understood the deep meaning of her thought, he did not know, that, when we love, truly and devotedly, or even cherish and esteem some one, an unkind word or a cruel retort, from those lips to us, makes a breach, which no forgiving phrases can ever right again. When the heart that loves has been wounded by the hand it adores, no remedy can ever fully heal the rankled spot, where the poisoned arrow has lodged. We can forgive the injury of one, whom we have never cherished nor loved, we can treat with indifference the slights of those we care little about, but it takes an angel's mercy, an infinite fortitude, a supernatural test of our moral strength to raise up again the golden idol that one word of cruel unkindness, has shattered within our hearts.
It was nearly dusk when Honor and Vivian Standish landed at Mr. Rayne's boat-house, near the bridge. The night air was growing cooler, and the stars were breaking through the cloudless sky in quiet succession.
With the tenderest of solicitude, Vivian carefully placed Honor's wrap around her shoulders, and gently assisting her up the steep ascent of the boat-house stairs, he stole his hand under the knotted fringe of the warm shawl, and thrust it within her arm.
Honor, for a great many reasons, chose to sign a treaty of peace with Vivian Standish. She suspected that he knew, perhaps more than he cared to show, of her attachment for Guy, and if a word of unmeaning forgiveness, could serve to buy him over, she did not hesitate in purchasing discretion with such counterfeit coins, for she cared little, if she were exalted or not in such opinions as his.
Thus, they proceeded, quite amicably on their homeward way, both in an unusually good humor. There is a auspicious feature about such suddenly assumed gaiety, that cannot but amuse the disinterested participator; when either in such a case as that of Vivian Standish we wish thereby to drown the memory of a recent mistake or blunder, by indulging in loud mirth, that distracts the mind from the unpleasantness just experienced, or when we are under the painful influence of some personal trouble, be it a substantial loss of any sort, or the more unfortunate burden, cast upon us by any social stigma, then, when the whole world, learning of our misfortune extends its hand in stinging sympathy, and looks with painful enquiry of curious compassion, to see "how we take it," what a piercing spur we thrust into our pride, to drive into it that forced merriment and happy resignation, which we blindly hope will stand for indifference in the eyes of a criticising society, at all times, it is neccessarily a short-lived effort, and so it was in the case of those two young people. When they reached Mr. Rayne's house, and separated at the gate, the masks fell immediately, and each went his way laughing at the absurd mockeries of life, by which, we cheat one another face to face, at those ridiculous attempts at veneering, through which it is as easy to see, as through a pane of polished glass, and yet, to which we have constant recourse, as though the human heart were more presentable in its mean disguises of truth and honesty, than when laid bare, in the actual existing state, of diplomacy, selfishness, and deceit.