Her own to him had been brief and to the point; giving him to understand that their engagement was at an end, without betraying the fact that her heart, too, was broken. She had even dried the tears that fell upon the paper, you remember. She had begged his pardon, of course, but had purposely excluded from her language all traces of feeling. As the thing had to be done, it should be done effectually.
What would he do? What would he say? A thousand possibilities had been dancing through Mary’s mind.
First and foremost, would he recant?
Inconceivable! Still, this hope refused to vanish.
Would he be violent? Would his reply be a burst of fierce indignation? Very likely. Yes, that was just what one might expect from such a man.
Would he be sarcastic? Will he sneer at a religion which can make me break my word? That was what she dreaded most of all. Not, oh male reader (if I shall have any such), not lest his flings and gibes should wound her. If you think that, sir, you have never penetrated into the mysteries of the female heart. It was a dread lest he—lest HE should descend to such weapons,—lest this soaring eagle of her imagination should stoop to be a mousing owl. A Hero may not use poisoned arrows; least of all against a woman. She had never known the Don to use a sarcastic word. He was too earnest, too fearfully earnest to be satirical. He left that to triflers, male and female. He was never witty, even. He is above it, Mary used to say, within her heart, with that blessed alchemy whereby women know how to convert into virtues the blemishes of those whom they love. No, thought she; let him upbraid me; let him tell me that I have been false to my word; let him even say that I have proven myself unworthy to link my destiny with his (and am I worthy of the homage of such a heart? Did not even unsentimental Alice say that a true woman would follow the man she loved to the ends of the earth?); no; let him cover me with fierce reproaches,—but let him not be little! It is enough, and more than enough, that I have to give him up. Let his image remain untarnished in my heart!
Or, would his letter be a broken-hearted wail? She hoped not,—so she said, at least; and let us try to believe her.
Pressing her hand upon her heart for a moment, to calm its tumultuous throbbing, she broke the seal of the letter, took in the first page at one mad, ravenous glance, and the hand that held the sheet fell upon her lap.
No sarcasms, no fierce reproaches, no wail of a broken heart!—no anything that she had thought possible.
Brief, yet not curt, he accepted her decree without a murmur; as though a prisoner bowed in silence under the sentence of the judge. No commonplace, no rhetoric; no trace of feeling; and yet no flippant suggestion of the want of it. In a word, his letter was an absolutely impenetrable veil. As though he had not written. Mary was stunned.