“She had decided to run away with this vulgar—fiddler. There was but one thing lacking,—he had not asked her; but she believed that he loved her with all his soul, and that he was having a fight with himself to decide whether it would be right for him to bring so scandalous a thing upon her. She and he both realized that it would be worse than useless for him to ask her parents for her. She said to me, ‘He fears that I shall be unhappy in the poverty that would be my lot if we should go away and marry. He fears that I should miss the luxuries to which I had been accustomed. He fears that my friends will think he had married me for my fortune. He has so many fears, and they are all for me. Yet I know that he would cheerfully lay down his life for me. There never was a man so unselfish, so generous, so ready to sacrifice himself for others.’
“I could hardly keep from laughing while the poor child was telling me all that rubbish. Before employing harsh measures to check her foolish purpose, I resorted to milder ones. While continuing to be sympathetic, I nevertheless said a great many things that would have set her thinking if she had had any sense. I gave her to understand, as delicately as possible (for I was careful not to rouse any resentfulness or stubbornness in her), that her lover undoubtedly was a worthless fellow, as persons of his class are; that he was weak in character and loose in morals; that he was merely a sly adventurer, playing adroitly upon her innocence and confidence, and anxious to leave his laborious life for one of ease at her expense. I compared her station as his wife with that as the wife of a man in her own sphere.
“The trouble was that she cared nothing for the position that she occupied. She honestly believed, poor idiot! that she could be as happy poor as rich. But the great obstacle was her infatuation for the man, and her belief that he was finer and better than the men of her own station. She was dreamy and romantic, and that is why she idealized this fiddling nobody. The more she told me of his gentleness, his refinement, his unselfishness, his poetic nature, the more I saw that he lacked the sterling qualities of manhood, the more I realized that he had made a careful study of her weaknesses and was playing upon them with all the unscrupulous skill of his species. She implored me to meet him, to know him, to study him. Of course that was out of the question. She was sure, she said, that I should come to admire and respect him as she had. I firmly declined to see him. I have even forgotten his name.”
There was a pause in the narration. The young man was so still that his guest looked round at him, and found his gaze fastened upon her. She started, for she saw that it held a veiled quality that she did not understand, and that for a moment filled her with uneasiness. He quickly and without a word looked again at the fire.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE convalescent thrust aside the momentary depression that her host’s strange expression had given her, and proceeded.
“At last I realized that all mild measures would be useless. I knew that at any time something dreadful might happen, and I was determined to save my old schoolmate from the disgrace and sorrow that she was inviting. Without directly encouraging her to proceed as she had started, I gave her to understand that she might always depend upon my friendship. Then I set about the serious work that I had to do.”
There was another long pause.