“God bless you,” replied Mave, “for you are truth an' honesty itself. God bless an' you, make him happy! Good-bye, dear Sarah.”
She put her hand into Sarah's and felt that it trembled excessively—but Sarah was utterly passive; she did not even return the pressure which she had received, and when Mave departed, she was standing in a reverie, incapable of thought, deadly pale, and perfectly motionless.
CHAPTEE XXV. — Sarah Without Hope.
How Sarah returned to Dalton's cabin she herself knew not. Such was the tumult which the communication then made to her by Mave, had occasioned in her mind, that, the scene which had just taken place, altogether appeared to her excited spirit like a troubled dream, whose impressions were too unreal and deceptive to be depended on for a moment. The reaction from the passive state in which Mave had left her, was, to a temperament like her's, perfectly overwhelming. Her pulse beat high, her cheek burned, and her eye flashed with more than its usual fire and overpowering brilliancy, and, with the exception of one impression alone, all her thoughts were so rapid and indistinct as to resemble the careering clouds which fly in tumult and confusion along the troubled sky, with nothing stationary but the sun far above, and which, in this case, might be said to resemble the bright conviction of Dalton's love for her, that Mave's assurance had left behind it. On re-entering the cabin, without being properly conscious of what she either did or said, she once more knelt by the side of Dalton's bed, and hastily taking his unresisting hand, was about to speak; but a difficulty how to shape her language held her in a painful and troubled suspense for some moments, during which Dalton could plainly perceive the excitement, or rather rapture, by which she was actuated. At length a gush of hot and burning tears enabled her to speak, and she said:
“Con Dalton—dear Con, is it true? can it be true?—oh, no—no—but, then, she says it—is it true that you like me—like me!—no, no—that word is too wake—is it true that you love me? but no—it can't be—there never was so much happiness intended for me; and then, if it should be true—oh, if it was possible, how will I bear it? what will I do? what—is to be the consequence? for my love for you is beyond all belief—beyond all that tongue can tell. I can't stand this struggle—my head is giddy—I scarcely know what I'm sayin', or is it a dhrame that I'll waken from, and find it false—false?”
Dalton pressed her hand, and looking tenderly upon her face, replied:
“Dear Sarah, forgive me; your dhrame is both thrue and false. It is true that I like you—that I pity you; but you forbid me to say that—well it is true, I say, that I like you; but I can't say more. The only girl I love in the sense you mane, is Mave Sullivan. I could not tell you an untruth, Sarah; nor don't desave yourself. I like you, but I love her.”
She started up, and in an instant dashed the tears from her cheeks; after which she said:
“I am glad to know it; you have said the truth—the bitther truth; ay, bitther it will prove, Condy Dalton, to more than me. My happiness in this world is now over forever. I never was happy; an' its clear that the doom is against me; I never will be happy. I am now free to act as I like. No matther what I do, it can't make me feel more than I feel now. I might take a life; ay, twenty, an' I couldn't feel more miserable than I am. Then, what is there to prevent me from workin' out my own will, an' doin' what my father wishes? I may make myself worse an' guiltier; but unhappier I cannot be. That poor, weak hope was all I had in this world; but that is gone; and I have no other hope now.”