“It must be broken, whatever its nature,” he said quickly.
“Ah! I only wish it could be,” she answered wistfully, again sighing. “I am compelled to wear a smiling face, but, alas! it only hides a heart worn out with weariness. I’m the most wretched girl in all the world. You think me cruel and heartless—you believe I no longer love you as I did—you must think so. Yet I assure you that day by day I am remembering with, regret those happy sunny days in Berkshire, those warm brilliant evenings when, wandering through the quiet leafy lanes, we made for ourselves a paradise which we foolishly believed would last always. And yet it is all past—all past, never to return.”
He saw that she was affected, and that tears stood in her eyes.
“Life with me has not the charm it used then to possess, dearest,” he said, in a low, intense tone, as together they sat upon one of the seats. “True, those days at Stratfield were the happiest of all I have ever known. I remember well how, each time we parted, I counted the long hours of sunshine until we met again; how, when I was away from your side, each road, house and tree reminded me of your own dear self; how in my day-dreams I imagined myself living with you always beside me. The blow came—my father died. You were my idol. I cared for nothing else in the world, and before he died I refused to obey his command to part from you.”
“Why,” she asked quickly, “did your father object to me?”
“Yes, darling, he did,” he answered. This was the first time he had told her the truth, and it had come out almost involuntarily.
“Then that is why he acted so unjustly towards you?” she observed, thoughtfully. “You displeased him because you loved me.”
He nodded in the affirmative.
“But I do not regret it,” he exclaimed hastily. “I do not regret, because I still love you as fervently as I did on that memorable evening when my father called me to his bedside and urged me to give up all thought of you. It is because—because of your decision to marry this man, Zertho, that I grieve.”
“It is not my decision,” she protested. “I am forced to act as I am acting.”