“Do you think Blanche would make a good wife for a petty country gentleman? Do you think I should become the character very well, Laura?” Pen asked. “Remember temptation walks about the hedgerows as well as the city streets: and idleness is the greatest tempter of all.”
“What does—does Mr. Warrington say?” said Laura, as a blush mounted up to her cheek, and of which Pen saw the fervour, though Laura’s veil fell over her face to hide it.
Pen rode on by Laura’s side silently for a while. George’s name so mentioned brought back the past to him, and the thoughts which he had once had regarding George and Laura. Why should the recurrence of the thought agitate him, now that he knew the union was impossible? Why should he be curious to know if, during the months of their intimacy, Laura had felt a regard for Warrington? From that day until the present time George had never alluded to his story, and Arthur remembered now that since then George had scarcely ever mentioned Laura’s name.
At last he cane close to her. “Tell me something, Laura,” he said.
She put back her veil and looked at him. “What is it, Arthur?” she asked—though from the tremor of her voice she guessed very well.
“Tell me—but for George’s misfortune—I never knew him speak of it before or since that day—would you—would you have given him—what you refused me?”
“Yes, Pen,” she said, bursting into tears.
“He deserved you better than I did,” poor Arthur groaned forth, with an indescribable pang at his heart. “I am but a selfish wretch, and George is better, nobler, truer, than I am. God bless him!”
“Yes, Pen,” said Laura, reaching out her hand to her cousin, and he put his arm round her, and for a moment she sobbed on his shoulder.
The gentle girl had had her secret, and told it. In the widow’s last journey from Fairoaks, when hastening with her mother to Arthur’s sick-bed, Laura had made a different confession; and it was only when Warrington told his own story, and described the hopeless condition of his life, that she discovered how much her feelings had changed, and with what tender sympathy, with what great respect, delight, and admiration she had grown to regard her cousin’s friend. Until she knew that some plans she might have dreamed of were impossible, and that Warrington, reading in her heart, perhaps, had told his melancholy story to warn her, she had not asked herself whether it was possible that her affections could change; and had been shocked and seared by the discovery of the truth. How should she have told it to Helen, and confessed her shame? Poor Laura felt guilty before her friend, with the secret which she dared not confide to her; felt as if she had been ungrateful for Helen’s love and regard; felt as if she had been wickedly faithless to Pen in withdrawing that love from him which he did not even care to accept; humbled even and repentant before Warrington, lest she should have encouraged him by undue sympathy, or shown the preference which she began to feel.