Her voice faltered, and there were tears on her lashes. Some quality in her narration brought before me so vividly the scenes of which she spoke that I started when she had finished. There was much more I would have known, but I could not press her to speak longer on a subject that gave her pain. At that moment she seemed more distant to me than ever before. She rose, went into the house, and left me thinking of the presumptions of the hopes I had dared to entertain, left me picturing sadly the existence of which she had spoken. Why had she told me of it? Perchance she had thought to do me a kindness!
She came back to me—I had not thought she would. She sat down with her embroidery in her lap, and for some moments busied herself with it in silence. Then she said, without looking up:—
“I do not know why I have tired you with this, why I have saddened myself. It is past and gone.”
“I was not tired, Madame. It is very difficult to live in the present when the past has been so brilliant,” I answered.
“So brilliant!” She sighed. “So thoughtless,—I think that is the sharpest regret.” I watched her fingers as they stitched, wondering how they could work so rapidly. At last she said in a low voice, “Antoinette and Mr. Temple have told me something of your life, Mr. Ritchie.”
I laughed.
“It has been very humble,” I replied.
“What I heard was—interesting to me,” she said, turning over her frame. “Will you not tell me something of it?”
“Gladly, Madame, if that is the case,” I answered.
“Well, then," she said, "why don't you?”