“So loving and so penitent,” murmurs she, “Time cannot surely have worked so ill with such a nature as he would have me believe! When he first sang that carol to my ear, I thought it might have been an angel singing:
“Alas, alas! to think with what terror I heard him sing it the last time. He may not be more changed within, perhaps, than he is without; since, notwithstanding what he said about his looks, I knew him again the first moment my eye lit upon him on yonder lawn. I wonder whether he would have known _me_, supposing he had snatched away my veil. Merciful Heaven, what a risk was that! nay, is not every moment that he remains at Mirk a risk! What if he heard the name of Gavestone coupled with mine? I am sure he recognised something in my voice, although I disguised it all I could. He must never come back hither--never, never! He must be as dead to me now as I deemed him to be before. God knows I pity him from the bottom of my heart: and also”--here she paused--“yes, and also that I do not love him--no, not him, although I love the man that wrote these words. I never concealed it, no, never, from my--Sir Robert himself. I said: 'I have no love to give you,' all along; 'only respect, devotion, duty.' And those, Heaven knows, I gave. If all together, and a hundred other gracious feelings added, could have made up love, then Sir Robert would have had that; but they can _not_. He knew it, noble heart, and was content. He knew that in that drawer I kept these very things that came on shore with me when----O Ralph, Ralph, Ralph!” My Lady shook with sobs; and then, in her agony, mistaking the noise of her own passion for some interruption from without, started up from the desk on which she had thrown herself, and listened.
Nothing was to be heard save a faint peal of laughter from the croquet-ground, where Walter and the two young ladies were endeavouring to play by lantern-light--a frolic she had heard them planning at dinner-time. Yet even that slight tidings from the world without recalled her to the present. “I must burn all proofs,” she murmured, as though repeating some authoritative command of another rather than any determination of her own. Then with a steady hand she took the letters, and burned them to the last atom, reading the words with greediness, as though, as the flame consumed them one by one, the remainder had grown more precious, like the Sibyl's books. There was more to try her yet. The last thing which the little drawer contained had yet to be brought forth--a leaden locket, the facsimile of the one which Derrick had just shewn to her in the churchyard. Within, although almost, as he had expressed it, “dried to dust,” was a tiny sprig of wood. She emptied this into the hollow of her hand, and instantly the wind whirled all away. My Lady uttered a low moan of anguish, then sat with the poor token in her hand, which, worthless and vacant as it was, yet, to her streaming eyes, held all the treasure of her youth. “Alas, alas, for the time that is no more!” cried she. “Who could have thought that I, with my own hand, should destroy this precious pledge? Kind Heaven, direct me--teach me what it is right to do! Till death should part us, did I swear to cherish him; and now, though we both live, alone he roves the world. It may be I should win him back to his former self, and save a soul alive. He has loved me always--always; and he loves me now, although he deems I have lain beneath the waves these thirty years, and although he seeks------ But that shall never he. I will tell Mary Forest rather to her face: 'I myself am married to this man whom you would wed.' He shall not bring another sin upon himself and shame on her, and----Ah, Heaven help me; what is that which I should do in this sad strait?”
