‘I shall ask Morford, as a particular favour, not to repair that bridge,’ said Lord Harrogate jestingly. ‘No chance then that the Hunger Hole should turn again into a trap for catching young ladies.’
‘Harrogate is going, you know, to leave us so very soon,’ Lady Maud De Vere had said, in her kindly matter-of-fact way, in the course of conversation with Ethel Gray; and Ethel had turned away her face instinctively, lest the burning blush which rose there unbidden should betray her secret to her pupil’s sister and her own friend. Poor Ethel had communed with her heart in the still hours of more than one night since the evening that had witnessed her release from the Hunger Hole, and she could not but acknowledge to herself that she loved Lord Harrogate.
It was not a welcome conviction that forced itself gradually upon Ethel Gray. The attachment, hopeless as it perforce was, was a thing to be deplored, a misfortune; not a source of joy. Lord Harrogate could be nothing to her. He was almost as remote from her humble sphere of life as a Prince of the blood-royal would have been. There are girls who know, where their own personal vanity is at stake, no distinction of ranks, and would set their caps without compunction at an Emperor. Ethel was none of these. To fall in love, even with an object as hopelessly out of reach as one of the fixed stars would be, is a forlorn privilege which has been claimed in every age by very humble persons of either sex. But to Ethel’s proud, maidenly heart it was pain, not pleasure, to know that the future Earl, the future master of High Tor, had grown to be dearer to her than was well for her peace of mind. That she was in his eyes merely Miss Gray, his sister’s governess, was to her thinking a certainty. And she did not even wish that it were otherwise. Why should there be two persons unhappy, on such a subject, instead of one? It was much better as it was. She had begun to love him before, in that desolate cavern on the moor, he had appeared as the harbinger of safety. But she had not admitted to herself that this was so, until the whirl of strong feelings consequent on the danger and the deliverance had taught her to read her own heart, and to learn that his image was garnered in its innermost core. And now he was going away, going very soon. Well, it was better so. A young man such as he was could not always be expected to linger in a country-house. He was going, and she should see him no more. Doubtless it was for the best.