"Do you mean to tell me"--with some natural indignation--"that up to this you have never, during all your wanderings, both at home and abroad, seen any woman you could sincerely admire?"
"Numbers, my dear Arthur,--any amount,--but not one I should care to marry. You see, that makes such a difference. I remember once before--last season--you spoke to me in this strain, and, simply to oblige you, I thought I would make up my mind to try matrimony. So I went in heavily, heart and soul, for Lady Fanny Hazlett. You have seen Lady Fanny?"
"Then you know how really pretty she is. Well, I spent three weeks at it; regular hard work the entire time, you know, no breathing-space allowed, as she never refuses an invitation, thinks nothing of three balls in one night, and insisted on my dancing attendance on her everywhere. I never suffered so much in my life; and when at last I gave in from sheer exhaustion, I found my clothes no longer fitted me. I was worn to a skeleton from loss of sleep, the heavy strain on my mental powers, and the meek endurance of her ladyship's ill tempers."
"Lady Fanny is one woman, Clarissa Peyton is quite another. How could you fail to be happy with Clarissa? Her sweetness, her grace of mind and body, her beauty, would keep you captive even against your will."
Dorian pauses for a moment or two, and then says, very gently, as though sorry to spoil the old man's cherished plan,--
"It is altogether impossible. Clarissa has no heart to give me."
Sartoris is silent. A vague suspicion of what now appears a certainty has for some time oppressed and haunted him. At this moment he is sadly realizing the emptiness of all his dreaming. Presently he says, slowly,--
"As certain as I can be without exactly hearing it from her own lips."
"Yes; it is Horace," says Branscombe, quietly.
"Tread softly; bow the head,-- In reverent silence bow, No passing bell doth toll, Yet an immortal soul Is passing now."--CAROLINE SOUTHEY.
A little room, scantily but neatly furnished. A low bed. A dying man. A kneeling girl,--half child, half woman,--with a lovely, miserable face, and pretty yellow hair.
It was almost dusk, and the sound of the moaning sea without, rising higher and hoarser as the tide rushes in, comes like a wail of passionate agony into the silent room.