The reading of that letter from Horace to the rector was a crisis in Bettina's life. Its effect upon her was singular. When she eagerly took in those pages filled with such anguish as possesses the heart but once or twice in a lifetime, the consciousness that it was she, Bettina, who had created such a love in the heart of the man that Horace Spotswood was to her now, so exhilarated her that she was capable of but one feeling--exultation. To have had this love, though now she had it not, seemed to glorify her life. To have caused him such sorrow--how greatly he had cared! In spite of all there was rapture in it!
That mood was followed by one of intense regret--an excoriating self-accusation that made her spirit writhe before her own bar of justice. Then, by degrees, when there came a moment of comparative calm, she forced herself to recognize the fact that it was the Bettina of the past who had been so loved, and that the man who had so loved her was that youthful and impulsive Horace. Was not the present Bettina, the slightingly treated widow of his cousin, a very different being--as different as was the present Lord Hurdly from that old and outgrown other self? Surely the change in both was great--a change which she construed as absolutely to her own disadvantage as it was to his advantage.
Yet, in spite of this, that letter brought a strange strength to her heart. Since it was now so plain that he had so truly, so worshippingly loved her, she felt a summons to her soul to be her highest possible, to overcome the slothful and the evil in her, and live as it became the woman who had been so loved by such a man. Above all, she longed to make her life avail for the good of others, that she might make it a thank-offering for what she had received in the knowledge that had come to her through that letter.
For, after its perusal, she knew that never again could she entertain the doubts which had so often filled her mind at the thought of the complete silence in which Horace had accepted her rejection of him. Sometimes she had fancied that it might have been a relief to him--a way out of a difficult situation; but now forever in her heart she could carry the proud consciousness that she had been as passionately loved as she had been desperately regretted.