“I will not ask you to say one word beyond that, my beloved.”
He had caught her hand and was holding it in both his own, smiling.
“Do not assume too much,” she cried. “I cannot be happy to-day--oh, it would be heartless for me to be happy while that girl is wretched!”
“Wretched? It cannot be possible that he has turned away from her within a month?” said Sir Percival. “Seven years, not weeks, was the space of time named by him.”
“It was impossible that anything but misery could come of his love for her,” said Agnes. “The misery has come. Poor child! I should be inhuman if I thought of my own happiness to-day while the waters have closed over her head.”
“I do not want another word from you, believe me,” said he. “I am content--more than content--with what you have said to me. There is in my heart nothing but hope. Good-bye.”
He remembered that on the morning when he had told her that he loved her, she had given him her face to kiss. But he made no attempt to kiss her forehead now. He did not even kiss her hand. The curious pathos of her words, “I cannot be happy to-day,” had appealed strongly to him. He was a man who had become accustomed to selfsacrifice. He left the house, having only touched her hand.
She heard his footsteps passing away on the hard gravel of the drive. She recollected how, on that morning when they had been together on the lawn, and he had left her with an abruptness that startled her, she had hurried to intercept him on the road. The impulse was now upon her to do as she had done that morning--to open the window and run across the lawn into his arms. She checked herself, however; she felt that it would be heartless for her to have so much happiness while Clare was overwhelmed with the misery that had fallen on her.
She turned away from the temptation of the window and seated herself in the dim light before the fire, giving herself up to her thoughts.
She had not quite recovered from the surprise that her own confession to Sir Percival had caused her. She had been amazed at the impulse under the force of which she had told him so much. Until that moment she had had no idea what was in her heart--what had been in her heart since the day of Claude Westwood's return. She knew, however, that she had confessed the truth to her friend: she had been deceiving herself when she thought she still loved Claude Westwood--when she thought she was sorry that she had flung his portrait on the floor of her room.