“What reason is there in it?” she said. “None. What has brought me to it? Nothing. Is he as worthy now as he was then? No! Isn’t it sheer madness? Yes, it is.”
She spoke truly, too. There was no reason in it. It was madness. He had done nothing to touch her heart, had made no effort to reach it. And yet he had reached and touched it. It would not have been like her to love a man because he was good, because he had made love to her; indeed, because of anything. Her actions were generally without any cause but her own peremptory fancies; and here, some strange, sudden caprice of emotion had been too much for her. How she had suffered since she discovered her weakness, no one but herself would ever know. She had writhed under it, burned under it, loathed it, and yet been conquered by it. Almost every blade of Pen’yllan grass reminded her of some wrong she had done to the kindly, impetuous young fellow, who had loved her in the past. Almost every grain of Pen’yllan sand taunted her with some wanton selfishness, or cruelty, which must be remembered by the man who could have nothing but dislike for her in the present.
“I should be grateful now,” she cried, bitterly. “Yes! Grateful for a tithe of what I once had under foot. This is eating dirt with a vengeance.”
She might well frighten Miss Clarissa with her pallor and wretched looks. The intensity of her misery and humiliation was wearing her out, and robbing her of sleep and appetite. She wanted to leave Pen’yllan, but how could she suggest it? Georgie was so happy, she told herself, with a vindictive pleasure in her pain, that it would be a pity to disturb her.
She walked up and down the beach for half an hour before she returned home; and when she went her way, she was so tired as to be fairly exhausted. At the side door, by which she entered the house, she met Georgie, who held an open letter in her hand.
“Whom from?” asked Lisbeth, for lack of something to say.
“Mamma,” was the girl’s answer. “She wonders when we are going home; but I am enjoying Pen’yllan so much----”
She paused, and blushed. Just lately it had occurred to her that it might be possible that Lisbeth misunderstood her relation to Hector, and something in Lisbeth’s face made her stop and blush in this opportune manner.