And apparently Sue was content to have it so,--here was another marvel; she loved and asked for nothing in return. She could go quietly on week after week, month after month, hugging her secret,--yet its power was such that Leo herself trembled to recall the hour that so nearly laid it bare. It was terrible to see Sue blanch and blench; to watch the fluttering of her lace jabot as her bosom heaved beneath. She trembled as she had never trembled at any emotions of her own.
She perceived that love was a strange, unknown force of which she, happily wooed, happily wedded, and sorrowfully widowed, nevertheless knew nothing. She had loved her husband--indeed she had loved him; he had been uniformly kind and pleasant and indulgent towards her, and she had honestly reciprocated his attachment,--but sometimes, sometimes she had wondered? She had heard, she had read of--more: she had never felt it.
And vague fancies had been put aside as disloyal; reasoned away as disturbing elements of a very real if sober felicity. She was married; and it was wrong and wicked to imagine how things might have been if she had never seen Godfrey, and was going about free and unfettered like other girls?
She did not, of course she did not, wish to be free, and was ashamed to find the thought obtruding itself; but there had been moments--and these recurred to her now.
How strange it must be to feel as--as Sue did, for instance? To start at the sound of a footstep, to thrill at a voice; to be wrapt in a golden haze--oh, she knew all that could be told about that curious, fantastic, elusive mystery, which was yet a sealed book as regarded herself.
And was it not a little hard that it should be so? Had something been missed out of her nature? Was she really formed without warmth, ardour, sensibility? A smile played upon her lips.
Was she then not inviting? Was there nothing desirable, attractive, alluring--nothing to create in another the feeling which might have awakened her own slumbering soul?
Again her thoughts reverted to Sue; to the staid, gaunt elderly Sue,--and with a new and sharp sensation. Sue had not waited to be sought; Sue could give without asking to receive--she envied Sue from the bottom of her soul.