Kitty was half asleep when her governess entered the room afterward, much later than usual. “I thought you had forgotten me,” she said, yawning and stretching out her plump little arms.
Sydney’s heart ached when she thought of the separation that was to come with the next day; her despair forced its way to expression in words.
“I wish I could forget you,” she answered, in reckless wretchedness.
The child was still too drowsy to hear plainly. “What did you say?” she asked. Sydney gently lifted her in the bed, and kissed her again and again. Kitty’s sleepy eyes opened in surprise. “How cold your hands are!” she said; “and how often you kiss me. What is it you have come to say to me--good-night or good-by?”
Sydney laid her down again on the pillow, gave her a last kiss, and ran out of the room.
In the corridor she heard Linley’s voice on the lower floor. He was asking one of the servants if Miss Westerfield was in the house or in the garden. Her first impulse was to advance to the stairs and to answer his question. In a moment more the remembrance of Mrs. Linley checked her. She went back to her bed-chamber. The presents that she had received, since her arrival at Mount Morven, were all laid out so that they could be easily seen by any person entering the room, after she had left the house. On the sofa lay the pretty new dress which she had worn at the evening party. Other little gifts were arranged on either side of it. The bracelet, resting on the pedestal of a statue close by, kept a morsel of paper in its place--on which she had written a few penitent words of farewell addressed to Mrs. Linley. On the toilet-table three photographic portraits showed themselves among the brushes and combs. She sat down, and looked first at the likenesses of Mrs. Linley and Kitty.
Had she any right to make those dear faces her companions in the future?
She hesitated; her tears dropped on the photographs. “They’re as good as spoiled now,” she thought; “they’re no longer fit for anybody but me.” She paused, and abruptly took up the third and last photograph--the likeness of Herbert Linley.
Was it an offense, now, even to look at his portrait? No idea of leaving it behind her was in her mind. Her resolution vibrated between two miseries--the misery of preserving her keep-sake after she had parted from him forever, and the misery of destroying it. Resigned to one more sacrifice, she took the card in both hands to tear it up. It would have been scattered in pieces on the floor, but for the chance which had turned the portrait side of the card toward her instead of the back. Her longing eyes stole a last look at him--a frenzy seized her--she pressed her lips to the photograph in a passion of hopeless love. “What does it matter?” she asked herself. “I’m nothing but the ignorant object of his kindness--the poor fool who could see no difference between gratitude and love. Where is the harm of having him with me when I am starving in the streets, or dying in the workhouse?” The fervid spirit in her that had never known a mother’s loving discipline, never thrilled to the sympathy of a sister-friend, rose in revolt against the evil destiny which had imbittered her life. Her eyes still rested on the photograph. “Come to my heart, my only friend, and kill me!” As those wild words escaped her, she thrust the card furiously into the bosom of her dress--and threw herself on the floor. There was something in the mad self-abandonment of that action which mocked the innocent despair of her childhood, on the day when her mother left her at the cruel mercy of her aunt.