"I should apologize," he said, "for coming in unannounced; but I did not know that you were here. I was shown into this room by the waiter, supposing that I was to remain here until he took my card to you."
She neither moved nor spoke, but sat and stared at him.
"I have only come as the bearer of a letter to you from Miss Cavendish--a letter that I promised to deliver in person. Here it is," he said, laying the little packet on the table before her.
Still she made no answer to his words, nor any acknowledgment of his service. She did not even take up Emma's letter.
"And now, having done my errand, I will bid you good-afternoon, Mrs. Grey," he said, bowing and turning to leave the room.
That broke the panic-stricken spell that held her still.
She started up and clasped her hands suddenly together, exclaiming:
"No, no, no; for pity's sake don't go yet! Now that you are here, for Heaven's sake stay a moment and listen to me!"
"What can you possibly have to say to me, Mrs. Grey?" coolly inquired the young man.
"Oh, sit down--sit down one little moment and hear me! I have not got the plague, that you should hasten from me so," she pleaded.
It was in Alden's thoughts to say that moral plagues were even more dangerous and fatal than material ones; but the woman before him looked so really distressed that he forbore.
"I know that you have ceased to love me," she went on in a broken voice. "I know, of course, that you have ceased to love me--"
"Yes, I am thoroughly cured of that egregious boyish folly," assented Alden, grimly.
"I know it, and I would not seek to recover your lost, lost love; but--"
Her voice, that had been faltering, now quite broke down, and she burst into tears and sobbed as if her heart was breaking.
And her grief was as real as it was violent; for she had loved the handsome young law student, and she mourned the loss of his love.
Alden sat apparently unmoved, but in truth he was beginning to feel very sorry for this woman, but it was with the sorrow we feel for a suffering criminal, and totally distinct from sympathy or affection.
Presently her gust of tears and sobs exhausted itself, and she sighed and dried her eyes and said:
"Yes, I know that all love is quite over between us."