Mrs. Geoffrey. Duchess
his soliloquy.
"Of the last time I heard any one sing," returns he, slowly. "I was comparing that singer very unfavorably with you. Your voice is so unlike what one usually hears in drawing-rooms."
He means highest praise. She accepts his words as a kind rebuke.
"Is that a compliment?" she says, wistfully. "Is it well to be unlike all the world? Yet what you say is true, no doubt. I suppose I am different from – from all the other people you know."
This is half a question; and Geoffrey, answering it from his heart, sinks even deeper into the mire.
"You are indeed," he says, in a tone so grateful that it ought to have betrayed to her his meaning. But grief and disappointment have seized upon her.
"Yes, of course," she says, dejectedly. A cloud seems to have fallen upon her happy hour. "When did you hear that – that last singer?" she asks, in a subdued voice.
"At home," returns he. He is gazing out of the window, with his hands clasped behind his back, and does not pay so much attention to her words as is his wont.
"Is your home very beautiful?" asks she, timidly, looking at him the more earnestly in that he seems rapt in contemplation of the valley that spreads itself before him.
"Yes, very beautiful," he answers, thinking of the stately oaks and aged elms and branching beeches that go so far to make up the glory of the ivied Towers.
"How paltry this country must appear in comparison with your own!" goes on the girl, longing for a contradiction, and staring at her little brown hands, the fingers of which are twining and intertwining nervously with one another, "How glad you will be to get back to your own home!"
"Yes, very glad," returns he, hardly knowing what he says. He has gone back again to his first thoughts, – his mother's boudoir, with its old china, and its choice water-colors that line the walls, and its delicate Italian statuettes. In his own home – which is situated about fourteen miles from the Towers, and which is rather out of repair through years of disuse – there are many rooms. He is busy now trying to remember them, and to decide which of them would look best decked out in crimson and gray, or blue and silver: he hardly knows which would suit her best. Perhaps, after all —
"How strange it is!" says Mona's voice, that has now a faint shade of sadness in it. "How people come and go in one's lives, like the waves of the restless sea, now breaking at one's feet, now receding, now – "
"Only to return," interrupts he, quickly. "And – to break at your feet? to break one's heart, do you mean? I do not like your simile."
"You jest," says Mona, full of calm reproach. "I mean how strangely people fall into one's lives and then out again!" She hesitates. Perhaps something in his face warns her, perhaps it is the weariness of her own voice that frightens her, but at this moment her whole expression changes, and a laugh, forced but apparently full of gayety, comes from her lips. It is very well done indeed, yet to any one but a jealous lover her eyes would betray her. The usual softness is gone from them, and only a well-suppressed grief and a pride that cannot be suppressed take its place.
"Why should they fall out again?" says Rodney, a little angrily, hearing only her careless laugh, and – man-like – ignoring stupidly the pain in her lovely eyes. "Unless people choose to forget."
"One may choose to forget, but one may not be able to accomplish it. To forget or to remember is not in one's own power."
"That is what fickle people say. But what one feels one remembers."
"That is true, for a time, with some. Forever with others."
"Are you one of the others?"
She makes him no answer.
"Are you?" she says, at length, after a long silence.
"I think so, Mona. There is one thing I shall never get."
"Many things, I dare say," she says, nervously, turning from him.
"Why do you speak of people dropping out of your life?"
"Because, of course, you will, you must. Your world is not mine."
"You could make it yours."
"I do not understand," she says, very proudly, throwing up her head with a charming gesture. "And, talking of forgetfulness, do you know what hour it is?"
"You evidently want to get rid of me," says Rodney, discouraged, taking up his hat. He takes up her hand, too, and holds it warmly, and looks long and earnestly into her face.
"By the by," he says, once more restored to something like hope, as he notes her drooping lids and changing color and how she hides from his searching gaze her dark, blue, Irish eyes, that, as somebody has so cleverly expressed it, seem "rubbed into her head with a dirty finger," so marked lie the shadows beneath them, that enhance and heighten their beauty, – "by the by, you told me you had a miniature of your mother in your desk, and you promised to show it to me." He merely says this with a view to gaining more time, and not from any overwhelming desire to see the late Mrs. Scully.
"It is here," says Mona, rather pleased at his remembering this promise of hers, and, going to a desk, proceeds to open a secret drawer, in which lies the picture in question.
It is a very handsome picture, and Geoffrey duly admires it; then it is returned to its place, and Mona, opening the drawer next to it, shows him some exquisite ferns dried and gummed on paper.
"What a clever child you are!" says Geoffrey, with genuine admiration. "And what is here?" laying his hand on the third drawer.
"Oh, do not open that – do not!" says Mona, hastily, in an agony of fear, to judge by her eyes, laying a deterring hand upon his arm.
"And why not this or any other drawer?" says Rodney, growing pale. Again jealousy, which is a demon, rises in his breast, and thrusts out all gentler feelings. Her allusion to Mr. Moore, most innocently spoken, and, later on, her reference to the students, have served to heighten within him angry suspicion.
"Do not!" says Mona, again, as though fresh words are impossible to her, drawing her breath quickly. Her evident agitation incenses him to the last degree. Opening the drawer impulsively, he gazes at its contents.
Only a little withered bunch of heather, tied by a blade of grass! Nothing more!
Rodney's heart throbs with passionate relief, yet shame covers him; for he himself, one day, had given her that heather, tied, as he remembers, with that selfsame grass; and she, poor child, had kept it ever since. She had treasured it, and laid it aside, apart from all other objects, among her most sacred possessions, as a thing beloved and full of tender memories; and his had been the hand to ruthlessly lay bare this hidden secret of her soul.
He is overcome with contrition, and would perhaps have said something betraying his scorn of himself, but she prevents him.
"Yes," she says, with cheeks colored to a rich carmine, and flashing eyes, and lips that quiver in spite of all her efforts at control, "that is the bit of heather you gave me, and that is the grass that tied it. I kept it because it reminded me of a day when I was happy. Now," bitterly, "I no longer care for it: for the future it can only bring back to me an hour when I was grieved and wounded."
Taking up the hapless heather, she throws it on the ground, and, in a fit of childish spleen, lays her foot upon it and tramples it out of all recognition. Yet, even as she does so, the tears gather in her eyes, and, resting there unshed, transfigure her into a lovely picture that might well be termed "Beauty in Distress." For this faded flower she grieves, as though it were, indeed, a living thing that she has lost.
"Go!" she says, in a choked voice, and with a little passionate sob, pointing to the door. "You have done mischief enough." Her gesture is at once imperious and dignified. Then in a softer voice, that tells of sorrow, and with a deep sigh, "At least," she says, "I believed in your honor!"
The reproach is terrible, and cuts him to the heart. He picks up the poor little bruised flower, and holds it tenderly in his hand.
"How can I go," he says, without daring to look at her, "until, at least, I ask for forgiveness?" He feels more nervous,