Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full
meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had
once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the
words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago,
in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night
without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come
from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make
sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's
affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful.
It was something to discover that she could be loved.
"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is
scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are
together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words,
the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with
some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be
conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same
race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from
Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?"
This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness
of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long
years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every
hope of her existence.
Pages:
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191