That is her
disposition."
Phineas again paused a moment before he replied. "Let him try," he
said.
"He is away,--in Brussels."
"Send to him, and bid him return. I will be patient, Lady Laura. Let
him come and try, and I will bide my time. I confess that I have no
right to interfere with him if there be a chance for him. If there is
no chance, my right is as good as that of any other."
There was something in this which made Lady Laura feel that she
could not maintain her hostility against this man on behalf of her
brother;--and yet she could not force herself to be other than
hostile to him. Her heart was sore, and it was he that had made
it sore. She had lectured herself, schooling herself with mental
sackcloth and ashes, rebuking herself with heaviest censures from day
to day, because she had found herself to be in danger of regarding
this man with a perilous love; and she had been constant in this
work of penance till she had been able to assure herself that the
sackcloth and ashes had done their work, and that the danger was
past. "I like him still and love him well," she had said to herself
with something almost of triumph, "but I have ceased to think of him
as one who might have been my lover." And yet she was now sick and
sore, almost beside herself with the agony of the wound, because this
man whom she had been able to throw aside from her heart had also
been able so to throw her aside.
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