What
would she have had of him? What would she have proposed to him, had
he questioned her as to his future, when they were together on the
braes of Loughlinter? Would she not have bid him to find some one
else whom he could love? Would she then have suggested to him the
propriety of nursing his love for herself,--for her who was about
to become another man's wife,--for her after she should have become
another man's wife? And yet because he had not done so, and because
she had made herself wretched by marrying a man whom she did not
love, she reproached him!
He could not tell her of all this, so he fell back for his defence on
words which had passed between them since the day when they had met
on the braes. "Lady Laura," he said, "it is only a month or two since
you spoke to me as though you wished that Violet Effingham might be
my wife."
"I never wished it. I never said that I wished it. There are moments
in which we try to give a child any brick on the chimney top for
which it may whimper." Then there was another silence which she was
the first to break. "You had better go," she said. "I know that I
have committed myself, and of course I would rather be alone."
"And what would you wish that I should do?"
"Do?" she said. "What you do can be nothing to me.
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