You cannot but feel that when I hear your
wailings, I must be impatient. You had better leave me now, if you
please."
"And are we to be no longer friends?" he asked.
"As far as friendship can go without intercourse, I shall always be
your friend."
Then he went, and as he walked down to his office, so intent was he
on that which had just passed that he hardly saw the people as he
met them, or was aware of the streets through which his way led him.
There had been something in the later words which Lady Laura had
spoken that had made him feel almost unconsciously that the injustice
of her reproaches was not so great as he had at first felt it to be,
and that she had some cause for her scorn. If her case was such as
she had so plainly described it, what was his plight as compared with
hers? He had lost his Violet, and was in pain. There must be much
of suffering before him. But though Violet were lost, the world was
not all blank before his eyes. He had not told himself, even in his
dreariest moments, that there was before him "no escape, no hope, no
prospect of relief, no place of consolation." And then he began to
think whether this must in truth be the case with Lady Laura. What if
Mr. Kennedy were to die? What in such case as that would he do? In
ten or perhaps in five years time might it not be possible for him
to go through the ceremony of falling upon his knees, with stiffened
joints indeed, but still with something left of the ardour of his old
love, of his oldest love of all?
As he was thinking of this he was brought up short in his walk as he
was entering the Green Park beneath the Duke's figure, by Laurence
Fitzgibbon.
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