"
"I remember it very well."
"So do I. Robert had shown it me as the fairest spot in all
Scotland."
"And there this lover of ours sang his song to you?"
"I do not know what he told me then; but I know that I told him that
I was engaged; and I felt when I told him so that my engagement was a
sorrow to me. And it has been a sorrow from that day to this."
"And the hero, Phineas,--he is still dear to you?"
"Dear to me?"
"Yes. You would have hated me, had he become my husband? And you will
hate Madame Goesler when she becomes his wife?"
"Not in the least. I am no dog in the manger. I have even gone so far
as almost to wish, at certain moments, that you should accept him."
"And why?"
"Because he has wished it so heartily."
"One can hardly forgive a man for such speedy changes," said Violet.
"Was I not to forgive him;--I, who had turned myself away from him
with a fixed purpose the moment that I found that he had made a mark
upon my heart? I could not wipe off the mark, and yet I married. Was
he not to try to wipe off his mark?"
"It seems that he wiped it off very quickly;--and since that he has
wiped off another mark. One doesn't know how many marks he has wiped
off. They are like the inn-keeper's score which he makes in chalk.
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