Nancy Part 68

"Roger!" I cry, pa.s.sionately, with a greedy yearning for human love here--at this very spot, where so much of the love of my life lies in death's austere silence at my feet--"love me a little--_ever so little_!

I know I am not very lovable, but you once liked me, did not you?--not nearly so much as I thought, I know, but still _a little_!"

"_A little!_"

"I am going to begin all over again!" I go on, eagerly, speaking very quickly, with my arms clasped about his neck, "quite all over again; indeed I am! I shall be so different that you will not know me for the same person, and if--if--" (beginning to falter and stumble)--"if you still go on liking _her_ best, and thinking her prettier and pleasanter to talk to--well, you cannot help it, it will not be your fault--and I--I--will try not to mind!"

He has taken my hands from about his neck, and is holding them warmly, steadfastly clasped in his own.

"Child! child!" he cries, "shall I _never_ undeceive you? are you still harping on that old worn-out string?"

"_Is_ it worn out?" I ask, anxiously, staring up with my wet eyes through the deep twilight into his. "Yes, yes!" (going on quickly and impulsively), "if you say so, I will believe it--without another word I will believe it, but--" (with a sudden fall from my high tone, and lapse into curiosity)--"you know you must have liked her a good deal once--you know you were engaged to her."

"_Engaged to her?_"

"Well, _were not_ you?"

"I never was engaged to any one in my life," he answers with solemn a.s.severation; "odd as it may seem, I never in my life had asked any woman to marry me until I asked you. I had known Zephine from a child; her father was the best and kindest friend ever any man had. When he was dying, he was uneasy in his mind about her, as she was not left well off, and I promised to do what I could for her--one does not lightly break such a promise, does one? I was fond of her--I would do her any good turn I could, for old sake's sake, but _marry_ her--be _engaged_ to her!--"

He pauses expressively.

"Thank G.o.d! thank G.o.d!" cry I, sobbing hysterically; "it has all come right, then--Roger!--Roger!"--(burying my tear-stained face in his breast)--"I will tell you _now_--perhaps I shall never feel so brave again!--do not look at me--let me hide my face; I want to get it over in a hurry! Do you remember--" (sinking my voice to an indistinct and struggling whisper)--"that night that you asked me about--about _Brindley Wood_?"

"Yes, I remember."

Already, his tone has changed. His arms seem to be slackening their close hold of me.

"Do not loose me!" cry I, pa.s.sionately; "hold me tight, or I can _never_ tell you--how could you expect me? Well, that night--you know as well as I do--I _lied_."

"You _did_?"

How hard and quick he is breathing! I am glad I cannot see his face.

"I _was_ there! I _did_ cry! she _did_ see me--"

I stop abruptly, choked by tears, by shame, by apprehension.

"Go on!" (spoken with panting shortness).

"He met me there!" I say, tremulously. "I do not know whether he did it on purpose or not, and said dreadful things! must I tell you them?"

(shuddering)--"pah! it makes me sick--he said" (speaking with a reluctant hurry)--"that he loved me, and that I loved him, and that I _hated_ you, and it took me so by surprise--it was all so horrible, and so different from what I had planned, that I cried--of course I ought not, but I did--I _roared_!"

There does not seem to me any thing ludicrous in this mode of expression, neither apparently does there to him.

"Well?"

"I do not think there is any thing more!" say I, slowly and timidly raising my eyes, to judge of the effect of my confession, "only that I was so _deadly, deadly_ ashamed; I thought it was such a shameful thing to happen to any one that I made up my mind I would never tell anybody, and I did not."

"And is that _all_?" he cries, with an intense and breathless anxiety in eyes and voice, "are you sure that that is _all_?"

"All!" repeat I, opening my eyes very wide in astonishment; "do not you think it is _enough_?"

"Are you sure," he cries, taking my face in his hands, and narrowly, searchingly regarding it--"Child! child!--to-day let us have nothing--_nothing_ but truth--are you sure that you did not a little regret that it must be so--that you did not feel it a little hard to be forever tied to my gray hairs--my eight-and-forty years?"

"Hus.h.!.+" cry I, s.n.a.t.c.hing away my hands, and putting them over my ears.

"I will not listen to you!--what do I care for your forty-eight years?--If you were a hundred--two hundred--what is it to me?--what do I care--I love you! I love you! I love you--O my darling, how stupid you have been not to see it all along!"

And so it comes to pa.s.s that by Barbara's grave we kiss again with tears. And now we are happy--stilly, inly happy, though I, perhaps, am never quite so boisterously gay as before the grave yawned for my Barbara; and we walk along hand-in-hand down the slopes and up the hills of life, with our eyes fixed, as far as the weakness of our human sight will let us, on the one dread, yet good G.o.d, whom through the veil of his great deeds we dimly discern. Only I wish that Roger were not nine-and-twenty years older than I!

THE END.

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"GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"

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