But it was not the loss of money or power that was
separating him from Constance Bledlow. He knew
her well enough by now to guess that in spite of her
youth and her luxurious bringing up, there was that
in her which was rapidly shaping a character capable
of fighting circumstance, as her heart might bid.
If she loved a man she would stand by him. No,
it was something known only to her and himself in
all those crowded rooms. As soon as he set eyes
on her, the vision of Radowitz’s bleeding hand
and prostrate form had emerged in consciousness—a
haunting presence, blurring the many-coloured movements
of the ballroom.
And yet it was not that maimed hand, either, which
stood between himself and Constance. It was rather
the spiritual fact behind the visible—that
instinct of fierce, tyrannical cruelty which he had
felt as he laid his hands on Radowitz in the Oxford
dawn a month ago. He shrank from it now as he
thought of it. It blackened and degraded his own
image of himself. He remembered something like
it years before, when he had joined in the bullying
of a small boy at school—a boy who yet afterwards
had become his good friend. If there is such
a thing as “possession,” devilish possession,
he had pleaded it on both occasions. Would it,
however, have seemed of any great importance to him
now, but for Constance Bledlow’s horror-struck
recoil? All men of strong and vehement temperament—so
his own defence might have run—are liable
to such gusts of violent, even murderous feeling;
and women accept it. But Constance Bledlow, influenced,
no doubt, by a pale-blooded sentimentalist like Sorell,
had refused to accept it.
“I should be always afraid of you—of
your pride and your violence—and love mustn’t
be afraid. Good-bye!”
He tried to scoff, but the words had burnt into his
heart.
CHAPTER XII
It was in the early morning, a few days after her
arrival at Scarfedale Manor, the house of her two
maiden aunts, that Connie, while all the Scarfedale
household was still asleep, took pen and paper and
began a letter to Nora Hooper.
On the evening before Connie left Oxford there had
been a long and intimate scene between these two.
Constance, motherless and sisterless, and with no
woman friend to turn to more understanding than Annette,
had been surprised in passionate weeping by Nora,
the night after the Marmion catastrophe. The
tact and devotion of the younger girl had been equal
to the situation. She humbly admired Connie, and
yet was directly conscious of a strength in herself,
in which Connie was perhaps lacking, and which might
be useful to her brilliant cousin. At any rate
on this occasion she showed so much sweetness, such
power, beyond her years, of comforting and understanding,
that Connie told her everything, and thenceforward
possessed a sister and a confidante. The letter
ran as follows:—
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Copyrights
Lady Connie from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
