Again she threw herself on her couch, but only to
rise and yet again pace the room.
“Nonsense! it is not love. It is merely
that nobody could help thinking about one who had
been so much before her mind for so long —one
too who had made her think. Ah! there, I do believe,
lies the real secret of it all!—There’s
the main cause of my trouble —and nothing
worse! I must not be foolhardy though, and remain
in danger, especially as, for anything I can tell,
he may be in love with that foolish child. People,
they say, like people that are not at all like themselves.
Then I am sure he might like me!—She seems
to be in love with him! I know she cannot be half
a quarter in real love with him: it’s not
in her.”
She did not rejoin Florimel that evening: it
was part of the understanding between the ladies that
each should be at absolute liberty. She slept
little during the night, starting awake as often as
she began to slumber, and before the morning came was
a good deal humbled. All sorts of means are kept
at work to make the children obedient and simple and
noble. Joy and sorrow are servants in God’s
nursery; pain and delight, ecstasy and despair minister
in it; but amongst them there is none more marvellous
in its potency than that mingling of all pains and
pleasures to which we specially give the name of Love.
When she appeared at breakfast, her countenance bore
traces of her suffering, but a headache, real enough,
though little heeded in the commotion upon whose surface
it floated, gave answer to the not very sympathetic
solicitude of Florimel. Happily the day of their
return was near at hand. Some talk there had been
of protracting their stay, but to that Clementina
avoided any farther allusion. She must put an
end to an intercourse which she was compelled to admit
was, at least, in danger of becoming dangerous.
This much she had with certainty discovered concerning
her own feelings, that her heart grew hot and cold
at the thought of the young man belonging more to
the mistress who could not understand him than to herself
who imagined she could; and it wanted no experience
in love to see that it was therefore time to be on
her guard against herself, for to herself she was
growing perilous.
The next was the last day of the reading. They
must finish the tale that morning, and on the following
set out to return home, travelling as they had come.
Clementina had not the strength of mind to deny herself
that last indulgence—a long four days’
ride in the company of this strangest of attendants.
After that, if not the deluge, yet a few miles of
Sahara.
“’ It is the opinion of many that he has
entered into a Moravian mission, for the use of which
he had previously drawn considerable sums,’”
read Malcolm, and paused, with book half closed.
“Is that all?” asked Florimel.
