Page:Braddon--Wyllard's weird.djvu/69

Rh how much I have lost in life—how many golden opportunities I have wasted!"

"There are always other opportunities to be found," answered the girl, trying to speak words of comfort, vaguely, hopelessly, in her utter ignorance of his griefs or his perplexities. "There is always the future, and the chance of beginning again."

"Yes, in Queensland, in the Fijis, in Peru. If you mean that I may some day learn to make my own living, I grant the possibility. Queensland or Peru may do something for me. But my chances of happiness, my chances of renown—those are gone for ever. I lost all when I left the army. At seven-and-twenty I am a broken man. Hard for a man to feel that this life is all over and done with before he is thirty."

"I fancy there must be a time in every life when the clouds seem to shut out the sun; but the darkness does not last for ever," said Hilda softly. "I hope the cloud may pass from your sky."

"Ah, if it would, Hilda—if that cloud could pass and leave me my own man again, as I was nine years ago, before I went to India!"

"You seemed to be very happy last winter—in the hunting season," said Hilda, trying to speak lightly, though her heart was beating as furiously as if she had been climbing a mountain.

"Yes, I was happy then. I allowed myself to forget. I did not know just then that the trouble I had taken upon my shoulders was a lifelong trouble. Yes, it was a happy time, Hilda, last winter. How many a glorious day we had together across country! You and I were always in the first flight, and generally near each other. Our horses were always such good friends, were they not? They loved to gallop neck-and-neck. O my darling, I was indeed happy in those days—unspeakably happy."

He had forgotten all prudence, all self-restraint, in a moment. He had taken Hilda's hand and lifted it to his lips.

"O my dear one, let me tell you how I love you," he said. "I may never dare say more than that, perhaps, but it is true, and you shall hear it, if only once. Yes, Hilda, I love you. I have loved you ever since last winter, when you and I used to ride after the hounds together. O, those happy winter days, those long waits at the corners of lanes, or in dusky thickets, or on the bleak bare common! I shall never forget them. Do you think I cared what became of the fox in those days, or whether we were after the right or the wrong one? Not a jot, dear. The veriest tailor that ever hung on to a horse could have cared no less for the sport than I. It was your sweet face I loved, and your friendly voice, and the light touch of your little hand. I was full of hope in those days, Hilda; and then a cloud came over my horizon and I dared hope no more. I never meant to