Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/352

{{rvh|354|THE STRAND MAGAZINE.{{ "Probably not."

"I thought you were merciful enough not to taunt me," said the girl, with an accent of bitter pain in her voice.

"I am not taunting you. I am in earnest. Wait. This time next year you will thank me as the best of brothers for the boon I am giving you."

"I do not understand. I have no wish to understand," said Nasha, almost passionately. "This only will I say, that while I am mistress of Eagle's Gorge, no friend of yours shall cross its threshold!"

{{img float | file    = The Strand Magazine vol. 4, no. 22, pg. 354 - I Have No Wish to Understand.png | width   = 400px | align   = center | cap     = {{smaller|{{asc|"I have no wish to understand."}}}} }}

She controlled all further expression of feeling and walked away, leaving Volmer laughing. The next day he went back to Paris, and life at the sombre castle fell again into its quiet routine. But on the eve of his departure there had swept over Nasha's existence a great wave of excitement, which, all unawares to her, was to prevent her world ever looking the same again. She tried to live in her round of duties, and to banish the troops of thoughts that would invade her mind; she sought to put down rose and the passionate longings that swelled in her breast; she resolutely turned from sudden visions of a husband; of a sweet, helpless, thankless thing that should lie in her arms and nestle to her breast; of glad-faced, bright-haired children who should call her mother, and whose young voices should make music of the echoes around Eagle's Gorge. She strove to stifle the overpowering heart-hunger of her awakened womanhood, to drown it in bitter draughts of recollection and of realization of the actual, but she strove in vain. Her day-dreams became more frequent, longer, and ever more fascinating. The vague Prince of her childish and girlish imaginings irrevocably assumed the likeness of a living man the man of Volmer's scheme. There were no mirrors in the inhabited part of Nasha's home; they had all been banished to the disused room which was her mother's bridal chamber, where the tell-tale faces were turned to the wall, and their backs whitened with the dust of years.

It was thought better for the young mistress of Eagle's Gorge to be spared their painful testimony to her ugliness; but she knew their resting-place as well as she knew the reason of their withdrawal, and now that the strange and awful longing for "the life of which her nerves were scant" had come upon her in all its force, she remembered the heart-shaped mirror framed in silver, which had reflected her mother's sad eyes, and she was impelled, in her agony of longing, to mount to the tower-room and consult its truthful face.

"Am I indeed so very ugly?" groaned the girl, as, trembling, she lifted the heavy glass. the cold, smooth surface seemed to mock her with the answer:—

"You know it!"

She carried the thing to her own room, where she polished the delicate silver so that it grew beautiful again, and she locked it away, for fear of Getha's sharp eyes, among