Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/154

Rh Mrs. Keith, catching his eye as he closed the carriage door, wished to Heaven that she had held her tongue. "I have done him injustice," she murmured as she went. "I have fancied him light, but I see he 's vicious." Hubert, however, kept his promise in so far as that he did take up his hat. Having held it a moment he put it down. He had reckoned without his hostess! Nora was seated by the fire, with her bare arms folded, with a downcast brow. Dressed in pale corn-color, her white throat confined by a band of blue velvet overstitched with a dozen pearls, she was not a subject for summary farewells. Meeting her eyes, he saw they were filled with tears. "You must not take this thing too hard," he said.

For a moment she answered nothing; then she bent her face into her hands and her tears flowed. "O poor, poor Roger!" she cried.

Hubert watched her weeping in her ball-dress those primitive tears. "I have not given him up," he said at last. "But suppose I had—" She raised her head and looked at him. "O," he cried, "I should have a hundred things to say! Both as a clergyman and as a man, I should preach resignation. In this crisis, let me speak my mind. Roger is part of your childhood; your childhood 's at an end. Possibly, with it he too is to go! At all events you are not to feel that in losing him you lose everything. I protest! As you sit here he belongs to your past. Ask yourself what part he may play in your future. Believe me, you will have to settle it, you will have to choose. Here, in any case, your life begins. Your tears are for the dead past; this is the future, with its living needs. Roger's fate is only one of them."