Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/259

 large-hearted enough to comprehend me? Look in my face--you have seen his; all earthly love is erased and blotted out of both."

Guy Darrell bowed his head in respect that partook of awe.

"You, too," said the grim woman, after a pause, and approaching him nearer--"you, too, have loved, I am told, and you, too, were forsaken."

He recoiled and--shuddered.

"What is left to your heart of its ancient folly? I should like to know! I am curious to learn if there be a man who can feel as woman! Have you only resentment? have you only disdain? have you only vengeance? have you pity? or have you the jealous absorbing desire, surviving the affection from which it sprang, that still the life wrenched from you shall owe, despite itself, a melancholy allegiance to your own?"

Darrell impatiently waved his hand to forbid further questions; and it needed all his sense of the service this woman had just rendered him to repress his haughty displeasure at so close an approach to his torturing secrets.

Arabella's dark bright eyes rested on his knitted brow, for a moment, wistfully, musingly. Then she said: "I see! man's inflexible pride--no pardon there! But own, at least, that you have suffered."

"Suffered!" groaned Darrell involuntarily, and pressing his hand to his heart.

"You have!--and you own it! Fellow-sufferer, I have no more anger against you. Neither should pity, but let each respect the other. A few words more,--this child!"

"Ay--ay--this child! you will be truthful. You will not seek to deceive me--you know that she--she--claimed by that assassin, reared by his convict father--she is no daughter of my line!"

"What! would it then be no joy to know that your line did not close with yourself--that your child might--"

"Cease, madam, cease--it matters not to a man nor to a race when it perish, so that it perish at last with honour. Who would have either himself or his lineage live on into a day when the escutcheon is blotted and the name disgraced? No; if that be Matilda's child, tell me, and I will bear, as man may do, the last calamity which the will