"Oh! Henry, you are so good to us!" Sabine cried. "No words can say what
I feel."
But Lord Fordyce could bear no more--and murmuring some kind of
blessing, he got from the room, leaving the two there in the embrasure
of the great window gazing into each other's eyes.
As the door shut, Michael spoke at last:
"Sabine--My own!" he whispered, and held out his arms.
* * * * *
When Henry left Sabine's sitting-room, he staggered down the stairs like
one blind--the poignant anguish had returned, and the mantle of comfort
fell from his shoulders. He was human, after all, and the picture of the
rapture on the faces of the two, showing him what he had never obtained,
stabbed him like a knife. He felt that he would willingly drop over the
causeway bridge into the boiling sea, and finish all the pain. He saw
Moravia's blue velvet dress in the distance down the road when he left
the lodge gates, and he fled into the garden; he must be alone--but she
had seen him go, and knew that another crisis had come and that she must
conquer this time also. So apparently only for the gratification of
Girolamo, she turned and entered the garden--the garden which seemed to
be a predestined spot for the stratagems of lovers!--then she strolled
toward the sea-wall, not turning her head in the direction where she
plainly perceived Henry had gone, but taking care that Girolamo should
see him, as she knew he would run to him. This he immediately did, and
dragged his victim back to his mother in the pavilion which looked out
over the sea. Girolamo was now three years old and a considerable imp;
he displayed Henry proudly and boasted of his catch--while Moravia
scolded him sweetly and asked Henry to forgive them for intruding upon
his solitude.
"You know I understand you must want to be alone, dear friend, and I
would not have come if I had seen you," she said, tenderly, while she
turned and, leaning out, beckoned to the nurse, whom she could just see
across the causeway on the courtyard wall, where the raised parapet was.
Then allowing her feelings to overcome her judgment, she flung out her
arms and seizing Henry's hands, she drew them into her warm, huge muff.
"Henry--I can't help it--!" she gasped. "It breaks my heart to see you
so cold and white and numb--I want to warm and comfort and love you back
to life again----!"
At this minute, the sun burst through the scudding clouds, and blazed in
upon them from the archway; and it seemed to Henry as if a new vitality
rushed into his frozen veins. She was so human and pretty, and young and
real. Love for him spoke from her sparkling, brown eyes. The ascendancy
she had obtained over him on the previous evening returned in a measure;
he no longer wanted to get away from her and be alone.
He made some murmuring reply, and did not seek to draw away his
hands--but a sudden change of feeling seemed to come over Moravia for
she lowered her head and a deep, pink flush grew in her cheeks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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