Rhoda Broughton

“ It makes her illogically feel more of a traitor than before; and, besides, is it quite manly?
“I am to sit with him this afternoon,” she answers in a tone of caustic discontent, “and convince that idiot Féodorovna that he is not being poisoned or starved. It will only be for to-day,” she adds, more as a satisfaction to her own conscience than as an explanation in the least called for by him. “And to-morrow you will both be back!”
“Even if we are, you must not hurry home!” replies Rupert, with that complete unselfishness which his family has grown so used to as barely to be aware of. ”

“ And her uncle? And her debt?—the debt whose colossal obligation the partner and cause of her unfaithfulness has so fully admitted; has so little blinked the overmastering necessity of paying? It is all packed into thirty seconds—relief, hope, recurring terror and despair; the thirty seconds between his question, and the one with which—how unlike her in its shiftiness—she answers him.
“Why shouldn’t it? Do not you think there are enough already?”
“Quite; but all the same there is another.”
“What do you mean?” A sort of false stoutness of heart is coming to her aid. ”

“ The sands of their dual solitude are running out, and this is the way in which they are utilizing Féodorovna’s absence! In both their minds a feverish reckoning is going on as to how long it will take Miss Prince to send her stork-legs along the corridors and staircases that separate her from her impertinent parent, snub him, and return. Ten minutes is an ample latitude to give her, and of these five must have already fled. They cannot, cannot part upon that jarring last note. The rebellion against doing so is equally strong in both minds, but it is the woman who raises the cry of revolt. ”

“ There is always something oppressive in the lightness of the habitually heavy, in the jollity of the habitually morose; and Sir George’s elation sits like lead upon his niece’s heart. She reproaches herself bitterly for it. Has not her whole life’s aim been to make him happy? And now that by his manner he is showing a cheerfulness higher than he had ever enjoyed even before the news of Bill’s death reached him, by what odious perversity are her own spirits dropping down to zero? ”

“ If any incredulity born of experience or observation invades the soul of Rupert’s brother man at this large assertion, no sign of it appears. He only waits blankly.
“I am up to my neck in debt to them—to both of them!” goes on the poor girl, losing something of her collectedness, and torn between the knowledge that wisdom bids her leave the picture of her past and future without further touches; and the impossibility of not making it clear to her pale hearer, that love—lover-love—has no part in the scheme of her existence. ”

“ There can be no question now as to its being “to please herself” that she is marrying Rupert, since she plainly cannot do without him.
They have left the farm behind them, and, dipping down into a valley-let, are passing through a hop-garden, where the eye travels through the long vista of bare poles to little blue air-pictures at the end. From a chestnut-brake near by, a nightingale, mimicked by a throstle, is whit-whitting and glug-glugging. ”

“ Every day some small stretched privilege is accorded, each dealt out with a frugal hand, that feels its way tentatively, lest the bruised brain should avenge itself for any temerity in hurrying it to be well. Whether thanks to these precautions or to a natural wiriness, Rupert is apparently returning to life and vigour, without a throw-back, and with an even steadiness that—considering the nature of the accident that has laid him low—seems nothing short of miraculous. ”

“ She knows not whether, or with what numb agnosticism, with what grey creed of nothingness, or with what faint flickering cresset of faith, Rupert has met the sorrows of life, will, when his hour strikes, confront the sharpness of death? His voice goes on evenly—
“Even if consciousness does survive, it will not give me the slightest satisfaction to know that you have cut your heart out to throw it as a complimentary tribute on my funeral pyre! ”