Beyond the Rocks

Hector became more and more unhappy. He tried several subjects. He told

her the last news of her father and Mrs. McBride. She answered them all

with the same politeness, until, maddened beyond bearing, he leaned

still farther forward and whispered in her ear: "For God's sake, what is it? What have I done?"

"Nothing," said Theodora. What right had she to ask him any question,

when for these seven nights and days since they had parted she had been

disciplining herself not to think of him in any way? She must never let

him know it could matter to her now.

"Nothing? Then why are you so changed? Ah, how it hurts!" he whispered,

passionately. And she turned and looked at him, and he saw that her

beautiful eyes were no longer those pure depths of blue sky in which he

could read love and faith, but were full of mist, as of a curtain

between them.

He put his hand up to touch the little gold case he carried always now

in his waistcoat-pocket, which contained her letter. He wanted to assure

himself it was there, and she had written it--and it was not all a

dream.

Theodora's tender heart was wrung by the passionate distress in his

eyes.

"Is that your mother over there you were with?" she asked, more gently.

"How beautiful she is!"

"Yes," he said, "my mother and Morella Winmarleigh, whom the world in

general and my mother in particular have decided I am going to marry."

She did not speak. She felt suddenly ashamed she could ever have doubted

him; it must be the warping atmosphere of Mrs. Devlyn's society for

these last days which had planted thoughts, so foreign to her nature, in

her. She did not yet know it was jealousy pure and simple, which attacks

the sweetest, as well, as the bitterest, soul among us all. But a

thrill of gladness ran through her as well as shame.

"And aren't you going to marry her, then?" she said, at last. "She is

very handsome."

Hector looked at her, and a wave of joy chased out the pain he had

suffered. That was it, then! They had told her this already, and she

hated it--she cared for him still.

"Surely you need not ask me," he said, deep reproach in his eyes. "You

must be very changed in seven days to even have thought it possible."

The shame deepened in Theodora. She was, indeed, unlike herself to have

been moved at all by Mrs. Devlyn's words, but she would never doubt

again, and she must tell him that.