'Then proudly, proudly up she rose,

Tho' the tear was in her e'e,

"Whate'er ye say, think what ye may,

Ye's get na word frae me!"'

SCOTCH BALLAD.

It was not merely that Margaret was known to Mr. Thornton to have

spoken falsely,--though she imagined that for this reason only

was she so turned in his opinion,--but that this falsehood of

hers bore a distinct reference in his mind to some other lover.

He could not forget the fond and earnest look that had passed

between her and some other man--the attitude of familiar

confidence, if not of positive endearment. The thought of this

perpetually stung him; it was a picture before his eyes, wherever

he went and whatever he was doing. In addition to this (and he

ground his teeth as he remembered it), was the hour, dusky

twilight; the place, so far away from home, and comparatively

unfrequented.

His nobler self had said at first, that all this

last might be accidental, innocent, justifiable; but once allow

her right to love and be beloved (and had he any reason to deny

her right?--had not her words been severely explicit when she

cast his love away from her?), she might easily have been

beguiled into a longer walk, on to a later hour than she had

anticipated. But that falsehood! which showed a fatal

consciousness of something wrong, and to be concealed, which was

unlike her.

He did her that justice, though all the time it would

have been a relief to believe her utterly unworthy of his esteem.

It was this that made the misery--that he passionately loved her,

and thought her, even with all her faults, more lovely and more

excellent than any other woman; yet he deemed her so attached to

some other man, so led away by her affection for him as to

violate her truthful nature. The very falsehood that stained her,

was a proof how blindly she loved another--this dark, slight,

elegant, handsome man--while he himself was rough, and stern, and

strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce

jealousy.

He thought of that look, that attitude!--how he would

have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond

detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical

way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now

he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man

she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of

her words--'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she

would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He

shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from

them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had

looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024