The New Magdalen

To all appearance the rebuke failed to produce the slightest effect.

She seemed to be as indifferent to it as if it had not reached her ears.

There was a spirit in her--a miserable spirit, born of her own bitter

experience--which rose in revolt against Horace's habitual glorification

of the ladies of his family. "It sickens me," she thought to herself,

"to hear of the virtues of women who have never been tempted! Where

is the merit of living reputably, when your life is one course of

prosperity and enjoyment? Has his mother known starvation? Have his

sisters been left forsaken in the street?" It hardened her heart--it

almost reconciled her to deceiving him--when he set his relatives up as

patterns for her. Would he never understand that women detested having

other women exhibited as examples to them? She looked round at him with

a sense of impatient wonder. He was sitting at the luncheon-table, with

his back turned on her, and his head resting on his hand. If he had

attempted to rejoin her, she would have repelled him; if he had spoken,

she would have met him with a sharp reply. He sat apart from her,

without uttering a word. In a man's hands silence is the most terrible

of all protests to the woman who loves him. Violence she can endure.

Words she is always ready to meet by words on her side. Silence conquers

her. After a moment's hesitation, Mercy left the sofa and advanced

submissively toward the table. She had offended him--and she alone

was in fault. How should he know it, poor fellow, when he innocently

mortified her? Step by step she drew closer and closer. He never looked

round; he never moved. She laid her hand timidly on his shoulder.

"Forgive me, Horace," she whispered in his ear. "I am suffering this

morning; I am not myself. I didn't mean what I said. Pray forgive me."

There was no resisting the caressing tenderness of voice and manner

which accompanied those words. He looked up; he took her hand. She bent

over him, and touched his forehead with her lips. "Am I forgiven?" she

asked.

"Oh, my darling," he said, "if you only knew how I loved you!"

"I do know it," she answered, gently, twining his hair round her finger,

and arranging it over his forehead where his hand had ruffled it.

They were completely absorbed in each other, or they must, at that

moment, have heard the library door open at the other end of the room.

Lady Janet had written the necessary reply to her nephew, and had

returned, faithful to her engagement, to plead the cause of Horace. The

first object that met her view was her client pleading, with conspicuous

success, for himself! "I am not wanted, evidently," thought the old

lady. She noiselessly closed the door again and left the lovers by

themselves.