He wondered how it might be with her. For a moment he cursed his
inconstancy; then he feared lest she were of larger heart and firmer
resolve than he,--lest her love had been less light than his; he could
scarcely feel himself secure of freedom,--he must watch. And then stole
in a deeper sense of loneliness than exile and foreign tongues had
taught him,--the knowledge of being single and solitary in the world,
not only for life, but for eternity.
The evening was passed in the recitation of affairs by himself and his
cousins alone together, and until a week completed its tale of dawns and
sunsets there was the same diurnal recurrence of question and answer.
One day, as the afternoon was paling, Rite came.
Mr. Raleigh had fallen asleep on the vine-hidden seat outside the
bay-window, and was awakened, certainly not by Mrs. Laudersdale's
velvets trailing over the drawing-room carpet. She was just entering,
slow-paced, though in haste. She held out both of her beautiful arms. A
little form of airy lightness, a very snow-wreath, blew into them.
"_O ma maman! Est ce que c'est toi_," it cried. "_O comme tu es douce!
Si belle, si molle, si chere!_" And the fair head was lying beneath the
dark one, the face hidden in the bent and stately neck.
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