"What! You will marry at last! And it must be that beautiful Caroline Lyndsay! It must—it must! You can never love another! You know it, my dear, dear master! I shall see you, then, happy before I die."
"Tut, foolish old friend!" said Darrell, leaning his arm tenderly on Fairthorn's shoulder, and walking on slowly toward the house. "How often must I tell you that no marriage-bells can ring for me!"
"But you have told me, too, that you went to Twickenham to steal a sight of her again; and that it was the sight of her that made you resolve to wed no one else. And when I have railed against her for fickleness, have not you nearly frightened me out of my wits, as if no one might rail against her but yourself? And now she is free—and did you not grant that she would not refuse your hand, and would be true and faithful henceforth? And yet you insist on being—granite!"
"No, Dick, not granite; I wish I were!"
"Granite and pride," persisted Dick, courageously. "If one chips a bit off the one, one only breaks one's spade against the other."
"Pride!—you too!" muttered Darrell, mournfully; then aloud, "No, it is not pride now, whatever it might have been even yesterday. But I would rather be racked by all the tortures that pious inquisitors ever invented out of compassion for obstinate heretics, than condemn the woman I have so fatally loved to a penance the misery of which she cannot foresee. She would accept me?—certainly! Why? Because she thinks she owes me a reparation—because she pities me. And my heart tells me that I might become cruel, and mean, and vindictive, if I were to live day by day with one who created in me, while my life was at noon, a love never known in its morn, and to feel that that love's sole return was the pity vouchsafed to the night-fall of my age. No; if she pitied, but did not love me, when, eighteen years ago, we parted under yonder beech-tree, I should be a dotard to dream that woman's pity mellows into love as our locks become gray, and Youth turns our vows into ridicule. It is not pride that speaks here; it is rather humility, Dick! But we must not now talk of old age and bygones. Youth and marriage-bells, Dick! Know that I have been for hours pondering how to reconcile with my old-fashioned notions dear Lionel's happiness. We must think of the living as well as the dead, Dick. I have solved the problem. I am happy, and so shall the young folks be."
"You don't mean to say that you will consent to—"
