His heart was beating fast, and there was a strange sense of oppression as he loosed the reins of his imagination for a moment; but the next, as he turned to gaze at the innocent, happy, unruffled face, so healthful and sweet, with the limpid grey eyes ready to meet his own so frankly, the calm came, and he felt that he could ask no greater joy than to live that peaceful life for ever at her side.
It would be hard to tell how it happened. They strolled about the garden till Millicent laughingly said that it would be like trespassing on her father’s carte blanche to cut more flowers, and then they went through the open French window into the drawing-room, where he sat near her, as if intoxicated by the sweetness of her voice, while she talked to him in unrestrained freedom of her happy, contented life, and bade him not to think he need be ceremonious there.
Yes, it would be hard to tell how it happened. There was one grand stillness without, as if the ardent sunshine had drunk up all sound but the dull, heavy throb of his heart, and the music of that sweet voice which now lulled him to a sense of delicious repose, now made every nerve and vein tingle with a joy he had never before known.
It had been a mystery to him in his student life. Books had been his world, and ambition to win a scholarly fame his care. Now it had by degrees dawned upon him that there was another, a greater love than that, transcending it so that all that had gone before seemed pitiful and small. He had met her, her voice would be part of his life from henceforth, and at last – how it came about he could not have told – he was standing at her side, holding her hands firmly in his own, and saying in low and eager tones that trembled with emotion:
“Millicent, I love you – my love – my love!”
For a few moments Millicent Luttrell stood motionless, gazing wonderingly at her companion as he bent down over her hands and pressed his lips upon them.
Then, snatching them away, her soft creamy face turned to scarlet with indignation, but only for this to fade as she met his eyes, and read there the earnest look he gave her, and his act from that moment ceased to be the insult she thought at first.
“Miss Luttrell!” he said.
“Hush! don’t speak to me,” she cried.
He took a step forward, but she waved him back, and for a few moments sobbed passionately, struggling hard the while to master her emotion.
“Have I offended you?” he panted. “Dear Millicent, listen to me. What have I done?”
“Hush!” she cried. “It is all a terrible mistake. What have I done?”
There was a pause, and the deep silence seemed to be filled now with strange noises. There was a painful throbbing of the heart, a singing in the ears, and life was all changed as Millicent at last mastered her emotion, and her voice seemed to come to the listener softened and full of pity as if spoken by one upon some far-off shore, so calm, so grave and slow, so impassionately the words fell upon his ear.
Such simple words, and yet to him like the death-knell of all his hope in life.
Volume One – Chapter Eight.
Crossed in Love
“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”
He looked piteously in the handsome pale young face before him, his heart sinking, and a feeling of misery, such as he had never before known, chilling him so that he strove in vain to speak.
The words were not cruel, they were not marked with scorn or contempt. There was no coquetry – no hope. They were spoken in a voice full of gentle sympathy, and there was tender pity in every tone, and yet they chilled him to the heart.
“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”
It needed no look to endorse those words, and yet it was there, beaming upon him from those sweet, frank eyes that had filled again with tears which she did not passionately dash aside, but which brimmed and softly dropped upon the hands she clasped across her breast.
He saw plainly enough that it had all been a dream, his dream of love and joy; that he had been too young to read a woman’s heart aright, and that he had taken her little frank kindnesses as responses to his love; and he needed no explanations, for the tones in which she uttered those words crushed him, till as he stood before her in those painful moments, he realised that the deathblow to all his hopes had come.
He sank back in his chair as she stood before him, gazing up at her in so boyish and piteous a manner that she spoke again.
“Indeed, indeed, Mr Bayle, I thought our intimacy so pleasant, I was so happy with you.”
“Then I may hope,” he cried passionately. “Millicent, dear Millicent, all my life has been spent in study; I have read so little, I never thought of love till I saw you, but it has grown upon me till I can think only of you – your words, the tones of your voice, your face, all are with me always, with me now. Millicent, dear Millicent, it is a man’s first true love, and you could give me hope.”
“Oh, hush! hush!” she said gently, as she held out her hand to him, which he seized and covered with his kisses, till she withdrew it firmly, and shook her head. “I am more pained than I can say,” she said softly. “I tell you I never thought of such a thing as this.”
“But you will,” he said, “Millicent, my love!”
“Mr Bayle,” she said, with some attempt at firmness, “if I have ever by my thoughtlessness made you think I cared for you, otherwise than as a very great friend, forgive me.”
“A friend!” he cried bitterly.
“Yes, as a friend. Is friendship so slight a thing that you speak of it like that?”
“Yes,” he cried; “at a time like this, when I ask for bread and you give me a stone.”
“Oh, hush!” she said again softly; and there was a sad smile through her tears. “I should be cruel if I did not speak to you plainly and firmly. Mr Bayle, what you ask is impossible.”
“You despise me,” he cried passionately, “because I am so boyish – so young.”
“No,” she said gently, as she laid her hand upon his shoulder. “Let me speak to you as an elder sister might.”
“A sister!” he cried angrily.
“Yes, as a sister,” replied Millicent gently. “Christie Bayle, it was those very things in you that attracted me first. I never had a brother; but you, with your frank and free-hearted youthfulness, your genuine freshness of nature, seemed so brotherly, that my life for the past few months has been brighter than ever. Our reading, our painting, our music – Oh, why did you dash all these happy times away?”
“Because I am not a boy,” he cried angrily; “because I am a man – a man who loves you. Millicent, will you not give me hope?”
There was a pause, during which she stood gazing right over his head as he still sat there with outstretched hands, which he at last dropped with a gesture of despair.
“No,” she said at last; “I cannot give you hope. It is impossible.”
“Then you love some one else,” he cried with boyish anger. “Oh, it is cruel. You led me on to love you, and now, in your coquettish triumph, you throw me aside for some other plaything of the hour.”
Millicent’s brow contracted, and a half-angry look came into her eyes.
“This talk to me of brotherly feeling and of being a sister, is it to mock me? It is as I thought,” he cried passionately, “as I have heard, with you handsome women; you who delight in giving pain, in trifling with a weak, foolish fellow’s heart, so that you may bring him to your feet.”
“Christie – ”
“No,” he raged, as he started to his feet, “don’t speak to me like that. I will not be led on again. Enjoy your triumph, but let it be made bitter by the knowledge that you have wrecked my life.”
“Oh,