she had rescued from the grave, and over whose agony she had watched in the Carpathian solitudes, think that she could wanton with his wretchedness, or be careless of his sorrow.
"Then—do what else you will with my life, but do not bid me leave you?"
She was silent, and she shook her head with a gesture of dissent; she knew that he prepared himself but added pain, hut more enduring suffering, the longer he deceived himself with the thought or the simulation of happiness. Yet, she asked herself, bitterly, why was she bound to send him from her as though she were plague-stricken?—why, since it was his will to linger in her presence, should she be compelled to drive him out of it?
Her honour, her pity, her conscience, her reason said—why delude him with a passing and treacherous hour of hope? Her heart pleaded for him—perhaps pleaded for herself;—her mood changed swiftly, though her character never; a natural nonchalance was combined in her with the dignity and depth of her nature. She was at all times too epicurean not to let life take its course, and heed but little of the morrow.
She gave a half-impatient, half-weary sigh.
