LITMIR.BIZ

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Directly upon that he came in, looking as though he had no business on hand more exciting than his ordinary morning’s tranquil employments. Alice at once got up to start with him. “So you and Alice are going to make your adieux,” said Lady Glencora. “It must be done sooner or later,” said Mr Grey; and then they went off.

      Those who know Lucerne,—and almost everybody now does know Lucerne,—will remember the big hotel which has been built close to the landing-pier of the steamers, and will remember also the church that stands upon a little hill or rising ground, to the left of you, as you come out of the inn upon the lake. The church is immediately over the lake, and round the church there is a burying-ground, and skirting the burying-ground there are cloisters, through the arches and apertures of which they who walk and sit there look down immediately upon the blue water, and across the water upon the frowning menaces of Mount Pilate. It is one of the prettiest spots in that land of beauty; and its charm is to my feeling enhanced by the sepulchral monuments over which I walk, and by which I am surrounded, as I stand there. Up here, into these cloisters, Alice and John Grey went together. I doubt whether he had formed any purpose of doing so. She certainly would have gone without question in any direction that he might have led her. The distance from the inn up to the church-gate did not take them ten minutes, and when they were there their walk was over. But the place was solitary, and they were alone; and it might be as well for Mr Grey to speak what words he had to say there as elsewhere. They had often been together in those cloisters before, but on such occasions either Mr Palliser or Lady Glencora had been with them. On their slow passage up the hill very little was spoken, and that little was of no moment. “We will go in here for a few minutes,” he said. “It is the prettiest spot about Lucerne, and we don’t know when we may see it again.” So they went in, and sat down on one of the embrasures that open from the cloisters over the lake.

      “Probably never again,” said Alice. “And yet I have been here now two years running.”

      She shuddered as she remembered that in that former year George Vavasor had been with her. As she thought of it all she hated herself. Over and over again she had told herself that she had so mismanaged the latter years of her life that it was impossible for her not to hate herself. No woman had a clearer idea of feminine constancy than she had, and no woman had sinned against that idea more deeply. He gave her time to think of all this as he sat there looking down upon the water.

      “And yet I would sooner live in Cambridgeshire,” were the first words he spoke.

      “Why so?”

      “Partly because all beauty is best enjoyed when it is sought for with some trouble and difficulty, and partly because such beauty, and the romance which is attached to it, should not make up the staple of one’s life. Romance, if it is to come at all, should always come by fits and starts.”

      “I should like to live in a pretty country.”

      “And would like to live a romantic life,—no doubt; but all those things lose their charm if they are made common. When a man has to go to Vienna or St Petersburg two or three times a month, you don’t suppose he enjoys travelling?”

      “All the same, I should like to live in a pretty country,” said Alice.

      “And I want you to come and live in a very ugly country.” Then he paused for a minute or two, not looking at her, but gazing still on the mountain opposite. She did not speak a word, but looked as he was looking. She knew that the request was coming, and had been thinking about it all night; but now that it had come she did not know how to bear herself. “I don’t think,” he went on to say, “that you would let that consideration stand in your way, if on other grounds you were willing to become my wife.”

      “What consideration?”

      “Because Nethercoats is not so pretty as Lucerne.”

      “It would have nothing to do with it,” said Alice.

      “It should have nothing to do with it.”

      “Nothing; nothing at all,” repeated Alice.

      “Will you come, then? Will you come and be my wife, and help me to be happy amidst all that ugliness? Will you come and be my one beautiful thing, my treasure, my joy, my comfort, my counsellor?”

      “You want no counsellor, Mr Grey.”

      “No man ever wanted one more. Alice, this has been a bad year to me, and I do not think that it has been a happy one for you.”

      “Indeed, no.”

      “Let us forget it,—or rather, let us treat it as though it were forgotten. Twelve months ago you were mine. You were, at any rate, so much mine that I had a right to boast of my possession among my friends.”

      “It was a poor boast.”

      “They did not seem to think so. I had but one or two to whom I could speak of you, but they told me that I was going to be a happy man. As to myself, I was sure that I was to be so. No man was ever better contented with his bargain than I was with mine. Let us go back to it, and the last twelve months shall be as though they had never been.”

      “That cannot be, Mr Grey. If it could, I should be worse even than I am.”

      “Why cannot it be?”

      “Because I cannot forgive myself what I have done, and because you ought not to forgive me.”

      “But I do. There has never been an hour with me in which there has been an offence of yours rankling in my bosom unforgiven. I think you have been foolish, misguided,—led away by a vain ambition, and that in the difficulty to which these things brought you, you endeavoured to constrain yourself to do an act, which, when it came near to you,—when the doing of it had to be more closely considered, you found to be contrary to your nature.” Now, as he spoke thus, she turned her eyes upon him, and looked at him, wondering that he should have had power to read her heart so accurately. “I never believed that you would marry your cousin. When I was told of it, I knew that trouble had blinded you for awhile. You had driven yourself to revolt against me, and upon that your heart misgave you, and you said to yourself that it did not matter then how you might throw away all your sweetness. You see that I speak of your old love for me with the frank conceit of a happy lover.”

      “No;—no, no!” she ejaculated.

      “But the storm passes over the tree and does not tear it up by the roots or spoil it of all its symmetry. When we hear the winds blowing, and see how the poor thing is shaken, we think that its days are numbered and its destruction at hand. Alice, when the winds were shaking you, and you were torn and buffeted, I never thought so. There may be some who will forgive you slowly. Your own self-forgiveness will be slow. But I, who have known you better than any one,—yes, better than any one,—I have forgiven you everything, have forgiven you instantly. Come to me, Alice, and comfort me. Come to me, for I want you sorely.” She sat quite still, looking at the lake and the mountain beyond, but she said nothing. What could she say to him? “My need of you is much greater now,” he went on to say, “than when I first asked you to share the world with me. Then I could have borne to lose you, as I had never boasted to myself that you were my own,—had never pictured to myself the life that might be mine if you were always to be with me. But since that day I have had no other hope,—no other hope but this for which I plead now. Am I to plead in vain?”

      “You do not know me,” she said; “how vile I have been! You do not think what it is,—for a woman to have promised herself to one man while she loved another.”

      “But it was me you loved. Ah! Alice, I can forgive that. Do I not tell you that I did forgive it the moment that I heard it? Do you not hear me say that I never for a moment thought that you would marry him? Alice, you should scold me for my vanity, for I have believed all through that you loved me, and me only. Come to me, dear, and tell me that it is so, and the past shall be only as a dream.”

      “I am dreaming it always,” said Alice.

      “They will cease to be bitter dreams if your

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