For the first moment there was not a word said between them, in the excess of emotion, he standing below, she looking out from above, her white face surrounded by the widow’s livery of woe, but suddenly flushed and glowing with life and love, and a kind of triumphant ecstasy. She had forgotten what it meant—she had not realised all that was in it; and now it burst upon her. She could not think, scarcely breathe—but held out her hands to him, with that look beyond words to describe. And he took them in the same way, and bent down his face over them, silent, not saying a word. The coachman and footman on the box thought it was excess of feeling that made this meeting so silent. They were sorry for their mistress, who was not yet able to meet anyone with composure; and the low brief conversation that followed, sounded to them like condolence and sympathy. How astounded the men would have been, and the still landscape around them, with its houses hidden in the trees, and all its silent observers about, had they known what this colloquy actually was.
“Edward!” was the first word that was said—and then “Carry! Carry! but I ought not to call you so.”
“Oh, never call me anything else,” she cried; “I could not endure another name from you. Oh, can you forgive me, have you forgiven me? I have paid for it—bitterly, bitterly! And it was not my fault.”
“I never blamed you. I have forgiven you always. My suffering is not older than my forgiveness.”
“You were always better than I;” and then she added eagerly, not pausing to think, carried on by that new tide that had caught her, “it is over; it is all over now.”
It was on his lips to say Thank God—but he reflected, and did not say it. He had held her hands all the time. There was nobody to see them, and the servants on the box were sympathetic and silent. Then he asked, “Will they let me go to you now?”
“You will not ask any leave,” she said hastily—“no leave! There are so many things I have to say to you—to ask your pardon. It has been on my heart to ask your pardon every day of my life. I used to think if I had only done that, I could die.”
“No dying now,” he said, with her hands in his.
“Ah,” she cried, with a little shudder, “but it is by dying I am here.”
He looked at her pitifully with a gaze of sympathy. He was prepared to be sorry if she was sorry. Even over his rival’s death Edward Beaufort felt himself capable of dropping a tear. He could go so far as that. Self-abnegation is very good in a woman, but in a man it is uncalled for to this degree. He could put himself out of the question altogether, and looked at her with the deepest sympathy, ready to condole if she thought proper. He was not prepared for the honesty of Carry’s profound sense of reopening life.
“You have had a great deal to bear,” he said, with a vague intention of consoling her. He was thinking of the interval that had elapsed since her husband’s death; but she was thinking of the dismal abyss before, and of all that was brought to a conclusion by that event.
“More than you can imagine—more than you could believe,” she said; then paused, with a hot blush of shame, not daring to look him in the face. All that she had suffered, was not that a mountain between them? She drew her hands out of his, and shrinking away from him, said, “When you think of that, you must have a horror of me.”
“I have a horror of you!” he said, with a faint smile. He put his head closer as she drew back. He was changed from the young man she had known. His beard, his mature air, the lines in his face, the gentle melancholy air which he had acquired, were all new to her. Carry thought that no face so compassionate, so tender, had ever been turned upon her before. A great pity seemed to beam in the eyes that were fixed with such tenderness upon her. Perhaps there was not in him any such flood of rosy gladness as had illuminated her. The rapture of freedom was not in his veins. But what a look that was! A face to pour out all your troubles to—to be sure always of sympathy from. This was what she thought.
Then in the tremor of blessedness and overwhelming emotion, she awoke to remember that she was by the roadside—no place for talk like this. Carry had no thought of what anyone would say. She would have bidden him come into the carriage and carried him away with her—her natural support, her consoler. There was no reason in her suddenly roused and passionate sense that never again must it be in anyone’s power to part them. Nor did she think that there could be any doubt of his sentiments, or whether he might still retain his love for her, notwithstanding all she had done to cure him of it. For the moment she was out of herself. They had
