"HAD I BUT MET YOU FIRST."
"But cruel fate that shapes our ends,
Dark doom that poet love attends,
The fate unhappy Petrarch sung
In fair Italia's burning tongue;
Such fate as reckless tears apart
The tendrils of the breaking heart,
From every prop where it would twine,
That cruel fate, alas, is mine,
For love of you!"
--MRS. ALEX. MCVEIGH MILLER.
Lovers and poets rave of voices so dear and sweet that they can call
one back almost from the borders of the grave.
Perhaps there is some little truth in those romantic ravings.
Precious Winans had been lying back as mute and still as some marble
image of a dead maiden, but those frenzied caresses, those sobbing
whispers, "My love! my darling!" sent the warm blood bounding sweetly
through her veins once more and her eyes opened with a dazed expression.
She saw Lord Chester's face bent close to hers with actual tears in the
splendid eyes, and her lips seemed to burn with his kisses. Wildly she
struggled out of his arms.
"How dare you kiss me?" she half moaned, trying to be angry.
"Forgive me, Precious, I thought you were dead and it almost drove me
mad. Do you not remember the dreadful rattler? I sucked the poison from
the wound, but I must take you home at once and send for a physician,
although I do not believe there can be any danger. Can you lean on me,
dear child--little sister that is to be--and let me lead you to the
house?"
His passion had changed to remorseful gentleness, and drawing her arm
through his he conducted her to Earle and Norah, who were horrified
at learning of the accident. Precious was taken to her room and a
physician summoned.
But beyond the shock and fright Precious suffered no ill effects from
the rattlesnake's venom. Lord Chester's measures had been quick and
effectual, declared the village doctor.
But Precious kept her room all day, with Norah near at hand, and only
came down at night when Earle begged her to sit awhile with Lord
Chester while he went on an errand to the village.
Lord Chester was sitting on the long piazza, watching the beautiful
moonlight as it silvered the landscape with its opal gleams.
He went to meet the girl, and placed her in a chair where the full
flood of moonlight shone on her marvelous beauty. But he saw that she
shrank and trembled at his nearness.
"You are angry with me," he said humbly, sorrowfully.
"I owe you my life for the second time. For that I must be grateful,"
she murmured faintly.
"Yet you despise me--because I dared--almost fearing you dead--to press
one kiss on your lips."
"You had no right," she faltered, holding her golden head quite
proudly; then, almost inaudibly: "You belong to Ethel."
There was ineffable sadness in the subdued voice--sadness and
struggling pride. He whispered thrillingly:
"Yes, Precious, I am not forgetting your sister's claim. Before I saw
you I loved her, but the moment I gazed on your face--ay, the mere
sight of your portrait--turned my heart from her to you. No, let me
speak, for I am not disloyal to Ethel. I mean to keep the troth I
plighted her when I realized that my honor stood pledged to her.
But to-day I was weak, wicked, if you will, for my heart o'er-leaped
control when I met you again. In my love and grief I went mad over you.
But will you forgive me? Will you let me keep that kiss as a precious
memory in the long years when I shall see you no more? For, dear, I
shall marry your sister and try to give her my heart. Our home will be
far away, in another clime, and I shall pray Heaven that I never see
your face again--the sweet face that lured me from queenly Ethel! But,
oh, love, if I had met you first, ere the mournful river sang, 'Too
late! too late!'" and turning quickly from her he went out into the
shadows of the night.