because I have determined to throw my mind and heart open to you. I
dare say you have wondered how my engagement to Orange hung fire. I was
bound to her, but my heart was elsewhere. You cannot understand the
distressing situation in which I found myself, bound in honour to hold
to an engagement which I detested, when all my hopes of happiness lay in
another direction. You do not know what it is to be tied to one person
and to love another. It is now many months since I first saw you, and
the more I have seen of you the deeper, the more intense has been my
love for you, and my repugnance towards a marriage with Orange. You and
I are one in sympathies, in rank, and in faith. We understand each
other; we are, as it were, made to constitute each other's happiness.'
Mirelle put her hand on the Captain's arm, and tried to speak--to avert
what he was saying; but the words died on her tongue. She trembled
helplessly. Then she clasped her hands, and wrung them on her lap,
despairingly. Speak she could not; but if Trecarrel had looked into her
face, he would have seen the agony of her soul, and how she implored
him, with her terrified eyes and her quivering lips, to forbear. He did
not look. If he had, and read that appeal, it would not have stayed him.
'I did not venture to declare to you--no, not even to allow you to
suspect--what was passing within me. I am a gentleman of high and
honourable feelings. I knew that I had allowed myself, through
inadvertence, to become entangled in an engagement to a person whom I
could regard, but could not love. All at once I became aware that my
heart was elsewhere. I proceeded, however, as an honourable man, to
fulfil that which I had undertaken. What my misery was, you can ill
conceive. I saw the fatal day approach with feelings of disgust and
despair. That day would bind me for life to an uncongenial companion,
and separate me for ever from her whom I felt, whom I knew, to be
essential to my happiness. Is it a marvel that, when circumstances
occurred which arrested the marriage, I felt relief? Is it to be
wondered at that now I feel a doubt whether I ought to go further in
this matter? Ask yourself, am I further tied--in duty--in honour? Can
I conscientiously marry a girl whom I do not love, whom I have even come
to regard with repugnance, with whom I can never be happy, and whose
whole life will be embittered by the knowledge that though she has my
name and my hand, she has not gained my heart? No, Mirelle; dear,
dearest Mirelle, no!'
'Stay--in heaven's name, stay!' gasped Mirelle. 'You must not speak to
me thus.'
'Why not?'
'I must ask you a question,' she said, and wiped the cold dew from her
lips and brow. 'I must ask of you a favour.'
'Ask me anything; it is yours.'
'Captain Trecarrel, this is Christmas Day. After eight days I shall
belong to another. I ask you--allow me to be married in Trecarrel
Chapel.'
Her heart beat so fast that it took away her breath. She was unable to
proceed.
Captain Trecarrel's blue eyes opened with amazement. He could not
believe his ears.
'I shall be married to--John Herring.'
Then she sank back in the coach, and threw her handkerchief over her
face. The wheels rattled over the pavement of the street.
'Stop!' shouted the Captain. 'Damnation! stop!'
He got out. 'Drive on hard to Dolbeare, coachman; the young lady has
fainted.'
So the coach rattled through the marketplace and along the High Street,
whilst the bells rang merrily, merrily, Glad tidings of great joy!
Roast beef and plum pudding and mince-pies to those who can afford it;
to the poor--nothing.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
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