Mais ai-je sur son ame encor quelque pouvoir,
Quelque reste d'amour s'y fait il encor voir.--_Polyeucte_.
With a slow step and a sinking heart, Morton entered Mrs. Ashland's
drawing room. He told her of his proposed journey; told her that he
should leave the country within a few days, to be absent for a year or
two at least, and asked her mediation to gain for him a parting
interview with Edith Leslie.
Mrs. Ashland, and she only, knew the whole misery of her friend's
position, and feared lest, exhausted as she was by mental pain and
long watching, and divided between her unextinguished love for Morton,
and her abhorrence of the criminal who by name and the letter of the
law was her husband, the meeting might put her self-mastery to too
painful a proof. She therefore, though with a very evident reluctance,
dissuaded Morton from it.
"Edith has been taxed already to the farthest limit of her strength.
She is not ill, but quite worn and spent. She is almost constantly
with her father, who, now, can hardly be said to live, and needs
constant care. To see you at this time would agitate her too much."
"Can the sight of me still have so much power to move her?"
"You know what she is. A feeling once rooted in her mind does not
loosen its hold. There are very few who comprehend her. Her character
is so balanced and so harmonious, so quiet and noiseless in its
movement, that no one suspects the force, and faith, and energy that
are in it. It is not in words or in looks that she shows herself. It
is in action, in emergencies, that she declares her power over herself
and over others."
Morton's passion glowed upon him with all its early fervor.
"I will tell her what you wish. But her cup is full already, and you
can hardly be willing to shake it to overflowing. It is impossible
that her father should linger many days more; and when that is over,
it will bring her a relief, though she may not think it so, in more
ways than one."
Morton assented to his friend's reasons, and leaving his farewell for
Edith Leslie, mournfully took his leave.