"Be prudent," said Henry. "Say no more."
"Nay, upon such a theme I could speak for ever. You may cast me off, Flora; but until you tell me you love another, I am yours till the death, and then with a sanguine hope at my heart that we shall meet again, never, dearest, to part."
Flora sobbed bitterly.
"Oh!" she said, "this is the unkindest blow of all--this is worse than all."
"Unkind!" echoed Holland.
"Heed her not," said Henry; "she means not you."
"Oh, no--no!" she cried. "Farewell, Charles--dear Charles."
"Oh, say that word again!" he exclaimed, with animation. "It is the first time such music has met my ears."
"It must be the last."
"No, no--oh, no."
"For your own sake I shall be able now, Charles, to show you that I really loved you."
"Not by casting me from you?"
"Yes, even so. That will be the way to show you that I love you."
She held up her hands wildly, as she added, in an excited voice,--
"The curse of destiny is upon me! I am singled out as one lost and accursed. Oh, horror--horror! would that I were dead!"
Charles staggered back a pace or two until he came to the table, at which he clutched for support. He turned very pale as he said, in a faint voice,--
"Is--is she mad, or am I?"
"Tell him I am mad, Henry," cried Flora. "Do not, oh, do not make his lonely thoughts terrible with more than that. Tell him I am mad."
"Come with me," whispered Henry to Holland. "I pray you come with me at once, and you shall know all."
"I--will."
"George, stay with Flora for a time. Come, come, Mr. Holland, you ought, and you shall know all; then you can come to a judgment for yourself. This way, sir. You cannot, in the wildest freak of your imagination, guess that which I have now to tell you."
Never was mortal man so utterly bewildered by the events of the last hour of his existence as was now Charles Holland, and truly he might well be so. He had arrived in England, and made what speed he could to the house of a family whom he admired for their intelligence, their high culture, and in one member of which his whole thoughts of domestic happiness in this world were centered, and he found nothing but confusion, incoherence, mystery, and the wildest dismay.
Well might he doubt if he were sleeping or waking--well might he ask if he or they were mad.
And now, as, after a long, lingering look of affection upon the pale, suffering face of Flora, he followed Henry from the room, his thoughts were busy in fancying a thousand vague and wild imaginations with respect to the communication which was promised to be made to him.
But, as Henry had truly said to him, not in the wildest freak of his imagination could he conceive of any thing near the terrible strangeness and horror of that which he had to tell him, and consequently he found himself closeted with Henry in a small private room, removed from the domestic part of the hall, to the full in as bewildered a state as he had been from the first.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COMMUNICATIONS TO THE LOVER.--THE HEART'S DESPAIR.
[Illustration]
Consternation is sympathetic, and any one who had looked upon the features of Charles Holland, now that he was seated with Henry Bannerworth, in expectation of a communication which his fears told him was to blast all his dearest and most fondly cherished hopes for ever, would scarce have recognised in him the same young man who, one short hour before, had knocked so loudly, and so full of joyful hope and expectation, at the door of the hall.
But so it was. He knew Henry Bannerworth too well to suppose that any unreal cause could blanch his cheek. He knew Flora too well to imagine for one moment that caprice had dictated the, to him, fearful words of dismissal she had uttered to him.
Happier would it at that time have been for Charles Holland had she acted capriciously towards him, and convinced him that his true heart's devotion had been cast at the feet of one unworthy of so really noble a gift. Pride would then have enabled him, no doubt, successfully to resist the blow. A feeling of honest and proper indignation at having his feelings trifled with, would, no doubt, have sustained him, but, alas! the case seemed widely different.
True, she implored him to think of her no more--no longer to cherish in his breast the fond dream of affection which had been its guest so long; but the manner in which she did so brought along with it an irresistible conviction, that she was making a noble sacrifice of her own feelings for him, from some cause which was involved in the profoundest mystery.