The Shadow of a Sin Part 11

"I admire bravery," he replied, "but not unscrupulous daring. Do you see that lady sitting under the ilex tree?"

"The one with the sad, thoughtful face?" asked Hyacinth.

"Yes. Twelve months ago she was the leading star of the most brilliant court in Europe; now she has no home that she can call her own."

Hyacinth turned her face to his.

"Mr. Darcy," she said, "is the world then so full of reverses? I thought that, when one was happy and prosperous, sorrow and trouble did not approach. What is stable if money, and friendship, and happiness fail?"

"Just one thing," he replied, with the beautiful luminous smile she had never seen on any other face--"Heaven!"

CHAPTER XI.

Hyacinth Vaughan repeated one sentence over and over again to herself--they were always the same words--"Thank Heaven, Adrian does not know what I have done."

For, as the days pa.s.sed on, she learned to care for him with a love that was wonderful in its intensity. It was not his personal beauty that impressed her. By many people Claude Lennox would have been considered the handsomer man of the two. It was the grandeur of Adrian Darcy's character, the loyalty and n.o.bility of his most loyal soul; the beauty of his mind, the stretch and clearness of his intellect, that charmed her.

She had never met any one like him--never met so perfect a mixture of chivalry and strength. She learned to have the utmost reliance upon him.

His most lightly spoken word was to her as the oath of another. She saw that every thought, every word, every action of his was so perfectly correct that his least judgment was invaluable. If he said a thing was right, the whole world could not have made her think it wrong; if he disapproved of anything, so entire was her reliance upon him, that she could not be brought to consider it right.

It seemed so strange that she should have been so ready to run away, so as to escape this Adrian Darcy; and now the brightest heaven of which she could dream was his friendship--for his love, after she understood him, she could hardly hope.

"How can he care for a child like me," she was accustomed to ask herself, "uninformed, inexperienced, ignorant? He is so great and so n.o.ble, how can he care for me?"

She did not know that her sweet humility, her graceful shyness, her _navete_, her entire freedom from all taint of worldliness, was more precious to him, more charming, than all the accomplishments she could have displayed.

"How can I ever have thought that I loved Claude?" she said to herself.

"How can I have been so blind? My heart never used to beat more quickly for his coming. If I had had the same liberty, the same amus.e.m.e.nts and pleasures which other girls have, I should never have cared for him. It was only because he broke the monotony of my life, and gave me something to think of."

Then in her own mind she contrasted the two men--Adrian, so calm, so dignified, so n.o.ble in thought, word, and deed, and so loyal, so upright; Claude, all impetuosity, fire, recklessness and pa.s.sion--not to be trusted, not to be relied upon. There was never a greater difference of character surely than between these two men.

She learned to look with Adrian's eyes, to think with his mind; and she became a n.o.ble woman.

Life at Bergheim was very pleasant; there was no monotony, no dreariness now. Her first thought when she woke in the morning, was that she should see Adrian, hear him speak, perhaps go out with him. Quite unconsciously to herself, he became the centre of her thoughts and ideas--the soul of her soul, the life of her life. She did not know that she loved him; what she called her "love" for Claude had been something so different--all made up of gratified vanity and love of change. The beautiful affection rapidly mastering her was so great and reverent, it filled her soul with light, her heart with music, her mind with beauty.

She did not know that it was love that kept her awake throughout the night thinking of him, bringing back to her mind every word he had spoken--that made her always anxious to look well.

"I always thought," she said to him one day, "that grave and thoughtful people always despised romance."

"They despise all affectation and caricature of it," he replied.

"Since I have been out in the world and have listened to people talking, I have heard them say, 'Oh, she is romantic!' as though romance were wrong or foolish."

"There is romance and romance," he said; "romance that is n.o.ble, beautiful and exalting; and romance that is the overheated sentiment of foolish girls. What so romantic as Shakespeare? What love he paints for us--what pa.s.sion, what sadness! Who more romantic than Fouque? What wild stories, what graceful, improbable legends he gives us! Yet, who sneers at Shakespeare and Fouque?"

"Then why do people apply the word 'romantic' almost as a term of reproach to others?"

"Because they misapply the word, and do not understand it. I plead guilty myself to a most pa.s.sionate love of romance--that is, romance which teaches, elevates, and enn.o.bles--the soul of poetry, the high and n.o.ble faculty that teaches one to appreciate the beautiful and true. You know, Hyacinth, there are true romance and false romance, just as there are true poetry and false poetry."

"I can understand what you call true romance, but not what you mean by false," she said.

"No; you are too much like the flower you are named after to know much of false romance," he rejoined. "Everything that lowers one's standard, that tends to lower one's thoughts, that puts mere sentiment in the place of duty, that makes wrong seem right, that leads to underhand actions, to deceit, to folly--all that is false romance. Pardon my alluding to such things. The lover who would persuade a girl to deceive her friends for his sake, who would persuade her to give him private meetings, to receive secret letters--such a lover starts from a base of the very falsest romance; yet many people think it true."

He did not notice that her beautiful face had suddenly grown pale, and that an expression of fear had crept into her blue eyes.

"You are always luring me into argument, Hyacinth," he said, with a smile.

"Because I like to hear you talk," she explained. She did not see how full of love was the look he bent on her as he plucked a spray of azalea flowers and pa.s.sed it to her. Through the tears that filled her downcast eyes she saw the flower, and almost mechanically took it from his hand, not daring to look up. But in the silence of her own room she pressed the flowers pa.s.sionately to her lips and rained tears upon them, as she moaned, "Oh, if he knew, what would he think of me? what would he think?"

CHAPTER XII.

Hyacinth Vaughan was soon to learn more of Mr. Darcy's sentiments. He was dining with them one day, when the conversation turned upon some English guests who had arrived at the hotel the evening before--Lord and Lady Wallace.

"She looks quite young," said Lady Vaughan. "She would be a nice companion for Hyacinth."

Mr. Darcy, to whom she was speaking, made no reply. Lady Vaughan noticed how grave his face had grown.

"Do you not think so, Adrian?" she asked.

"Since you wish me to speak, my answer is, no; I do not think so."

"Do you mind telling me why?" pursued Lady Vaughan "I have been so long out of the world I am ignorant of its proceedings."

"I would rather you would not ask me, Lady Vaughan," he said.

"And I would rather hear what you have to tell," she persisted, with a smiling air of command that he was too courteous not to obey.

"I do not think Lady Wallace would be a good companion for Hyacinth, because she is what people of the period call 'fast.' She created a great sensation three years ago by eloping with Lord Wallace. She was only seventeen at the time."

Lady Vaughan looked slightly disgusted; but Hyacinth, who perhaps felt in some measure that she was on her trial, said: "Perhaps she loved him."

Adrian turned to her eagerly. "That is what I was trying to explain to you the other day--false romance--how the truest, the purest, the brightest romance would have been, not eloping--which is the commonplace instinct of commonplace minds--but waiting in patience. Think of the untruths, the deceit, the false words, the underhand dealings that are necessary for an elopement!"

"But surely," said Lady Vaughan, "there are exceptions?"

"There may be. I do not know. I am only saying what I think. A girl who deceives all her friends, who leaves home in such a fashion, must be devoid of refinement and delicacy--not to mention truth and honesty."

"You are very hard," murmured Hyacinth.

"Nay," he rejoined, turning to her with infinite tenderness of manner; "there are some things in which one cannot be too hard. Anything that touches the fair and pure name of a woman should be held sacred."

"You think highly of women," she said.