But to tell this girl, or even her
father or mother, that he had been married, after a shameful,
unsanctified fashion, to a savage, with what came after, and the awful
thing that happened--he who ministered at the altar! Now that he looked
the thing in the face it shocked him. No, he could not do it.
She said to him, while he looked at her as though he would read her
through and through, though his mind was occupied with a dreadful
possibility beyond her:
"Why do you look so? You are stern. You are critical. Have I--disimproved
so?"
The words were full of a sudden and natural womanly fear, that something
in herself had fallen in value. They had a pathos so much the more moving
because she sought to hide it.
There swam before his eyes the picture of happiness from which she
herself had roused him when she came. He involuntarily, passionately,
caught her hand and pressed it to his lips twice; but spoke nothing.
"Oh! oh!--please!" she said. Her voice was low and broken, and she spoke
appealingly. Could he not see that he was breaking her heart, while
filling it also with unbearable joy? Why did he not speak and make this
possible, and not leave it a thing to flush her cheeks, and cause her to
feel he had acted on a knowledge he had no right to possess till he had
declared himself in speech? Could he not have spared her that?--This
Christian gentleman, whose worth had compassed these mountains and won
the dwellers among them--it was bitter.
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