DALLAS GALBRAITH.
1868.]
“ She is not here.
Colonel Pervis
drove her to town this morning. She will be back to-morrow.” They both were silent after that.
There was no reason why Dallas should stay longer.
His
choice was made.
Honora, drawn back a little, her eyes
dropped on the floor, waited, he thought,
only to say good-bye.
But he did not
say good-bye. He never knew, after ward, how long he stood there, or of what he thought as he gazed at the downcast face. She knew, without look ing at him, and turned from him with a shiver: “I must leave you now. If you will an
“ Yes, I will go.”
“ Do you wish me to keep your secret ?”
“ Yes: until I come back.” A faint heat began to rise in Honora’s cheeks. If she could not take this hero
by the hand and lead him in to her un cle, it was something to know that he had gone out like an old Crusader into the world seeking the true knighthood— something to hold his secret in her hand, a tie between themselves alone, some day
to draw him gently back to claim his own. It was romance and mystery enough to comfort any woman. “ You may trust me,” she said, in a
whisper, a precaution which she had neglected before. Another silence, in which he waited. But still she did not look at him.
“ When will you come back?” “ In a year. I will try what strength I have, and if I succeed, I will come
and claim my place.” “ If you do not succeed?”
“ Then I will come to you to say farewell, Miss Dundas, for ever. I will ask you to forget that I ever crossed your path.” He came closer to her, involuntarily,
as he spoke. The dreadful constraint and weight which oppressed him when ever he tried to drag his secret thoughts to the light were upon him. He looked down from his grave, square height on Honora where she stood: her hands were clasped and resting on a heap of
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dead moss. They were so bloodless that he wondered, vaguely, if they were not icy cold, and went on hurriedly stumbling
through his words: “ You must not think I have not seen the sacrifice you would have made. I am not so ignorant that a noble, true woman—” There he stopped. Her bosom was heaving, her chin quivering as Matt’s did when he choked back the tears. Galbraith made one step that brought him beside her. Could it be that it cost her anything for him to go ? The white, cold hands were very near him. He clasped his own behind him
resolutely.
He had no thought of her
as the beautiful, richly-dressed lady; but he did remember that the taint of the prison was on his flesh, and until
she knew it he had no right to touch her. “I will keep your secret,” she said, “ and a year from now I will look for you to come back. Good-bye, Cousin Dallas.”
She held out her hand, and
when he did not take it looked wonder ingly up at him. Poor Dallas ! All that he knew was the face upturned to his. He had failed to recognize the fairy queen in her elaborate silken sheen. A woman was a woman to him; and in this swift moment he
absorbed every trifling detail that set this one apart from others, and gathered it all into his honest, stupid heart, to feed on hereafter. This gown she wore, he thought, was the very color of the inside of the shells he used to find at low tide; and her eyes were dark and brown as the kelp washed up on the shore: the old friendly Manasquan life came up as the echo of a far-off home-song. Her eyes were full of tears. She was very near to him—nearer than any living be
ing.
On the night he first saw her
he knew that, when, from the world from which he was shut out, she had held her hand down to him. Before he came back, she would marry—in her own class. Not a convict. But with the quiet assurance of real love, he knew himself to be near to her nearer to her than any other man could ever be. Now, he was intolerably alone;
