The handsome Englishman attracted
her strangely, and not by his outward personality only. From the first
a sort of mystery had hung over him, and she had felt, when she was
with him, the inexplicable fascination of a curiosity which she should
be sure to satisfy sooner or later. And now, having learned something
of his life, and liking him the more for what she knew, she was
suddenly filled with an irresistible longing to see the girl who had
made the first mark on Gilbert's life. She tried to conjure up the
young face, and the dark hue he had spoken of brought the vision of a
fateful shadow. Her mind dwelt upon the girl, and she started visibly
when Gilbert spoke to her.
"And has your Grace no deed for me to do?" he asked. "Is there nothing
whereby I may prove my thanks?"
"Nothing, save that you be indeed my friend--a friend I can trust, a
friend to whom I may speak safely as to my own soul, a friend whom I
may tell how heartily I hate this life I lead!"
She uttered the last words with a sudden rising accent of unruly
discontent, as genuine as every other outward showing of her vital
nature.
"How can your life be hateful?" asked Gilbert, in profound
astonishment, for he did not know her half as well as she already knew
him.
"How can it be anything else?" she asked, "How should life not be
hateful, when every natural thing that makes life worth living is
choked as soon as it is awake? Oh, I often wish I were a man!"
"Men do not wish you were," answered Gilbert, with a smile.
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