This caused him restless anguish. What
was the meaning of it all? Could she have learned in the light of the
world that it was not a very great position he had offered her, and so
despised him in consequence? What aspect of it might they not have put
into her head--these people she was with--this step-mother of whom he
had never heard? In all cases Fate had parted them, and he must cut the
pain of it from his life or it would destroy him. It never occurred to
him to reflect upon the possible agony she might be suffering, his poor
little wood-nymph, all alone. The fact of his own unhappiness filled his
mind to the exclusion of any other thought for the time. In his dire
physical weakness Cecilia Cricklander's gracious beauty seemed to
augment, and Halcyone's sylph-like charm to grow of less potent force.
For Love had not done all that he would yet do with John Derringham's
soul.
That underneath, if he could have chosen between the two women, he would
have hesitated for a second was not the case; only physical weakness,
and circumstance and propinquity were working for the one and against
the other--and so it would appear was Fate.
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