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Page 27
"I could not help speaking. I love you, Charlotte. Is there any wrong in
loving you? If I had any hope of winning you."
"No, no; there is no hope. I do not love you. I never shall love you."
"Unless you have some other lover, Charlotte, I shall dare to hope"--
"I have a lover."
"Oh!"
"And I am frank with you because it is best. I trust you will respect my
candor."
He only bowed. Indeed, he found speech impossible. Never before had
Charlotte looked so lovely and so desirable to him. He felt her positive
rejection very keenly.
"Sophia is coming. Please to forget that this conversation has ever
been."
"You are very cruel."
"No. I am truly kind. Sophia, I am tired; let us go home."
So they turned out of the field, and into the lane. But something was
gone, and something had come. Sophia felt the change, and she looked
curiously at Julius and Charlotte. Charlotte was calmly mingling the
poppies and wheat in her hands. Her face revealed nothing. Julius was a
little melancholy. "The fairies have left us," he said. "All of a
sudden, the revel is over." Then as they walked slowly homeward, he took
Sophia's hand, and swayed it gently to and fro to the old fiddler's
refrain,--
"'Little I thought what love could do.'"
CHAPTER V.
CHARLOTTE.
"Oh, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day!"
"Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte."
When Charlotte again went to Up-Hill she found herself walking through a
sober realm of leafless trees. The glory of autumn was gone. The hills,
with their circular sheep-pens, were now brown and bare; and the plaided
shepherds, descending far apart, gave only an air of loneliness to the
landscape. She could see the white line of the stony road with a sad
distinctness. It was no longer bordered with creeping vines and patches
of murmuring bee-bent heather. And the stream-bed also had lost nearly
all its sentinel rushes, and the tall brakens from its shaggy slopes
were gone. But Silver Beck still ran musically over tracts of tinkling
stones; and, through the chilly air, the lustered black cock was
crowing for the gray hen in the hollow.
Very soon the atmosphere became full of misty rain; and ere she reached
the house, there was a cold wind, and the nearest cloud was sprinkling
the bubbling beck. It was pleasant to see Ducie at the open door ready
to welcome her; pleasant to get into the snug houseplace, and watch the
great fire leaping up the chimney, and throwing lustres on the carved
oak presses and long settles, and on the bright brass and pewter
vessels, and the rows of showy chinaware. Very pleasant to draw her
chair to the little round table on the hearthstone, and to inhale the
fragrance of the infusing tea, and the rich aroma of potted char and
spiced bread and freshly-baked cheese-cakes. And still more pleasant to
be taken possession of, to have her damp shoes and cloak removed, her
chill fingers warmed in a kindly, motherly clasp, and to be made to feel
through all her senses that she was indeed "welcome as sun-shining."
With a little shiver of disappointment she noticed that there were only
two tea-cups on the table; and the house, when she came to analyze its
atmosphere, had in it the perceptible loneliness of the absent master.
"Is not Stephen at home?" she asked, as Ducie settled herself
comfortably for their meal; "I thought Stephen was at home."
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