, why should she rob herself of
a last joy?

She laid her head on his shoulder, and there she whispered in a voice he
hardly recognized, so dominated it was by sorrow and pain: "It must be
good-bye, beloved; we must not meet. Ah! never any more. I have been
meaning to say this to you all the day. I cannot bear it either. Oh, we
must part, and it must end; but oh, not--not in that way!"

He tried to persuade her, he pleaded with her, drew pictures of their
happiness that surely would be, talked of Italy and eternal summer and
exquisite pleasure and bliss.

And all the time he felt her quiver in his arms and respond to each
thought, as her imagination took fire at the beautiful pictures of love
and joy. But nothing shook her determination.

At last she said: "Dearest, if I were different perhaps, stronger and
braver, I could go away and live with you like that, and keep it all a
glorious thing; but I am not--only a weak creature, and the memory of my
broken word, and Josiah's sorrow, and your mother's anguish, would kill
all joy. We could have blissful moments of forgetfulness, but the great
ghost of remorse would chase for me all happiness away. Dearest, I love
you so; but oh, I could not live, haunted like that; I should
just--die."

Then he knew all hope was over, and the mad passion went out of him, and
his arms dropped to his sides as if half life had fled. She looked up in
his face in fear at its ghastly whiteness.

And at this moment, through the parted willows, there appeared the
sullen, mocking eyes of Morella Winmarleigh.

She pushed the bushes aside, and, followed by Lord Wensleydown, she came
towards the summer-house.

Her slow senses had taken in the scene. Hector was evidently very
unhappy, she thought, and that hateful woman had been teasing him, no
doubt.

Thus her banal mind read the tragedy of these two human lives.

XXVII

Morella Winmarleigh had been taking an evening stroll with Lord
Wensleydown. They had come upon the two in the summer-house quite by
accident, but now they had caught them they would stick to them, and
make their walk as tiresome as possible, they both decided to
themselves.

After very great emotion such as Hector and Theodora had been
experiencing, to have this uncongenial and hateful pair as companions
was impossible to bear.

Neither Hector or Theodora stirred or made room for them on the seat.

"Isn't this a sweet place, Lord Wensleydown?" Miss Winmarle