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There was no breakfast at Herons' Holt that morning. When George, dressed, bathed and shaved, sought out his uncle, it was to find Mr. Marrapit in the study. The distracted man was pacing the floor, a closely written sheet of paper in his hands. He turned upon George. "In the hour of my travail I am also beneath the burden of earlier griefs. Yesterday a disastrous scene took place between us.
"You, a great lady, and so much envied I, so humble and despised, pity you?" "Tell me, my poor friend," resumed Adrienne, after some moments of silence, "are not the worst griefs those which we dare not avow to any one, for fear of raillery and contempt? How can we venture to ask interest or pity, for sufferings that we hardly dare avow to ourselves, because they make us blush?"
She herself was, or seemed to be, perfectly unconscious of the many discussions concerning her and her origin. She had her own secret sorrows, her sad private history, which she shut close within her own breast, but out of many griefs and poverty-stricken days of struggle and cruel environment, she had educated herself to a wonderful height of moral self-control and almost stoical rectitude.
Having himself contracted the habit of confiding his griefs and sorrows to the public, the sanctuary of his private life was open alike to the discussion of friends and enemies. The biographer, who wishes to be exact, and yet set down nought in malice, is forced to the contemplation of his errors.
His head fell on the table and his whole frame shook with emotion, while Blanche, with her own sad beautiful eyes swimming in tears, could not utter a word of consolation. When he had partially recovered she asked: "Why did you not tell me this before, you might have had my sympathy all along." "I did not care to burden you with my griefs." "Trust in God."
Oh, may I pass through it with you, grieving in your griefs, rejoicing in your joy!" Here language failed her. Again the dear arms embraced me, and the dear face, eloquent with love, hid itself on my human breast. That interview is over! Again I am banished from Lilian's room; the agitation, the joy of that meeting has overstrained her enfeebled nerves.
Alas! her griefs double mine!" What was my chagrin when, upon awaking and learning what had passed, the Queen burst into tears from regret at not having been called, and began to upbraid me, on whose friendship she ought to have been able to rely, for having served her so ill under such circumstances!
A great love was teaching her as only a great love can; a love which she scarcely dared to admit to herself, but which nevertheless was beginning to lead her step by step, into that mysterious land, half light, half shadow, which is the nearest road to Heaven, a land where we suffer gladly for another's sorrow, and are joyous in our own griefs, because another is happy!
But now as Barnabas sat there staring into the fire and lost in thought, he became, all at once, a prey to Doubt and Fear once again, doubt of himself, and fear of the future; for, bethinking him of his father's last words, it seemed to him that he had indeed chosen the harder course, since his days, henceforth, must needs stretch away a dismal prospect wherein no woman's form might go beside him, no soft voice cheer him, no tender hand be stretched out to soothe his griefs; truly he had chosen the harder way, a very desolate way where no light fall of a woman's foot might banish for him its loneliness.
"Is not this a strange place," she continued, "for a woman, who has lived in a very different world too, to be found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph Sedley; I have been made to suffer so cruelly that I am almost made mad sometimes. I can't stay still in any place, but wander about always restless and unhappy. All my friends have been false to me all.
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