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Updated: September 28, 2025
The season was over, and she had little else to do. She expected him back at any moment, and preferred to await his arrival in town. One evening she was sitting in her bedroom thinking of him. The night was hot and the windows were open. It was very late. She had been staring down upon the dark mass of tree-tops in the Park, recapitulating, phase by phase, the growth of her feeling for Hedworth.
But half an hour of weeping, and of the tenderest consolations, calmed the poor girl a little, and she was able to listen to the explanations. These were exceedingly simple, and so clear, as, in connection with the other evidence, to put the facts out of all doubt. Miss Hedworth had become known to Mrs. Dutton, while the latter was an inmate of the house of her patron.
"Is it that there is an impalpable entity in this world for me, and that part of it is in one man and part in another? Is the man who has the larger share the one I really love? Is that the explanation of loving a second time? It certainly is very like ridiculously like." She turned her thoughts to Hedworth, but they swung aside and pointed straight to the other man.
Her teeth indented the nib of her penholder. "Was ever a woman in such a predicament before? So illusionary and yet so ridiculously actual! Shall I send Hedworth away and sit down with this phantom through life? I understand that some women get their happiness out of just that sort of thing. Then when I forget Hedworth would I forget him? Is passion needed to set the soul free?
Agnes Hedworth, notwithstanding, had been very dear to our sailor, from a variety of causes, far more so, than her sister, the Duchess, though she was a favourite and the rear-admiral, when his mind glanced rapidly through the chain of association, that traced the accidental resemblance of Mildred to this esteemed object, had a sincere delight in finding he had thus been unconsciously attracted by one whose every look and smile now forcibly reminded him of the countenance of a being whom, in her day, he had thought so near perfection.
If Hedworth left her, died, she might regret him, long to have him back; but the ghost of that abandon of grief, that racking of every sense, that groping in an abyss while a voiceless something within her raved and shrieked, resolved itself into a finger of fire, which wrote Hedworth's inferior position. "What shall I do? What shall I do?" She dipped the pen into the ink and put it to the paper.
With chin drawn in and shoulders squared in a sort of petrified military habit, he received the feverish news that grew worse with each brief bulletin. He, the chief of staff; he, Hedworth Westerling, the superman, must be a rock in the flood of alarm. When he heard that his human ram was in recoil he declared that the repulse had been exaggerated repulses always were.
She was a clever woman, but not too clever; and their chances of happiness were good. And then a strange thing happened to her. Hedworth was called to Switzerland by his mother, who fell ill. His parting with Edith occupied several hours, and during the three or four days following, his affianced protested that she was inconsolable.
At first they enjoyed this new experience; but when they found themselves in a large party that seemed to pervade every corner of the house and grounds at once, and two days had passed without an interview of five minutes' duration, Hedworth walked up to her she was alone for the moment and said: "Four weeks from to-day we marry." She gave a little gasp, but made no protest.
Frederick Lambton and Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux, and the late Lord Lichfield. Looking down the long vista of sixty years with eyes that have already lost their keen vision, the most vivid impression that remains of my early childhood is the nightly ordeal of the journey down "The Passage of Many Terrors" in our Irish home.
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