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Updated: June 25, 2025
Yet if penance were required, what had he not given?... Exile, loneliness, nonentity for all the best years of his life; and her image, the beloved face of his lost Joan, the only woman's presence in his life. And yet now, as he stood gazing, gazing to the far blue hills, it seemed that her face and Meryl's were strangely blended.
"As if he couldn't go there any day!" she grumbled. "O, of course, he is perfectly odious." Meryl's eyes met her father's, and they both laughed, while he remarked, "Never mind; perhaps we can lay a trap for him another time. Evidently he has no particular fancy for ladies' company." "Do you know the Macaulays?" Meryl asked. "No, but I am going to see them in two or three days on business."
So Henry devoted himself entirely to the science of money-making, and at thirty-five he was a rich man. He married a second time, choosing for his wife among the gentlest-born Johannesburg could offer, and winning the sweet woman who was Meryl's mother.
So little ever escaped his clear eyes that it was not in the least surprising he had seen whither Meryl's mind was trending, almost before she knew of it herself. And much as he admired Major Carew, he feared, with the clear sight of a great love, that indefinable something that stood as a barrier between the man and his outlook upon certain phases of life.
The girls' influence upon each other, which was cemented by a very deep affection, was wholly beneficial; for whereas Diana awakened Meryl from too much dreaminess, Meryl's quiet dignity had a softening effect upon Diana's too great exuberance of spirits and occasional boyish lack of refinement, which was more the result of a boisterous capacity for enjoyment than inbred.
"Have you seen Meryl's dress," she enquired, with an expression that had suddenly grown sentimental. "The dear child. To think of her in her wedding-dress, so soon to be a bride!" "Well, that's a commonplace enough event! Girls like Meryl usually do become brides, and later on they wear shrouds, and have a nice little coffin all to themselves. There really isn't very much difference!..."
And then, knowing well that Meryl's heart was given elsewhere, she spent no anxious moments as to whether this warmer feeling of hers were unfair to her cousin. It was as though it was just held in abeyance waiting for something to happen; and when the something had happened, she swam out fearlessly into the deep water. With van Hert it had necessarily been different.
Beyond them, what you see here, a far dream-country of untold loveliness. I said, 'O, Billy! have you lived beside this all these months? And then I began to cry, because I didn't know what else to do, and I was so glad that I had come." A fleeting shadow of sadness seemed to cross Meryl's face. "I envy you," she said in a low voice. "You can stay on with the man you love, and see it every day.
She felt vaguely that some new thought was forming in Meryl's mind, some thought that held danger, but she could not grasp in what direction it tended. And van Hert smoked his pipe with a very thoughtful air that evening, pondering deeply.
He was peeling a pear in a slow, methodical fashion, and his face quickly seemed to assume the expression of one whose thoughts were already elsewhere; but not before, with a quick, characteristic movement, he had glanced keenly and surreptitiously into Meryl's face and read her indecision. Something was on her mind.
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