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But her interest was immediately aroused when she saw that Quenelda's usually rosy face was white with anguish, and the girl's pretty eyes swollen with many tears. "What is the matter, dear?" asked Elisabeth, with that sound in her voice which made all weak things turn to her. "You are in trouble, and you must let me help you." Quenelda broke out into bitter weeping.
When in due time this worthy man was gathered to his fathers, he left a comfortable little fortune to his long-lost grandson; whereupon Cecil married Quenelda, and continued to make art his profession, while his recreation took the form of believing and retailing his belief to anybody who had time and patience to listen to it that the Farringdons of Sedgehill had, by foul means, ousted him from his rightful position, and that, but for their dishonesty, he would have been one of the richest men in Mershire.
That she had not been altogether to blame that she had deluded herself in both cases as effectually as she had deluded him was no consolation as far as he was concerned; his egoism took no account of her motives it only resented the results. Quenelda did all in her power to comfort him, but she found it uphill work.
"I think if one loved another person as much as that," she said to herself, "one would understand a little of how God feels about us." Aloud she said: "Dear, what do you want me to do? I will do anything in the world that you wish." Quenelda seized Elisabeth's hand and kissed it. "How good you are! And I don't deserve it a bit, for I've been horrid to you and said vile things."
I am too refined, too highly strung, too sensitive, to enter upon such a weary struggle with circumstances as my marriage with a woman as poor as myself would entail; therefore, my darling Quenelda, much as I love you I feel it is my duty to renounce you; and as you grow older and wiser you will see that I am right.
She had not done what Quenelda had reproached her for doing, it was true; but she had deliberately lowered her ideal: she had wearied of striving after the best, and had decided that the second-best should suffice her; and for this she was now being chastised.
It was to help such a man as this that she had been willing to sacrifice her youthful ideals and her girlish dreams. What a fool she had been! "If you do not believe me, here is his letter," Quenelda went on; "I brought it on purpose for you to read, just to show you how little you are to him.
"You have everything," Quenelda went on, in spite of the sobs which shook her slender frame; "you had money and position to begin with, and everybody thought well of you and admired you and made life easy for you.
I can not write any more; my heart is breaking. How cruel it is that poverty should have power to separate forever such true lovers as you and I! "Your heartbroken "CECIL." Elisabeth gave back the letter to Quenelda. "Do you mean to tell me that you don't despise the man who sent this?" she asked. "No; because I love him, you see. You never did." "You are right there. I never loved him.
Cecil would rule at the Osierfield and Quenelda at the Willows instead of herself, and those dearly loved places would know her no more. At this thought Elisabeth broke down. How she loved every stone of the Black Country, and how closely all her childish fancies and girlish dreams were bound up in it!
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