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He gave it to his friend, and ate, pleasantly, while Orange glanced down the page. His soul's wish was to be left alone. The effort of forcing himself not to affect but honestly to feel an interest in Reckage's conversation had proved successful.
Orange was in no mood for the entertainment, but Reckage's evident misery seemed to require a fresh scene. The streets, as they left the house, were full of a deep purple fog, through which shone out, with a dull and brazen gleam, the lights of lamps and passing carriages.
He was leaning forward, for the seat in front of him was, at the moment, vacant; his hands were tightly locked, his eyes fixed on the curtain. At last Reckage's determined stare produced its effect. He moved, glanced toward the box, and, in response to his lordship's signal, left his place. Two minutes later Orange heard a tap at the door.
Sara had recovered from the emotion called forth by Reckage's tragic fate, and she was living now in one of those taciturn reveries which had become more and more habitual with her since the last interview with d'Alchingen.
We never see each other now, and we never write to each other." Her voice trembled for the first time. "How does he look?" she asked, after a sharp struggle between her pride and a desire to hear more. "He looks ill and worn. He over-works." "He will suffer at Lord Reckage's death." "But he hides his feelings. He is always reticent."
"She talks and writes incessantly about Orange," he had said; "what a marriage it would be! I hope it may be brought about." This suggestion drove Reckage's thoughts toward a fatal survey of the past year. He discovered, as he believed, irresistible proofs of Sara's infatuation, and, what was worse, clear evidence of Robert's sly encouragement of that weakness.
Awe, too, had mingled in Reckage's sensations while he looked on; something of pity and terror stirred under the callous muscle which he called his heart at the sight of a voiceless, stifled despair outside the range of his personal experience, though not entirely beyond his sympathy.
It is an unhappy policy, and always unhappily applied, to imagine that men can be reconciled by partial concessions. I attribute much of Reckage's behaviour to his fear of society. Society itself, however, does not practise any of the virtues which it demands from the individual. It ridicules the highest motives, and degrades the most heroic achievements.
The exercise of divining the many hidden meanings in Reckage's epistle was certainly purely intellectual.
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