I pondered much on this; I
believed at last that the solitude, the isolation, would be not
unpropitious to me. From the little world of the ice-locked vessel his
thoughts would turn to the greater world he had left, and I should be
remembered. When he returned we should be much together. His mother was
dead; our house was the only place he could call his home. Not even for
me, I felt assured, would he cast off the love of his only brother. I
had not done with him yet. So quietly and composedly I awaited his
return.
He came at last, and his manner when we met smote me with a strange
uneasiness. It was not the estrangement of a friend whom I had injured,
but the distant politeness of a stranger. Was my influence gone? I
determined to know, once for all. When we chanced to be alone a moment
I went to his side. "William," I asked, laying my hand on his arm, and
speaking in a tender, reproachful tone, "why do you treat me so?"
With a quick, decided motion, he removed my hand,--then looked down on
me with a smile. "'You are strangely obtuse,'" he said, quoting my own
words of two years before. "What can Mrs. Haughton desire from a base
fortune-hunter with whom she is unhappily connected by marriage, but a
humility that does not presume on the relationship?"
I saw a bold stroke was needed, and that I must stoop to conquer.
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