"Believe me, Mr. Hanbury, I take this step with a view to our mutual good, and in no haste or pique. I shall always think of you, with the greatest interest and respect. I should like, if you think well of it, that we may remain friends in appearance as I hope we may always be in spirit.
"I ask you for only one favour. Pray do not make any attempt whatever to treat this decision as anything but final and irrevocable.
"Yours very sincerely,"Dora Ashton."
So far the difficult parts of the affair had been done, and done too with much less pain than she could have imagined. She had taken the two great steps without faltering. She had made up her mind to end the engagement between her and John Hanbury, and she had written to him saying the engagement was at an end. If ill-matched people who found themselves engaged to one another only acted with her decision and promptness what an infinity of misery would be avoided. She was almost surprised it had required so little effort for her to make up her mind and to put her decision on paper. She had often heard of the miseries such a step entailed, and here she was now sitting alone in her own room after doing the very thing and feeling little the worse of it. She was but twenty-one, and she had broken with the only man she had ever seriously thought of as a lover, and it had not caused her anything like the pang she had suffered last night when he reproached her so bitterly and told her he could expect nothing but betrayal at her hands.
And now that the important part of the affair had been disposed of in a business-like way, what had she to do?
Nothing.
She could do nothing else whatever. It wanted some hours of dinner-time, and no one ever called upon them of Fridays except-him,
and he would not call to-day. She should have the whole of the afternoon to herself. That was fortunate, for although she did not feel greatly depressed or cast down, she was not inclined towards company of any kind. It had been arranged early yesterday that she should ride with her father in the Park to-day, and she had not cared to plead any excuse, for she did not want to attract attention to herself, and besides, she did not feel very much in need of any excuse since she knew he would not be there. He knew they were to ride there. In fact he had promised to meet her there, but after last night he would not of course go, for he would not like the first meeting after last night to occur in so public a place and so soon after that scene.
Yes, everything was in perfectly regular order now and she had the afternoon to herself without any fear of interruption. So she could now sit down and rest, and-think.
Then she remained quite still for a long time in her easy chair, quite still, with her hand before her face and her eyes closed. The difficulties had been faced and overcome in a wise and philosophical way, and nothing remained to be done but to do nothing, and as she sat and thought this doing of nothing became harder than all that had gone before. She had told herself she was a person of convictions and principles when she was resolving on action and acting on resolve. She had no further need of her convictions and principles. She laid them aside with the writing materials out of which she had called forth that letter to Jack-to Mr. Hanbury. She did not realize until this moment, she had not had time to realize it, that she was a woman, a young girl who had given her heart to a young man, and that now he and she had parted to meet no more on the old terms.
It was easy to shut up the ceremonious gates of the temple and say worship was at an end in that place for ever. But how fared it in the penetralia of her heart? How did she face the inner chambers of her soul where the statue of her hero stood enshrined for worship? It cost but little effort to say that the god was deposed, but could she all at once effectually forbid the priestess to worship?
Ah, this doing of nothing when all had been done, was ten thousand times harder than action!
All the faculties of her reason were in favour of her decision, but what has the reason to do with the glance of an eye, or the touch of a hand, of the confiding commune of a soul in sympathy with one's own?
She understood him better than any other woman ever should. It was her anxiety that he should stand high in his own regard that made her jealous of his little weaknesses, and they were little, and only weaknesses after all, and only weaknesses in a giant, not the weaknesses of a man of common clay. If she had loved more what he was to her than what she dreamed he might be to himself and all the world, she would have taken no trouble in these matters that angered him to fury.
And why should he not be angered with her for her poor, feeble woman's interference with his lion nature? Why should he not turn upon her and revile her for coming across his path? Who was she that she must irritate him that was all the world to her, and deferred to by all men who came his way? Why should she thwart or impede him?