67. CHAPTER LXVII.
Mais ai-je sur son ame encor quelque ponvoir,
Quelque reste d'amour s'y fait il encor voir.
— Polyeucte.
With a slow step and a sinking heart, Morton entered
Mrs. Ashland's drawing room. He told her of his proposed
journey; told her that he should leave the country within a
few days, to be absent for a year or two at least, and asked
her mediation to gain for him a parting interview with Edith
Leslie.
Mrs. Ashland, and she only, knew the whole misery of her
friend's position, and feared lest, exhausted as she was by
mental pain and long watching, and divided between her
unextinguished love for Morton, and her abhorrence of the
criminal who by name and the letter of the law was her husband,
the meeting might put her self-mastery to too painful a
proof. She therefore, though with a very evident reluctance,
dissuaded Morton from it.
“Edith has been taxed already to the farthest limit of her
strength. She is not ill, but quite worn and spent. She is
almost constantly with her father, who, now, can hardly be
said to live, and needs constant care. To see you at this
time would agitate her too much.”
“Can the sight of me still have so much power to
move her?”
“You know what she is. A feeling once rooted in her
mind does not loosen its hold. There are very few who comprehend
her. Her character is so balanced and so harmonious,
so quiet and noiseless in its movement, that no one
suspects the force, and faith, and energy that are in it. It is
not in words or in looks that she shows herself. It is in
action, in emergencies, that she declares her power over herself
and over others.”
Morton's passion glowed upon him with all its early fervor.
“I will tell her what you wish. But her cup is full
already, and you can hardly be willing to shake it to overflowing.
It is impossible that her father should linger many
days more; and when that is over, it will bring her a relief,
though she may not think it so, in more ways than one.”
Morton assented to his friend's reasons, and leaving his
farewell for Edith Leslie, mournfully took his leave.
