As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo.  “Poor Carlo loves me,” said she.  “He is not stern and distant to his friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent.”

As she patted the dog’s head, bending with native grace before his young and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master’s face.  I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion.  Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she for a woman.  His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty.  But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed.  He responded neither by word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.

“Papa says you never come to see us now,” continued Miss Oliver, looking up.  “You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall.  He is alone this evening, and not very well:  will you return with me and visit him?”

“It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver,” answered St. John.

“Not a seasonable hour!  But I declare it is.  It is just the hour when papa most wants company:  when the works are closed and he has no business to occupy him.  Now, Mr. Rivers, do come.  Why are you so very shy, and so very sombre?” She filled up the hiatus his silence left by a reply of her own.

“I forgot!” she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if shocked at herself.  “I am so giddy and thoughtless!  Do excuse me.  It had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for joining in my chatter.  Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is shut up, and you are so lonely.  I am sure I pity you.  Do come and see papa.”

“Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night.”

Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton:  himself only knew the effort it cost him thus to refuse.

“Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay any longer:  the dew begins to fall.  Good evening!”

She held out her hand.  He just touched it.  “Good evening!” he repeated, in a voice low and hollow as an echo.  She turned, but in a moment returned.

“Are you well?” she asked.  Well might she put the question:  his face was blanched as her gown.

“Quite well,” he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate.  She went one way; he another.  She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across, never turned at all.

This spectacle of another’s suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from exclusive meditation on my own.  Diana Rivers had designated her brother “inexorable as death.”  She had not exaggerated.

CHAPTER XXXII