But
she would be to him a friend so tender that no wife, no mistress
should ever have been fonder! She did tell him everything as they
stood together on the ramparts of the old Saxon castle. Then he had
kissed her, and pressed her to his heart,--not because he loved her,
but because he was generous. She had partly understood it all,--but
yet had not understood it thoroughly. He did not assure her of his
love,--but then she was a wife, and would have admitted no love that
was sinful. When she returned to Dresden that night she stood gazing
at herself in the glass and saw that there was nothing there to
attract the love of such a man as Phineas Finn,--of one who was
himself glorious with manly beauty; but yet for her sadness there was
some cure, some possibility of consolation in the fact that she was
a wife. Why speak of love at all when marriage was so far out of the
question? But now she was a widow and as free as he was,--a widow
endowed with ample wealth; and she was the woman to whom he had sworn
his love when they had stood together, both young, by the falls
of the Linter! How often might they stand there again if only his
constancy would equal hers?
She had seen him once since Fate had made her a widow; but then she
had been but a few days a widow, and his life had at that moment been
in strange jeopardy.
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