The motives that had
urged her to such a step would be hard indeed to define. The same
weariness and impatience of inaction that have been alluded to in the
case of Royston Keene may have had much to do with it; to this, perhaps,
was added a feeling of wild remorse, seeking to vent itself in
self-torturing penance, such as impelled kings and conquerors in old
days to don the palmer's gown, and macerate their bodies by fast and
scourge; there may have been, too, some vague, unacknowledged longing to
seize the last chance of seeing her lost love once again. Might she not
tend _him_ as she nursed the other wounded, without adding to the weight
of her sin? If she ever entertained such an idea, her punishment may
well have atoned for her offense, when she came suddenly and unprepared
into that sick-chamber, and looked upon the mangled wreck lying
senseless there.
Royston spoke first. "What brought you here?" If it was possible that he
could feel any thing like terror, surely the hollow, tremulous voice
betrayed it then.
Cecil Tresilyan sprang to her feet as if an electric shock had moved
her, and stood gazing at him with her great, desolate, tearless eyes;
all her misery could not make them hard or haggard, nor dispel their
marvelous enchantment.
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