imagined that I should have felt, after so wonderful a drawing together of the bonds of intimacy, that there were no hopes I might not entertain. But this was far, far from being the case. Had I ever ventured to imagine that she could detach herself from all the hands that clung to her, and come into my life and become a portion of me? If so, I saw now the utter madness of the thought. I stood at the window looking out upon the lamps, and the glimmer of reflection upon the pavement, which was wet with repeated showers. A few people still hung about the outskirts of a house in which a man had killed himself. The curiosity which waits upon death, especially upon violent death, gaped at the door, as if something of that mystery would be disclosed when{118} it opened. For my part, I felt as if there was no novelty in any incident, but that this, and only this, could have happened from the beginning of time.
{117}
{118}
When we left the house of death, Charlotte clung to me with a nervous trembling which was the first sign of exhaustion she had shown. Even in her, the claims of human weakness had to be acknowledged; her firm step wavered as she descended the steps, and she was glad to have my arm for support. But the peace of that scene after the tumult of the morning had produced its effect upon her. She began to talk to me of Colin. “He was my brother,” she said. “Don’t you know a large family falls into pairs? Charley’s sister died too, and since then he has been more with me; but it was always Colin and Chatty, Chatty and Colin.”
“He and you will comfort each other,” I said. “Charley is so good a fellow.{119}”
{119}
“Ah!” she said, “he is good, and Colin was always a trouble—but he is not Colin. Mr. Temple, if our boy had died by God’s hand and not his own”—She paused a little and trembled, and her voice died away in her throat. “I could almost have been glad,” she added afterwards, with a sudden energy. “He and his life were never at harmony.” I felt her whole frame quiver with the long sigh of a sorrow that was past tears.
“Then it was not only this marriage?”
“Oh, can you think so little of us?” she cried. “We would have made the best of it. Me, there is nothing, nothing I would not have done. Colin’s wife, she would have been sacred. And so long as she loved him”—then she made a pause. “You will hear afterwards,” she said; “I know our name, our honour was in
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