Book the Second - the Golden Thread
17. XVII. One Night
(continued)
Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could
scarcely have assumed, "Quite sure, my darling! More than that,"
he added, as he tenderly kissed her: "my future is far brighter,
Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay,
than it ever was--without it."
"If I could hope THAT, my father!--"
"Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how
plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young,
cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life
should not be wasted--"
She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his,
and repeated the word.
"--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the
natural order of things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot
entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask
yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?"
"If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite
happy with you."
He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy
without Charles, having seen him; and replied:
"My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been
Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other,
I should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would
have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you."
It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer
to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation
while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards.
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