Could she arrogate such triumphant confidence in the temper and
nature of a man who did not love her?--whose heart and mind were not
trusted to her keeping? That doubt assailed Lillian anew in Bayne's
absence, and in the scope for dreary meditation that the eventless days
afforded it developed a fang that added its cruelties to a grief which
she had imagined could be supplemented by no other sorrow.
It was merely sympathy that animated him in her behalf, she felt sure; it
was pity for her helplessness when none other would abet the hopeless
effort to recover the child. His conviction that Archie still lived
constrained him by the dictates of humanity to seek his rescue. He was
doubtless moved, too, by the great generosity of his heart, his
magnanimity; but not by love--never by love! How could it be, indeed, in
the face of all that had come and gone, and of the constant contrast,
mind, body, and soul, with the perfect, the peerless Gladys!
In this, the dreariest of his absences, seldom a word came to the two
women waiting alternately in agonized expectation or dull despair.
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