Constance was too agitated to reply. Under present circumstances, she
would have given worlds not to have seen Walter; and, having seen him,
she knew not what to say, or how to think or act: the painful struggle
she endured deprived her of the power of utterance.
"It is not for myself I speak, Constantia; though now I need not tell
you that the love of boyhood has never been banished from my bosom. The
remembrance of the hours we spent together, before a knowledge of the
world, before a change in the constitution of our country, shed its
malign influence, not over our hearts, but over our destinies--the
remembrance of those hours has been the blessing, the solitary blessing,
of my exile; it has been the green oasis in the desert of my existence:
amid the turmoil of battle, it has led me on to victory; amid the
dissipation of the royal court, it has preserved me from taint. The
remembrance of Constance, like the night-star that cheers the mariner on
the wide sea, has kept all holy and hopeful feelings around my heart;
telling of home, my early home, and its enjoyments--of Constance, the
little affectionate, but high-souled girl--the----"
"Stop!" interrupted Constance, with an agonised expression--"Stop, I
conjure you! I know what you were going to say; you were about to repeat
that which my mother loved to call me--your wife! She did not mean it in
mockery, though it sounds so now, like a knell from the lower earth. But
one thing, Walter, one request I have to make--you pray sometimes?--the
time has been when we have prayed together!--when next you pray, thank
God that SHE is dead!"
"How! thank God that my kind and early friend--that your mother is
dead!" repeated the young man, in a voice of astonishment.
"Even so, Walter. You would not see her stretched upon the rack? would
not see her exposed to tortures, such as, at no very distant period, the
saints of our own church endured?--would not see her torn limb from limb
by wild horses?"
"Heavens! Constantia, are you mad?" exclaimed Walter, terrified at her
excited and distraught manner.
"I am not mad," she replied, in a changed and subdued tone; "but do not
forget (and let it be on your knees) to thank God that my mother is
dead; and that the cold clay presses the temples, which, if they were
alive, would throb and burn as mine do now."
She pressed her hands on her brow; while the youth, appalled and
astonished, gazed on her in silence.