Yet she felt guilty even while she said this to herself, guilty and ashamed, and then doubtful. She doubted her new capacity to be furtive. She could watch, but she did not know whether she could watch without showing what she was doing. And Emile was terribly observant.
This thought, of his subtlety and her desire to conceal, made her suddenly realize their altered relations with a vividness that frightened her. Where was the beautiful friendship that had been the comfort, the prop of her bereaved life? It seemed already to have sunk away into the past. She wondered what was in store for her, if there were new sorrows being forged for her in the cruel smithy of the great Ruler, sorrows that would hang like chains about her till she could go no farther. The Egyptian had said: "What is to come will come, and what is to go will go, at the time appointed." And Vere had said she felt as if perhaps there was a cross that must be borne by some one on the island, by "one of us." Was she, Hermione, picked out to bear that cross? Surely God mistook the measure of her strength. If He had He would soon know how feeble she was. When Maurice had died, somehow she had endured it. She had staggered under the weight laid upon her, but she had upheld it. But now she was much older, and she felt as if suffering, instead of strengthening, had weakened her character, as if she had not much "fight" left in her.
"I don't believe I could endure another great sorrow," she said to herself. "I'm sure I couldn't."
Just then Vere came in to bid her good-night.
She kissed the girl gently on the forehead, and the touch of the cool skin suddenly made her long to sob, and to say many things. She took her lips away.
There was a touch of reproach in Vere's tone, and there was something so transparently natural, so transparently innocent and girlish in her disappointment, that it told her mother something she was glad to know. Not that she had doubted it--but she was glad to know.
"Well, but I was only on the cliff, where I always go. I was there having a little talk with Ruffo."
"And you never called me, Madre!" Vere looked openly hurt. "Why didn't you?"
In truth, Hermione hardly knew. Surely it had been Emile who had led them away from the singing voice of Ruffo.