He looked up and saw that she had been weeping. The haughty curl of the lip and proud look from the eye were all gone, and her expression was of humility and sorrow. She held out her hand to him with an air almost of entreaty. He raised it respectfully to his lips, and with the low, musical voice, sadder than ever before, he said:
"I am sorry that you should grieve about anything. There is nothing to forgive. Let us forget it."
"Oh, Mr. Wayne, how unkind I have been, and how cruelly I have wronged you!"
She pressed his hand between both her palms for a moment, and looked into his face, as if studying to read if some trace of resentment were not visible. But the blue eyes looked down kindly and mournfully upon her, and bursting into tears, she turned from him, and hurriedly left the room.
The incident related in the preceding chapter seemed to have effected a marked change in the demeanor of Oriana toward her brother's guest. She realized with painful force the wrong that her thoughtlessness, more than her malice, had inflicted on a noble character, and it required all of Arthur's winning sweetness of disposition to remove from her mind the impression that she stood, while in his presence, in the light of an unforgiven culprit. They were necessarily much in each other's company, in the course of the many rambles and excursions that were devised to relieve the monotony of the old manor house, and Oriana was surprised to feel herself insensibly attracted toward the shy and pensive man, whose character, so far as it was betrayed by outward sign, was the very reverse of her own impassioned temperament. She discovered that the unruffled surface covered an under-current of pure thought and exquisite feeling, and when, on the bosom of the river, or in the solitudes of the forest, his spirit threw off its reserve under the spell of nature's inspiration, she felt her own impetuous organization rebuked and held in awe by the simple and quiet grandeur that his eloquence revealed.
One afternoon, some two weeks after his arrival at the Riverside manor, while returning from a canter in the neighborhood, they paused upon an eminence that overlooked a portion of the city of Richmond. There, upon an open space, could be seen a great number of the citizens assembled, apparently listening to the harangue of an orator. The occasional cheer that arose from the multitude faintly reached their ears, and that mass of humanity, restless, turbulent and excited, seemed, even at that distance, to be swayed by some mighty passion.