The child wondered greatly as to what he meant by this, and for a long time did not venture to disobey the command, but all the more did she implore her loved Madonna to pray for his happiness.
During his quiet sojourn at Capri, Mr. Earnscliffe heard of his wife's death, and there, too, he received Flora's letter. His pride took fire even at the trustful love which she had shown to him. It was too much for him to receive with the meekness and thankfulness which it deserved, and so by turns he battled with and yielded to the sweet delight which it foreshadowed to him, as it recalled all the happiness which her confiding affection had given him from the well remembered evening at Achensee to that of the fatal ball in Paris.
As our hero's struggle with himself continued and his egotism was from time to time overcome, a soft light would steal into his eyes, and he would stretch out his arms longing to clasp Flora to his heart again and for ever; but that brightening--like the lightning's flash across a stormy sky--was gone almost as soon as seen, and left behind it only darkness. One day, with a look of proud despair, he turned away his head from the letter which lay before him, and muttered--"No, no! I am not so love-sick as to trust again to one who was so ready to sacrifice me to a senseless regulation of what she calls religion! Flora Adair, you _shall_ be torn from my heart whatever it may cost me!"
He seized the letter and crushed it in his hand. After a few moments of seeming thought, however, he threw it, all crushed as it was, into a corner of his desk, and locked it up. Like Count Azo, he was now, indeed, bearing within him "a heart which _would_ not yield nor _could_ forget."
There were times when evidences of the heroic trust produced by the religion in which Flora Adair believed, crowded before his mind. These testimonies Mr. Earnscliffe had seen in the Catacombs, in history, in the world around him, and, lastly, in Flora's sacrifice of happiness to principle. But pride chased even these away, and his unbending will again and again perverted his better but weaker judgment. "It is impossible!" he would exclaim, "that I have been mistaken after all these years of thought and study! No! I see what this is: it is a weak clinging to a woman whose prejudice is stronger than her love; but I _will_ not yield to it! She shall know that I have sufficient strength to bear wretchedness and loneliness even rather than accept the second place in her heart!" Yet the thought of that letter lying crushed in the corner of his desk haunted him. He longed to look upon her writing again--to read once more all those fond expressions of her constancy; for he was forced to admit that, at least, she had been _constant_; but he refused himself even that gratification.