"Who-o-o----!" Lettice could not whistle as some girls can; but that long-drawn masculine expression of--of everything at once--of the fat having fallen in the fire, with general loss, trouble, and confusion, seemed the only adequate and appropriate one for the occasion, and she framed her lips and voice to the nearest equivalent.
"And what will you do, dear?" she said, after a considerable pause.
"Don't bother me with questions, Lettie. I do not know in the very least. I shall go to bed, and try to sleep, and to forget everything. If one could only forget for always! How good it would be! I am in a mess. And all from having my way, and getting everything I thought I wanted. It is all a mess! an irretrievable muddle. Whatever I may do, it will be sure to be wrong. Oh Lettie! take warning in time; and don't let your little tempers run away with you, as mine have done with me."
When Rose and Lettice went their way, the three cavaliers found their occupation gone. They stood an instant looking after the retreating fair, then turned to face one another; but there was no satisfaction in view of the witnesses of their discomfiture--each felt small, rather, and perhaps a little ridiculous. The only plaster for their grazed self-love was absence from the witnesses; and accordingly each turned on his heel, going off in quest of some new interest, and diverging as widely from the other two as was possible.
Joseph strolled despondently back toward the stunted grove, to which twice already he had bent his steps, but had not reached. He had borne up bravely enough under Rose's disclosure at the moment. In the thick of the fight one generally does bear up. The excitement of combat stirs the blood, and blows fall scarcely heeded on him who struggles hard to have his way. It is when the battle is over, that the wounds begin to smart, when the stricken have leisure to feel them. And Joseph was wounded sore. It crushed him to think that anything could be said in derogation of the peerless one whom he had found to fit into' the long-vacant shrine, where the beloved of his youth had sat, and whose memory, still hovering there, had made it a holy place. There seemed impiety in associating the new avatar of his love with the ribald vulgarities of the divorce court, in dragging the blossom of his worship through its noisome mire. Yet was she the less precious because her lines had fallen haplessly? Does a jewel lose worth for having fallen in the kennel? He told himself this, and repeated it over and over. He vowed that her need of sympathy and support, was a claim the more upon his honour, and that the claim should be satisfied; but still it was painful to think that the name of his wife to be, had been bandied from mouth to mouth as one of the motley crew who shock chaste ears with their clamour to be relieved from obligations which if was their own free choice to undertake. It dimmed the bright promise of that future in which he had been basking so unsuspiciously, but it should not appal him. He would steadfastly look forward to all being well; his own faith and hope would of themselves contribute to a happy consummation; and for Rose, how much she must have suffered!--how much she needed him!