. .
XXIII.
He look'd at her--paused--felt if thus far
The ground held yet. The ardor with which he had spoken,
This close, rapid question, thus suddenly broken,
Inspired in Matilda a vague sense of fear,
As though some indefinite danger were near.
With composure, however, at once she replied:--
"'Tis three years since the day when I first was a bride,
And my husband I never had cause to suspect;
Nor ever have stoop'd, sir, such cause to detect.
Yet if in his looks or his acts I should see--
See, or fancy--some moment's oblivion of me,
I trust that I too should forget it,--for you
Must have seen that my heart is my husband's."
The hue
On her cheek, with the effort wherewith to the Duke
She had uttered this vague and half-frightened rebuke,
Was white as the rose in her hand. The last word
Seem'd to die on her lip, and could scarcely be heard.
There was silence again.
A great step had been made
By the Duke in the words he that evening had said.
There, half drown'd by the music, Matilda, that night,
Had listen'd--long listen'd--no doubt, in despite
Of herself, to a voice she should never have heard,
And her heart by that voice had been troubled and stirr'd.
And so having suffer'd in silence his eye
To fathom her own, he resumed, with a sigh:
XXIV.
"Will you suffer me, lady, your thoughts to invade
By disclosing my own? The position," he said,
"In which we so strangely seem placed may excuse
The frankness and force of the words which I use.
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