They trembled, but with no weakness, as she showed them.
“Understand me, my dear;” thus she went on. I have never dreamed of the possibility of his being anything to me on this earth but the kind picture that I know I could not make you understand, if the understanding was not in your own breast already. I have no more dreamed of the possibility of MY being his wife, than he ever has — and words could not be stronger than that. And yet I love him. I love him so much, and so dearly, that when I sometimes think my life may be but a weary one, I am proud of it and glad of it. I am proud and glad to suffer something for him, even though it is of no service to him, and he will never know of it or care for it.”
Bella sat enchained by the deep, unselfish passion of this girl or woman of her own age, courageously revealing itself in the confidence of her sympathetic perception of its truth. And yet she had never experienced anything like it, or thought of the existence of anything like it.
“It was late upon a wretched night,” said Lizzie, “when his eyes first looked at me in my old river-side home, very different from this. His eyes may never look at me again. I would rather that they never did; I hope that they never may. But I would not have the light of them taken out of my life, for anything my life can give me. I have told you everything now, my dear. If it comes a little strange to me to have parted with it, I am not sorry. I had no thought of ever parting with a single word of it, a moment before you came in; but you came in, and my mind changed.”
Bella kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her warmly for her confidence. “I only wish,” said Bella, “I was more deserving of it.”
“More deserving of it?” repeated Lizzie, with an incredulous smile.
“I don’t mean in respect of keeping it,” said Bella, “because any one should tear me to bits before getting at a syllable of it — though there’s no merit in that, for I am naturally as obstinate as a Pig. What I mean is, Lizzie, that I am a mere impertinent piece of conceit, and you shame me.”
Lizzie put up the pretty brown hair that came tumbling down, owing to the energy with which Bella shook her head; and she remonstrated while thus engaged, “My dear!”
“Oh, it’s all very well to call me your dear,” said Bella, with a pettish whimper, “and I am glad to be called so, though I have slight enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty little thing!”
“My dear!” urged Lizzie again.
“Such a shallow, cold, worldly, Limited little brute!” said Bella, bringing out her last adjective with culminating force.
“Do you think,” inquired Lizzie with her quiet smile, the hair being now secured, “that I don’t know better?”
“DO you know better though?” said Bella. “Do you really believe you know better? Oh, I should be so glad if you did know better, but I am so very much afraid that I must know best!”
Lizzie asked her, laughing outright, whether she ever saw her own face or heard her own voice?
“I suppose so,” returned Bella; “I look in the glass often enough, and I chatter like a Magpie.”
“I have seen your face, and heard your voice, at any rate,” said Lizzie, “and they have tempted me to say to you — with a certainty of not going wrong — what I thought I should never say to any one. Does that look ill?”
“No, I hope it doesn’t,” pouted Bella, stopping herself in something between a humoured laugh and a humoured sob.