She cannot
look up at him for abhorrence, but she has perceived that he is
dressed in deep mourning. So is she. It was not so at first; but
the lost has long been given up, and mourned for, as dead.
He would begin by touching her hand. She feels the intention, and
draws her hand back. His eyes are then fixed upon her, she knows,
though her own see nothing but the grass.
'I have been waiting,' he begins, 'for some time, to be summoned
back to my duty near you.'
After several times forming her lips, which she knows he is closely
watching, into the shape of some other hesitating reply, and then
into none, she answers: 'Duty, sir?'
'The duty of teaching you, serving you as your faithful music-
master.'
'I have left off that study.'
'Not left off, I think. Discontinued. I was told by your guardian
that you discontinued it under the shock that we have all felt so
acutely. When will you resume?'
'Never, sir.'
'Never? You could have done no more if you had loved my dear boy.'
'I did love him!' cried Rosa, with a flash of anger.
'Yes; but not quite--not quite in the right way, shall I say? Not
in the intended and expected way. Much as my dear boy was,
unhappily, too self-conscious and self-satisfied (I'll draw no
parallel between him and you in that respect) to love as he should
have loved, or as any one in his place would have loved--must have
loved!'
She sits in the same still attitude, but shrinking a little more.
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