In either case Hereward would have no descendants for
whom it was worth his while to labor or to fight. What wonder if he longed
for a son,--and not a son of hers, the barren tree,--to pass his name down
to future generations? It might be worth while, for that, to come in to
the king, to recover his lands, to----She saw it all now, and her heart was
dead within her.
She spent that evening neither eating nor drinking, but sitting over the
log embers, her head upon her hands, and thinking over all her past life
and love, since she saw him, from the gable window, ride the first time
into St. Omer. She went through it all, with a certain stern delight in
the self-torture, deliberately day by day, year by year,--all its lofty
aspirations, all its blissful passages, all its deep disappointments, and
found in it--so she chose to fancy in the wilfulness of her misery--
nothing but cause for remorse. Self in all, vanity, and vexation of
spirit; for herself she had loved him; for herself she had tried to raise
him; for herself she had set her heart on man, and not on God. She had
sown the wind: and behold, she had reaped the whirlwind. She could not
repent; she could not pray. But oh! that she could die.
She was unjust to herself, in her great nobleness. It was not true, not
half, not a tenth part true.
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