Edward Macleod was no sentimentalist, and yet he was conscious of a
very delicate, infinitely sad satisfaction in the belief that he would
expiate with his life the folly he had committed in permitting her to
love him. In the loftiest sense he would be true to her. He could not
be selfish and shameless enough to set forever aside the desolation
that his hands had callously wrought. As her sorrow could never be
mitigated it should always be shared. He would do everything for her.
She should be educated, and inducted by gentle degrees into the
refinement of civilization--he fervently hoped that it might not prove
the refinement of cruelty. She should not be left desolate, forsaken,
uncared-for; she should share everything he had except his heart. That
was to be kept empty for her sake--for the sake of the sweet dusky
maiden who had once possessed it.
Who had _once_ possessed it! Ah, was it true then that she no longer
held a claim? He had closed the door hesitatingly and with sharp pain
in her face, but now the bare recollection of the little brown hands
fumbling upon it thrilled him with a blissful sense that perhaps,
after all, his life was not to be the utter sacrifice that he had
supposed.
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