your answer would have been the same.
Let us part in kindness; it will be very long before we meet again; but
I do not think I shall forget you; and I hope you will remember me if
you ever want a hand or head to carry out any one of your wishes or
whims. It would make me very happy if I could so serve you. Now,
good-by. It is only going this afternoon instead of to-morrow. I must
try and make up for lost time, too, by working a little harder."

The smile that accompanied those last words haunted Cecil for many, many
days. She knew already enough of Waring to be certain that he would
never sink into maudlin sentimentality; it saddened her inexpressibly to
fancy him alone in his gloomy chambers, when the night was waning,
chained to those crabbed law-papers from a dreary sense of duty, but
without a hope or an interest to cheer him on; he had given up ambition
long ago. (There are many clocks that keep time to a second, when their
striking part is ruined utterly.) She felt angry, then and afterward,
that she could find no words to say the least appropriate or expressive;
she held out her hand timidly, pleading for forgiveness with her eyes.
He just touched it with his lips before he let it go. That kiss of peace
was a more precious tribute than any of her hundred vassals had offered
to the proud Tresilyan. So they parted.

Cecil's conscience was disagreeably uncompromising, and for a long time,
declined to admit any valid excuse for the mischief she had done; but
time and change are efficient anodynes; and her penance was nearly
completed when she came to Dorade. Of late, however, the reproachful
vision had presented itself oftener than ever. She realized more
completely the pain that Mark Waring must have endured, as she guessed
what would be the bitterness of her own feelings, if it should prove
that she had mistaken Royston Keene. That sorrowful memory seemed to
rise before her like a warning spectre, waving her back from the path
she had begun to tread. Truly, Cecil Tresilyan _was_ different from the
generality of her sex; or, when her own heart was sorely imperiled, she
would never have found time to think so often, and so regretfully, of
one that she had broken. But, when a woman has once determined to set
her whole fortunes on the turn of a die, where is the monitor that will
teach her prudence or self-restraint? She will hardly be persuaded
"though one rose from the dead."

CHAPTER XV.

Royston Keene