"
He said no more. He had grown white to the very lips; and those pale
lips were dry and feverish. But the conversation changed abruptly, and
Douglas Dale's name was not again mentioned.
In the meantime, the betrothed lovers had been very happy and this
interview, which she had always dreaded but felt she could not avoid,
having passed over, Paulina was more at liberty to realize her changed
position, and dwell on her future prospects. She was really happy, but
in her happiness there was some touch of fever, something too much of
nervous excitement. It was not the calm happiness which makes the
crowning joy of an untroubled life. A long career of artificial
excitement, of alternate fears and hopes, the mad delight and madder
despair which makes the gambler's fever, had unfitted Paulina for the
quiet peace of a spirit at rest. She yearned for rest, but the angel of
rest had been scared away by the long nights of dissipation, and would
not answer to her call.
Victor Carrington had fathomed the mystery of her feverish gaiety--her
intervals of dull apathy that was almost despair. In the depth of her
misery she had lulled herself to a false repose by the use of opium;
and even now, when the old miseries were no more, she could not exist
without the poisonous anodyne.
"Douglas Dale must be blinded by his infatuation, or he would have
found out the state of the case by this time," Victor said to himself.
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