Now he began to recall words
that she had spoken of which he had never before taken heed. The
rippling laugh, half like the notes of a silver bell, and half like
the trilling of a bob-o-link's song, came back like music now into
his desolate soul, making him all the more disconsolate that he was
never again to hear it. But had she not looked wistfully into his
eyes when he took her hand in the garden to say good-bye? Was such a
thought not comforting now? Ah no. Too truly has our poet sung it:
"Comfort! comfort scorned of devils, this is truth the poet sings;
--That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."
Would he, Roland began to ask himself, have been hurried into the
hasty words, the passionate feeling, which were really the origin of
all this woe, but for his regard for her? No; he saw it all plainly
now. He had courted this quarrel; he obtained what he sought, and now
did he hold in his hands the bitter fruit.
'But he might have had his will; she is a lone girl; and her
unnatural father was no less eager that the marriage should be than
the baseborn himself. Let it be!' Then a startled gleam came into his
face.
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