CHAPTER XI.CONFESSIONS.
The months went by, and there were changes at Roundwood; such changes as Phemie had prophesied. If Major Morrice’s wooing was long, his wedding was speedy; and early in the ensuing year he took his wife to her new abode.
Was Olivia Derno forgotten? you ask, and I answer No; but the man had his life to live though she was dead, and he felt it no slight on her memory to marry one who had known and loved her.
It was a very good match for Helen. “Very wonderful,” said Mrs. Keller, with her nose in the air, “for a poor farmer’s daughter.”
“Never mind, Mrs. Keller,” observed Phemie,with that terrible knack of reading people’s thoughts which her relative had noticed on the occasion of her first visit. “Major Morrice would have been almost too old a husband for any of your girls, and we will see what we can do for them yet. I think I have been a rather successful match-maker.”
At this Mrs. Keller bridled, and wondered what Mrs. Stondon was talking about.
“About your daughters,” answered Phemie quietly. “You do not want them to live single all their lives, I suppose; and if eligible husbands offer, you will not say them nay. Had I daughters, I should give them every opportunity of falling in love I could devise——”
“My dear Mrs. Stondon!”
“My dear Mrs. Keller!”
“Is it not time enough,” said the latter lady, “to consider these matters when a gentleman proposes?”
“And treat marriage as an alliance between two high and mighty powers, instead of an affairbetween man and woman,” answered Phemie. “Just as you will. Let the girls come down here and stay, taking their chance of meeting a good husband, as they might of meeting a desirable acquaintance; or keep them away, it is immaterial to me; only, had I girls, I should give them an opportunity of making their choice, and deciding whom they loved best, before the irrevocable words were spoken—the matrimonial Rubicon crossed.”
Mrs. Keller laughed, and said her hostess was eccentric; but for all that she let her girls be among the number of Helen’s bridemaids, and felt quite a maternal flutter when she heard a bachelor baronet was one of Major Morrice’s dearest friends and his nearest neighbour.
To the surprise of every one interested in the matter, however, Duncan Aggland conceived a most violent affection for the second Miss Keller, and begged her mother to consider his request favourably.
He was not a baronet, and he was in business,but still the lady consented to ignore his trade for the sake of his income.
“There are many engineers Members of Parliament,” she remarked meditatively to Mrs. Stondon, at which observation Phemie laughed till she was weary.
“Pray do not put that idea into Duncan’s mind,” she said, “or he will never attend to his business;” and Mrs. Keller took the advice and held her peace.
“The birds are all on the wing, uncle,” she said to Mr. Aggland one day, “and we shall soon be left solitary;” but it was in a more cheerful tone than formerly Phemie spoke. The days brought their duties with them, and the due discharge of daily duties ultimately ensures happiness to the man or woman who tries to act aright.
“And it will soon be summer again,” Phemie proceeded; “where shall we go this year?”
They sat in the twilight of the spring evening talking about this place, and about that; andthen as the darkness drew on the night became cloudy, and the rain began to patter against the window-panes. The wind rose also, and they could hear the angry rush of the waves as they came rolling up louder and louder upon the shore.
“Heaven have mercy on those who are out at sea,” said Mr. Aggland, looking forth into the gathering darkness, “for it is going to be a wild night;” and at the words Phemie shivered with the strange shivering of old.
She moved to the piano and played the first few bars of Handel’s “Lord, what is man?” then she rose again and stirred the fire into a blaze, and pulled the chairs into comfortable positions, and turned the lamp up to a desirable height, and then stood before the hearth meditatively.
“Sing for me, Phemie dear, if you are not tired,” said her uncle, who knew that when these restless moods came on, music was the best and, indeed, the only sedative. “Sing for me a songor a hymn, a ballad or a psalm—what you will, only sing.”
Obediently she walked across the room and began making melody. Now she sang, and again she played; now it was “Ave Verum,” and then she stopped abruptly and drew her hands from the instrument, only to commence that sonata of Beethoven’s which contains within its leaves the Funeral march upon the death of a Hero.
“What a night it is!” she broke off at last to say, “do you hear the rain?”
“And how the wind is howling!” answered Mr. Aggland; “it puts me in mind of the way it used to come up the valley at Tordale, running like a racehorse between the hills, and then flinging itself against our door. Do you remember how it beat for admittance—how it rattled against the windows—how it screamed and shrieked, as if it were a living thing, to be let in—only to be let in?”
“Yes,” Phemie said, pursuing the same idea;“and how it used to go away, sobbing and moaning like one in great pain, across the moor to Strammer Tarn. I often thought in those days I should have loved to be beside the Tarn when the night wind came home there; I always felt as though it lived among those great rocks and boulders. Do you not wonder whether it is as rough a night up in the Cumberland Hills as it is down here by the coast? Do you wonder who is living in the old place now, and whether they are gathered close round the fire as we had a way of gathering when the wind was howling at the door?”
“I often think about the old place, Phemie,” he said. “When I am sitting quietly here by your fireside, dear, in such peace and comfort as I once thought never to know, my fancy turns many and many a time back to Tordale; it was a sweet spot—ay, you might travel far to find one lovelier—beautiful as Roundwood is, I never can fancy it so perfect as Tordale. I wish we had a drawing of the valley. I think I shall askDuncan, next time he is in the north, to bring me a sketch of it.”
She turned a little from the piano, and, leaning her elbow on the keys, bade him go on and talk to her about their Cumberland home—
“Which I supposed we shall love best of all,” she finished, “to the end.”
“Yes,” Mr. Aggland replied, “probably, for—
‘This fond attachment to the well-known place,Whence first we started into life’s long race,Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’
‘This fond attachment to the well-known place,Whence first we started into life’s long race,Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’
‘This fond attachment to the well-known place,Whence first we started into life’s long race,Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’
‘This fond attachment to the well-known place,
Whence first we started into life’s long race,
Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,
We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’
—But, mercy on us! how the rain is coming down! I do not think I ever heard heavier rain even in Cumberland;” and he rose as he spoke, and, putting the curtains aside, looked out into the night.
Just then there came a ring at the front door—a peal, hurried, loud, and yet conveying the idea of the bell having been pulled by an unsteady hand.
“Who on earth can it be at this hour, and in such a storm?”
Phemie had started up as the peal echoed through the house, and uncle and niece stood looking apprehensively in each other’s faces for a moment, wondering what could be wrong.
“It must be a message from one of the boys,” said Mr. Aggland, hurrying next instant to the drawing-room door; but before he could reach it a servant announced Mr. Basil Stondon, and that gentleman entered.
“What a night for you to choose,” exclaimed Mr. Aggland.
“What have you got there?” asked Phemie, pointing to something which lay hidden under Basil’s coat.
“A trifle for you to take care of for me,” he answered, “if you will;” and he put the rough covering gently aside, and showed her Fay lying fast asleep in his arms.
“Basil”—Phemie could not find another word to say to him.
“What is the meaning of it?” Mr. Agglandasked. “Is your wife ill—are you mad—or is she dead?”
“She is dead to me,” Basil answered; “take my child, Phemie, and let me go; I only came to ask you to be kind to her.”
The water was absolutely dripping off him as he spoke—he stood in a little pool in the centre of the room—outside, the rain was pouring down in torrents, and mingling with the noise of the rain was the howling of the wind and the rushing sound upon the shore, of the not far distant sea.
“Go up to my uncle’s room and change your clothes directly,” was Phemie’s unromantic comment on this explanation; “give me the child. Basil, you are mad.”
For some time he stood it out with her that he would neither change his dripping garments nor remain in Roundwood even for the night.
“Where are you going?” asked Phemie.
“I have no plan; I am not sure; I do not know.”
“Well, then, I do,” she interrupted. “Youwill go direct off to bed, and take something at once to prevent your catching your death of cold.”
“He was not cold,” he persisted. “He was burning with heat—he had walked over from the station carrying Fay—and——”
“Took off your top-coat to keep her dry,” again interrupted Phemie; “the consequence of which will be that if you do not take immediate care of yourself, you will be seriously ill.”
“He did not mind that—he should like to be ill—he should like to die. If it had not been for Fay, he would first have shot Georgina, and then himself.”
“What has she done?” asked Phemie, hushing the child, who, having been awakened by the light and the talking, had begun to cry.
“She has been false to me,” he answered.
“Nonsense,” retorted Phemie. “Basil, you are mad, as I said before.”
“Perhaps so; but a thing like that is enough to make a man feel a little discomposed;” and hethrust a letter into her hand, which she held unopened while she said:—
“Now be reasonable, and listen to me. Standing in your wet clothes, or wandering about the country, will not mend matters in the least. Unless you do what I ask you, I will not take care of Fay; I will not even put her to bed, nor take charge of her for a single night.”
“But why should I remain?” he began; which sentence Phemie cut short by directing a meaning glance towards her uncle, who at once laid his hand on Mr. Stondon’s arm and led him from the room.
Then Phemie rang for her maid, and gave Fay into her charge, after which she unfolded the missive Basil had left with her, and read one of the most glowing and tender loveletters it had ever fallen to her lot to peruse.
Her first idea was that her senses must be playing her some trick; her next was a purely feminine wonder as to what manner of man couldhave become so desperately enamoured of Georgina Stondon.
“After that,” said Mistress Phemie to herself, “I will never disbelieve in witchcraft again;” and she remained standing beside the fire, not so much shocked as astonished—lost, in fact, in such a labyrinth of amazement and conjecture as completely bewildered her senses.
“I would not have believed it, Basil,” she said, “if I had not seen it; and I do not believe it yet.”
Mr. Aggland brought their unexpected guest downstairs again to the drawing-room, and then left him and his niece to talk the matter over together.
“I quite agree with you, Phemie, that he is mad,” he whispered ere he went; “but he will be better in the morning if you can only induce him to eat something and go quietly to bed. Let him talk—it will do him good.”
Having received which piece of advice, Phemie went back to the man she had once loved sopassionately, and spoke to him the words I have written.
“I would not have believed it had I not seen it, and I do not believe it yet.”
He looked up at her with a sad, hopeless expression in his face.
“She did not deny it, and I gave her the chance of doing so.”
What could any one say in reply to this? Even Phemie stood mute; while he went on angrily:—
“What did I ever do, that she should have played me false? Have I not been a good husband to her? Has she not had wealth and standing? Was she not poor, and did I not make her rich? If we did quarrel at times, it was all her own fault. Since—since Harry died, I swear to you, Phemie, I never have spoken a cross word to her—never. I have tried to live at peace with her. If I had been like other husbands——”
“Oh, Basil, stop!—oh, Basil, stop!” Phemiecried out shrilly, like one in some bodily pain; for, as he spoke, there came up before her the memory of another husband very unlike Basil indeed—a husband who had taken a young girl from poverty and drudgery to raise her to wealth and station—a husband who had never looked coldly on her—a husband who stood between his wife and the world—who had been so careful of her reputation that he would not acknowledge even to her that her purity was in peril—who removed the stumbling-block from her path, and the snare from her feet—and then grew suddenly old and infirm, and died bearing his burden of sorrow to the grave with him patiently.
Till she heard this man vaunting himself—this poor, weak, selfish sinner thanking God that he was not as other sinners—it had never fully come home to her what a great heart it was he and she had mutually broken—what a grand nature they had tricked and deceived.
But the dagger had found the vulnerable pointat last, and every nerve in Phemie’s body thrilled with pain as she implored of him to stop.
For a moment he stared at her in surprise, but then he knew how he had hurt her—how and where; and a dead silence ensued—a silence like that which fell between them when she took her place opposite to his in the railway carriage, and told him there was no need to hurry.
During that pause each fought out a mental battle, and then, when they had waged their conflict, beaten down separately the phantoms that came up to reproach them, Phemie turned to Basil and said calmly, as though that cry of irrepressible agony had never escaped her lips:
“There is no name. Have you any idea who it is?”
“Not the least,” he answered; “but I will know; I will find it out; I will free myself and my child from her—I will.”
“No, you shall not,” Phemie interrupted. “Let Georgina be what she may, you shall not do this thing until, at all events, you have had time tothink over the matter calmly and justly. You shall hold your peace about her; you shall make no scandal; you have been mad enough in coming here in this fashion to-night, and bringing Fairy with you, and talking before the child as you have done; but that is all the more reason why you should be quiet and prudent now.”
She calmed him down by degrees, and after a time, although she could not get him to go to bed, she did induce him to eat something, and to sit down before the fire, “like a rational being,” as she observed.
When he thought Mr. Stondon must have had ample time to say his say, Mr. Aggland re-entered the room, and urged upon him the desirability of his at once swallowing a certain decoction of herbs, which would, so that gentleman assured him, prevent his having to retire into what Charles Lamb calls “that regal solitude, sickness.”
“I should like to be sick,” retorted the other, pettishly.
“Should you?” said Mr. Aggland; “’twouldbe a pity, then, to balk so reasonable a fancy;” and he leaned back in his chair and gave over the patient, who remained looking steadfastly at the fire, while from a little distance Phemie contemplated him.
He was a young man no longer; his youth, like her own, had flitted by, leaving no outward traces of its former presence. He was not the Basil Stondon who had come to her beside Strammer Tarn, brushing his way through the heather to the spot she occupied. He was middle-aged, and worn and haggard, not in the least resembling the dream-hero who had crossed the hills too late—too late.
When she thought of that hero, Phemie could see the man no more for the tears that blinded her.
Dreams, friends—dreams! I wonder if we ever shed such bitter tears when the realities of our lives are destroyed and the once sure earth cut from beneath our feet, as we do when, in a mist-wreath, the air-castle vanishes—when theonce limitless lands of our fairy kingdom disappear in the depths of the ocean, and are lost to our sight for ever.
Prosperous as her life had proved, Phemie at any rate found it hard to look back upon the dreams and fantasies of her girlish days with equanimity.
She had been thinking much of Tordale and the Hill Farm—of the old old life—of the beauty of that secluded valley—of the Church—of the waterfall, of the mountains and the fells—before Basil broke in upon her reminiscences; and now she could not help bringing his figure as she remembered it into the mental picture likewise—she could not avoid recallingthatday—when, among the glorious sights and sounds of summer, he crossed the hills in order to tell her all his love.
Strammer Tarn at that moment was more real to her than her luxuriously furnished room at Roundwood. Basil—the dream-hero Basil, the careless, handsome, thoughtless, wicked, and yetnot intentionally wicked sinner—was more real to her than Georgina’s husband. She, herself, was for the moment no widow—no worn, changed woman—but a wife in the full flush of her beauty, resisting the temptation to which that very beauty had exposed her, trying to stand firm against his love and her own.
It was all like a story to her that night, like a real tale of another person’s life, and I think the Phemie who was no longer young, and who had passed through much suffering, and who knew that no temptation could come to her to shake her more, felt sorry for that far-away figure which, crouching among the heather and the grass and the wild thyme, wept passionately.
Does the tale grow wearisome, reader?—are these particulars too minute?
If they be, bear with me still a little, I pray, for the story is drawing to its end; the last page will soon be reached, the final touch given to the figures we have been studying, the volume completed, the book closed and laid aside; and beforethat end is reached, I would have you take in the retrospect of Phemie Keller’s life as she took it in, and regard her, as for one moment she regarded the girl, and the woman, she beheld standing young and fanciful and foolish—young and beautiful and tempted—pityingly.
But not one half so much pity did she feel for that former self, as she did for the man who sat by her hearth, whose punishment had fallen upon him so late.
Thinking of the Basil she had known—thinking of all he might have made of his life—of his opportunities—of his position—of his friends—of his winning manners—of his frank, free, generous disposition—Phemie thought her heart must break for very pity, for very remorse, to remember she had ever a hand in bringing about so poor an ending to a once promising story.
How might a woman like herself, had she only been true, and kept him from loving her, or changed his unholy love into respect and trust and admiration, not have moulded such a nature.
He had loved Miss Derno, and yet Miss Derno came in time to be the best friend, the most faithful adviser his manhood ever knew.
“Oh! if I had only loved him less, or loved my husband more,” thought the poor soul, as a finish to her own bitter reflections; “thisneed never have come upon him; he might have stayed in England and married a different wife, and been happy instead of wretched; useful in his generation, instead of a mere cumberer of the ground.”
When she had arrived at this point in her argument, Basil came back from his mental journey, wherever it had taken him, and speaking like a man wakened suddenly from sleep, said that he thought he should like to bid her goodnight, that he was beginning to feel very chilly.
“You had better take my prescription,” observed Mr. Aggland; and Basil did take the dose, which proved impotent, however, to work the cure its discoverer promised it should effect, for next morning he was so ill he could not rise,and before the following night fever set in, and for a time all his troubles were forgotten.
He raved frantically indeed, but not about his sorrows; as is often the case, his mutterings contained no reference to the cause of his illness; he wandered in imagination, not through the night carrying his child with him, not across the seas to seek his fortune, not over the hills to find Phemie, blue-eyed and auburn-haired; but backwards and forwards—to and fro in a land full of strange fancies—of mad vagaries—of unreal horrors—of fearful delusions—of horrible spectres.
Very rapidly he got worse, so rapidly, indeed, that before Mrs. Montague Stondon could be written to and arrive from Paris, which capital she was then honouring with her presence, the doctors had begun to look very grave, and, to adapt an old saying to present use, although they hoped the best, evidently believed the worst.
When it came to that, Phemie declared that, let the consequences be what they might, sheshould send for his wife; and Georgina was sent for accordingly.
Almost before Phemie thought it possible she could arrive, Mrs. Basil Stondon reached Roundwood, reached it with the cold hardness, with the insolent sarcasm beaten and pinched out of her face.
“Why did you not write to me before?” she asked, almost fiercely.
“Because I was not certain whether I ought to write at all,” Phemie replied.
“Then he came straight to you: I might have known he would; and Fay is here also, I suppose; and—he showed you the letter.”
“He did, but we will not talk about that now.”
“But we will talk of it, if you please. You believed in that letter, I suppose—you mourned over my shortcomings—you sympathised with a man who was tied to so wicked a wife—you dreamed perhaps of a divorce, and thought it within the bounds of probability that Basil Stondon and Euphemia Stondon might one daystand before the altar. Did you? I hope you did, for the letter was a sham! Ay, you may look at me,” she went on with a hysterical laugh. “I wrote it every word myself, and I left it in his way on purpose to see if I could rouse any feeling in him.”
“What an idiot you must be, Georgina,” exclaimed Phemie, indignantly; “what a senseless, wicked, foolish, childish trick it was. If he dies, his death will be at your door. How could you do it?—how came such a plan ever to enter your mind?”
“One cannot live near ice and not desire to thaw it,” was the reply; “may I see him?” she added, more humbly; “would it do him any harm if I spoke to him for a moment?”
“He will not know who you are,” the elder woman answered; and she led the way to where Basil lay, his wife following.
Then for the first time Phemie understood that Georgina loved her husband with all her heart, and soul, and strength; that all throughtheir married life the attachment had been on her side, that she would have done anything to secure his affection, had she known how; that it would, as she declared, kill her if his illness proved fatal.
“I did more to win his heart than ever you could have done,” she said, when at last Phemie had dragged her from the sick-chamber. “I would have gone through fire and water for him, but he never loved me—never!”
“He must have loved you, or he would not have married you,” Phemie answered.
“I made him marry me,” was the reply. “He married me because I loved him; do you understand that, Mrs. Stondon—you, who were so cold, and so prudent, and so selfish? If I had been in your place, if I had been married fifty times, I would have left my husband for his sake. If he had loved me as he loved you, I would have quitted Marshlands had he held up his finger for me to come. I nursed him,”—she continued, speaking hurriedly and excitedly,—“I nursedhim all through that illness he had in India. I brought him back from death. He could not have lived but for my care. It is no light thing, let me tell you, tending a man through a long sickness out in that climate, and when he got better I was like a ghost; but he knew I loved him,—knew no woman could have done what I did had she not loved him, and he married me, and I thought I had won the battle at last.”
“And afterwards,” Phemie suggested, as the speaker paused.
“Afterwards!” repeated Mrs. Basil Stondon. “You want me to go on and tell you how you beat me at every move—how it was your men on the board prevented my winning the game. So be it. The game has not been all profit to you either, so I must rest satisfied.”
“For pity’s sake,” entreated Phemie, “forget that he ever was fond of me; let the dead past lie: it was never so fair or pleasant that you need be continually taking off the coffin-lid to look at it.”
“Don’t talk to me about coffins,” exclaimed Georgina, with a shudder, “and he so ill; and as for your request, I would let the past lie if I could. I would bury it half a mile deep, and never desire to hear of it again, if you and he would only let me; but is it in a woman’s nature—cold as you are, I put it to you, would it be even in yours—to see a stranger preferred before you—to feel that she is seated in the innermost chamber while you are shivering outside on the doorstep?”
“It would not,” Phemie answered; “but then I am not in the innermost chamber, so there is no use in making yourself miserable about the matter.”
“If you are not, who is?” demanded Mrs. Basil Stondon; and Phemie remained silent for very want of the ability to answer the question. “If you had not been, would he have come to you with that letter?—would he have rushed straight as he did from me to you? Go back over your own life. When Captain Stondonfound out that you and Basil were so fond of one another, what did he do? Did he fly from you as he might from a pestilence? Did he publish the story to Miss Derno, or any other miss or madam in the kingdom? Did he?”
“No,” replied Phemie; “but then my husband was a very different man to yours.”
“True,” said Mrs. Basil Stondon, “he was a very different man, and a very much better. You had a good husband, if you had only known how to value him; but still, good or not, different or not different, had Basil loved me he never would have come to you. It was my last attempt; now I throw up the cards.”
And when Georgina concluded, she made a movement as of flinging something from her, and turned sullenly aside.
Finding, however, that Phemie did not speak, she faced round again and asked,—
“Have you got nothing to remark on all that? When Basil gave you his version you weresurely not so dumb?” But still Phemie made no reply.
She was wondering whether she should ever be able to reconcile this pair—whether any interference of hers might produce some good result—whether, if he lived, she could bring about some better understanding—whether, if he died, he would first recover sufficiently to speak kindly to his wife ere he departed.
“Are you going to open your lips again to-day?” persisted Mrs. Basil Stondon; and at last Phemie answered, while she rose and laid her hand gently on Georgina:—
“Yes. I am going to ask you, why you will persist in regarding me as your enemy? When I followed Basil into Yorkshire—when I brought him home with me—when I broke the bad news to him in such a way that he never had an angry feeling towards you in consequence, was I your enemy? Was I not, at all events, only doing your bidding—only trying to accomplish what you wanted, to the best of my ability?”
“Yes; but it seemed so hard for such interference to be necessary,” said Georgina, softening a little.
“Was that my fault? He married you; why he married you is quite beside the question; he did marry you, and for years you had him all to yourself. I should not care if a man had loved fifty women before he made me his wife. If I could not turn them all out, and keep the citadel against them, I should say I did not deserve to have it.”
“And does the same rule hold good with regard to husbands, Mrs. Stondon?” asked the other, maliciously.
“We were talking of wives, not of husbands,” answered Phemie; and continued: “Feeling as you did towards me, why did you ever ask me to Marshlands?—why did you press me to stay there?”
“Because I was weary of my life—because you were better than nobody—because it looked well—because it tormented Basil—stop; let mego back to the beginning, where you interrupted my story. I do not mind showing you my hand, now the game is over. We were married, as I told you; the mutiny broke out, and we were bound still closer by the feeling of a common danger; besides, he was grateful to me. Oh! yes, he was grateful, for he set great store by his life, and I had saved it! My father was killed, as you heard, and Basil was sorry for my loss. Altogether, though I knew he did not love me even then, still we got on very well for a time, and the only quarrel we had originated in his obstinate refusal to write to Captain Stondon and tell him of his marriage.”
“‘You are afraid ofhimlettingherknow, I suppose,’ I was provoked at last into saying. That was my first downrightly bad move, and you were the occasion of it.
“‘It was your doing, then, that I had to leave Marshlands,’ he answered on the instant, almost indeed before I had time to wish my own words unspoken, ‘how did you manage it?’
“I told him all—I did really—all that you have assured me came to your knowledge after you were left a widow. I could not help writing that note. I would have done anything to part you—anything to get him out to India with us—I was so fond of him; but he put it all down to love of Marshlands; and so, when at last news came to us of your husband’s death, he turned to me and said, ‘You have got that which you schemed for so well and so long; I wish you joy of it.’
“There was something else, though, in his mind at the moment—something I read out of his face that I knew he would not have put into words for anything; but I did for him. I said, ‘You are thinking she is free, and I am bound. I am bound, and she is free!’”
“Have mercy, Georgina!”—It was Phemie who entreated this boon. She was turning faint and sick at such a thought being put before him in its naked deformity; but Georgina’s answer made her stand erect and defiant once more.
“Do you think, if I had not mercy on him, I amgoing to take pity on you?” she asked. “I told him his thought in so many words. I taunted him with it, and then we had a fearful quarrel—the first of our new series, which has never ceased from that day to this. It was then he informed me of the pleasant ban you had laid upon him—almost exultingly he spoke of how your words had come true—of how, although you might never be to him what I was, yet that still you would always be something nearer and dearer by far. He did not spare me a pang, you may depend upon it. Then I learned what was in my husband; I have never unlearned that knowledge since.”
“I am very sorry,”—Phemie uttered this sentence humbly—“forgive me, Georgina, my share in your misery. What you tell me is very terrible—it must have been dreadful for you to bear.”
“I did not bear it,” was the quick reply; “I did not even regard it as payment for breaking the heart of a better man, than ever you were a woman. I battled against it; I was hard, and he was harder; I would not accept my position,and he scoffed at me when I tried to alter it. We came back to England, and he wanted to travel down to Marshlands alone; but I had a suspicion we should find you there, and I was resolved not to lose the sight of that interview at any rate. I had the advantage, so far as he was concerned, for he really felt afraid to meet you, and it was a triumph for the time being. Next to getting the thing one wants for one’s self, the greatest pleasure in life is seeing another disappointed in getting it also. Altogether,” proceeded Mrs. Basil Stondon, “I fancy I got the best in that matter. Had I not been present, there would have been opportunity for some tender passages between Basil and yourself. What is wrong, now?” she added, as Phemie suddenly moved aside, and drew her hand away, and shook her dress, seeming to think there must be contagion in the very touch of her companion’s garments.