She stopped, achoke for breath, and Audrey said: "Oh, please—please."
Misgiving, that subtle, coward spy that spies the way for fear, cast its net over Lady Burdon. The pleading, gentle air—no flush of shame, no note of defiance hunted her mind back to its alarms. And Audrey said: "He did not wish our marriage known;" and at "marriage" misgiving turned and shouted fear to follow.
She said slowly: "You persist marriage? There are proofs of marriage. Where are your proofs?"
The pleading look only deepened: "But I never thought—" Audrey said, "—but I never thought—" She swayed, and swayed against the chair she held. It supported her. "I never thought I would not be believed. Lady Burdon will understand. I know she will understand. If I may see her, please..."
"If you were married—proofs."
There was a considerable space before Audrey answered. Presently she said very faintly:
"I am very ill ... I am very ill ... I can bring proofs.... But she will understand.... Please let me see her.... Please, please..."
In advertisement of her state her eyelids fluttered and fell upon her eyes while she spoke. Her voice was scarcely to be heard.
Her condition made no appeal to Lady Burdon. The simplicity of her words, her simple acceptance of the challenge to bring proofs, returned Lady Burdon to that dull plucking at her hands; and presently she turned and went heavily across the room and through the door, closed it behind her and went a few paces down the hall—to what? At that question she stopped, and at the answer her mind gave went quickly back to the door and stood there breathing fast. What was shut in here? A monstrous thing come to strike her down as suddenly as miracle had come to snatch her up? And where had she been going? To publish it? To impel the horrible fate it might have for her? To say to old Lady Burdon and to Maurice: "There is a woman here who says she was married to Lord Burdon?" To say what would spring into their minds as it tore like a wild thing at hers:—"Yes, if marriage, a child ... an heir?" At thought of how narrowly she had escaped the results of that action, she trembled as one trembles that in darkness has come to the edge of a cliff and by a single further step had plunged to destruction; and at imagination of the bitterness, the humiliation that would be hers if the worst were realised and she returned from what she had become to worse than she had been, she writhed in torture of spirit that was like twisting poison in her vitals. All her plans, all her dreams, all her sweet foretasting sprang up before her, mocking her; all the intolerable sympathy of her friends, all the secret laughter it would hide, came at her, twisting her.
Somewhere in the house a door opened and shut. She put a hand violently to her throat, as though the shock of the sound were a blow that struck her there. She found herself braced against the door, guarding it; listening for footsteps, and strung up to keep away whoever came. Silence! But the attitude into which she had sprung informed her of the determination that had shaped unperceived beneath the tumult of her thoughts. She was not going to fall beneath the blow that threatened her! When she knew that, she was calmer, and set herself to satisfy her fears. What was shut in here? A wanton.... Wanton? Who never flushed, never railed, defied? A betrayed, then. Well, what was that to her, and how was she concerned? A betrayed? Who came with no story of betrayal that might or might not be, but with assertion of marriage that was capable of definite proof or disproof? Marriage? Impossible! A lie! Impossible? There came to her recollection of that strange disappearance of which Mr. Pemberton had told; was marriage the secret of it? There swept back to her that vivid and hideous nightmare on the very night of the news when she had cried "I hold!" and had been answered: "No, you do not—nay, I hold." Was that foreboding? There flamed before her again the mock of her plans, the humiliation of her downfall. She struck her clenched hands together; and as if the violent action caused an assembly of her arguments, she reduced her position to this: either the thing was true, in which case it could be proved; or it was a lie, in which case no consideration recommended her to do other than keep it to herself and herself stamp upon it.