"Why do you talk in that way?" she broke out, suddenly. "I came to say something quite different; and you speak as if you wanted to taunt me—to insult me—to hurt me in every possible way? I do not understand what you mean."
"You never did," said Caspar. The scorn had gone now, and the voice had grown stern. "It is useless for us to talk together at all. You have made intercourse impossible. I have no desire to hurt or taunt or insult you, as you phrase it; but, if I am to speak the truth, I must say that I feel very strongly that it is to you and your behavior that we owe the greater part of this trouble. If you had been at my side, if Lesley had been under a mother's wing, sheltered as only a mother could shelter her, there never would have been an opportunity for that man Trent's clandestine approaches, which will put a stigma on that poor child for the rest of her life, and may—for aught I know—endanger my own neck! I could put up with the loss and harm to myself; but once and for all let me say to you, Alice, that you have neglected your duty as a mother as much as I have neglected mine as a father; and that if you had been in your proper place all this ruin and disgrace and misery might never have come about."
The broken and vehement tones of his voice showed that his feelings were powerfully affected. Lady Alice listened in perfect silence, and kept silence for some minutes after the conclusion of his speech. Caspar, leaning with one shoulder against the mantelpiece, looked frowningly before him, as if he were unconscious of the fact that she had taken her handkerchief out of her muff, and was pressing it to her cheeks and eyes. But in reality he was painfully alive to every one of her movements, and expected a plaintive rejoinder to his accusations. But none came. The silence irritated him, as it had formerly irritated him with Lesley. He was obliged at last to ask a question.
"Since you say you did not come to reproach me, may I ask the motive of your visit?" he asked.
"I scarcely think that it is of any use to tell you now," said his wife, quietly. She had got rid of her tears now, and had put her handkerchief away. "I had a sort of fancy that you might like me to tell you with my own lips something that I felt rather strongly, but you would probably resent it—and it is only a trifle after all."
She rose from her chair and drew her fur-lined cloak closely round her, as if preparing to depart.
"I should like to hear it—if I am not troubling you too much," said Caspar.
She averted her eyes and began slowly to draw on her gloves. "It is really nothing—I came on a momentary impulse. I have not seen you for a good many years, and we parted with very angry words on our lips, did we not?—but I wanted to say that—although you were sometimes angry—I never knew you do a cruel thing—you were always kind—kindest of all to creatures that were weak (except, perhaps to me); and I am quite sure—sure as that I stand here—that you never did the thing of which they are accusing you. There!"—and she looked straight into his face—"it is a little thing, no doubt: you have hosts of friends to say the same thing to you: but my tribute is worth having, perhaps, because, after all, I am your wife—and in some ways I do understand!"
Caspar's face worked strangely: he bit his lip hard as he looked at her.
"You are generous, Alice," he said, in a low voice, after a pause that seemed eternal to her.