She sank down on a low chair as if her limbs would support her no longer and rested her face upon her hands.
"No," she said, in a low voice, "you are wrong: I do not love Caspar Brooke."
"What other motive can you have?"
She waited for a moment, and then said, still softly—
"I suppose I may as well tell you. I loved him once. In those first days of our acquaintance—when he was disappointed in his wife and seeking for sympathy elsewhere—I thought that he cared for me. I was mistaken. Oliver, can you keep my secret? No other soul in the world knows of this from me but you. I told him my love. I wrote to him—a wild, mad letter—offering to fly to the ends of the earth with him if he would go."
Oliver stared at her as if he could not believe his ears.
"And what answer did he make?"
"He made none—because he never saw it. That letter fell into Lady Alice's hands. She did not know that it was the first that had been written: she took it to be one of a series. She wrote a short note to me about it; and the next thing I heard was that she had gone. But I know that he never saw that letter of mine."
"All this," said Oliver, in a hard contemptuous voice, "does not explain your present line of conduct."
She lifted her face from her hands. "Yes, it does," she said quickly. "If you were a woman you would understand! Do you think I want her to come back to him? No, if he cannot make me happy, he shall not be happy at her side. I shall never forgive her for the words she wrote to me! If her daughter comes, Oliver, it is all the more reason why I should be here, ready to nip any notion of reconciliation in the bud. It is hate, not love, that dominates me: it is in my hatred for Caspar Brooke's wife that you must seek the explanation of my actions. Now, do you understand?"