"Not very soon. He kept his word——"
"What?"
"He married me, on the day when I left you. Not in a church, but somewhere—in Fulham, I think. It looked like a private house, but he said it was a registrar's. Oh, Miss Campion, are you ill?"
Lettice was holding her side. She had turned white, and her heart was throbbing painfully; but she soon overcame the feeling or at least concealed it.
"No. Go on—go on! He married you!"
"And we went on the Continent together. I was very happy for a time, so long as he seemed happy; but I could never shake off that uncomfortable fear in his presence. After a while we came back to London, and then I had to live alone, which of course I did not like. He had taken very nice rooms for me at Hampstead, where he used to come now and then; and he offered to bring some friends to visit me; but I did not want him to do that—I cared for nobody but him!"
"Poor Milly!" said Lettice, softly.
"I had been suspicious and uneasy for some time, especially when he told me I had better go to Birchmead and stay with my grandmother, as he was too busy to come and see me, and the rooms at Hampstead were expensive. So I went to Birchmead and told them that Mr. Beadon was abroad. He was not—he was in London—and I went up to see him every now and then; but I wanted to put the best face on everything. It would have been too hard to tell my grandmother that I did not think he cared for me."
She stopped and wiped the tears away from her eyes.
"There was worse than that," she said. "I began to believe that I was not his lawful wife, or he would not behave to me as he did. But I daren't ask, I was so afraid of him. And I felt as if I could not leave him, even if I was not his wife. That's where the badness of me came out, you see, Miss Lettice. I would have stayed with him to the end of my days, wife or no wife, if he had wanted me. But he tired of me very soon."