“There was confidence between us at last; each knew that the other suffered, and that the other loved.
“I have said that Murray was an honorable man, but his love was a tyrant, or it would never have been expressed. He was no tempter, nor was I one to be tempted. It was in his goodness that our strength lay, for we were strong, and in every act of our lives faithful to the duties that chained us.
“Murray seized upon this passion with his grasping intellect, and strove to force it into friendship, or into that deceptive, Platonic sentiment which is neither friendship nor love. My heart followed him—my mind kept pace with his—anything that did not separate us, and which was not degradation, I was strong enough to endure. We could not give up each other’s society; that we did not attempt, for both felt its impossibility.”
CHAPTER VIII
STRUGGLES AND PENALTIES
“Varnham was absent when our confession was first looked, then breathed, and at last desperately uttered. He had been gone more than a week, making preparations for our return to Ashton. Had every action of our lives been counted during that time, the most austere moralist could have detected no wrong. The sin with us was too subtle and deep for human eyes, even for our own. We could not believe that feelings which had no evil wish might be in themselves evil. But when my husband returned, the pang of shame and regret that fell upon us should have been proof enough of wrong. When had we ever blushed and trembled in his presence before?
“We were alone, Murray and myself, in the little boudoir which I have mentioned so often. He was sitting on the sofa, to which my husband had so tenderly lifted me on the night before my mother’s funeral, reading one of my favorite Italian poets. I sat a little way off, listening to the deep melody of his voice, watching the alternate fire and shadow that played within the depths of his large eyes, the clear, bold expression of his forehead, and the smile upon his lips, which seemed imbued with the soft poetry that dropped in melody from them.
“I had forgotten everything for the time, and was lost in the first bewildering dream which follows, with its delicious quietude, the entire outpouring of the soul; when thought itself arises but as sweet exhalation from the one grand passion which pervades the whole being; when even a sense of wrong but haunts the heart as the bee slumbers within the urn of a flower, rendered inert and stingless by the wealth of honey which surrounds it.
“Murray had been bred in society, and could not so readily fling off the consciousness of our position. A shadow, darker than the words of his author warranted, settled on his brow as he read, and more than once he raised his eyes from the page in the middle of a sentence, and fixed them with a serious and almost melancholy earnestness on my face. Then I would interrupt his thoughts with some of the pleasant words which love sends up from the full heart, naturally as song gushes from the bosom of a nightingale. He would muse a moment after this and resume his book, allowing his voice to revel in the melody of the language, then hurry on with a stern and abrupt emphasis, as one who strives by rapidity of utterance to conquer painful thoughts.
“The sudden recoil of my heart was suffocating, then its deep, heavy throbbing grew almost audible. I felt the blood ebbing away from my face and a faintness was upon me. Murray started and grasped my hand with a violence that pained me.
“‘Lady Granby, be yourself; why do you tremble? Have we in wish or act wronged this man?’