"I am not Rachael Closs!" cried the woman, fiercely. "You would not have treated her so. It is Lady Hope you are putting to torture. Oh, Norton! what have I done to you? What have I done to you that you should mock me so?"
"I wish to save my child—to save myself."
"Well, is that all? She shall never speak to Hepworth again. Yes, what is my brother, or anybody in the world, compared to one smile from my husband?"
"And you will help me to reconcile Clara to that which must be?"
"I will do anything, everything that you wish, only do not leave me again."
"But I must sometimes go out."
"And I cannot go with you. Rachael Closs is not good enough for your high-born friends. Lady Carset has put her ban on your wife, and the nobility of England accept it. But for this I might have been the companion of your visits, the helpmate of your greatness—for I have the power. I could have done so much, so much in this great world of yours, but that old woman would not let me. It is cruel! it is cruel! You would have loved me now as you did at first, but for her."
Lord Hope took Rachael's hand in his.
"Ah, Rachael!" he said, "if you could but understand the love which can neither be cherished nor cast away, which pervades a whole life, only to disturb it! Between you and me must ever come the shadow of a woman we cannot talk of, but who stands eternally between us two. Even in the first days of our passionate delirium I felt this viperous truth creeping under the roses with which we madly hoped to smother it. The thought grew and grew, like a parasite upon the heart. It clung to mine, bound it down, made it powerless. Oh, would to God the memory of that one night could be lifted from my soul! The presence of your brother here has brought it back upon me with terrible force. But, thank God, he is gone!"
"Gone! What, my brother? Am I never to see him again?"