“Philippa!”
“I know, I know I should have trusted you. That I should have seen and felt that you were incapable of doing so mean and wicked a thing as—as my suspicions suggested to me, but, coming up-stairs while your mother was below, I had seen you pass into her room on tiptoe, stay but a moment, and then come creeping out again, thrusting something that glittered into your breast. I had seen this; and though I thought nothing of it at the moment I—I did fear and tremble when from the back room, into which I had stepped, I beheld her come back, walk over to the mantel-piece where she stood for a moment gazing at her jewel-case, and then, rushing to the window and throwing it open, run out again into the hall crying that her diamonds were gone and that a thief must have crawled in from the street and taken them while she was below. For—it is my only excuse, Lawrence—I could not dream she had taken advantage of that moment’s pause before the mantel to snatch the jewels from their case and hide them in her own bosom. That would imply a knowledge of facts and motives to which I was necessarily a stranger. I could only think she was influenced in her action by a conviction that one she loved had done this act, and this apparent conviction of hers awakened mine; for she was a woman and a mother, and knew, as I believed, her own son well, while I was but a simple girl who loved. Yet see, yet see, she was the one who did the wrong, if wrong were done, while you—” Philippa’s head sank on her breast and the tears came.
He let her weep for a moment; then with a slow and mechanical motion he thrust his hand into his breast and took out a simple bracelet made of silver coils and held it towards her.
“This is what I went for,” said he, “and this is what I brought out. I had seen it lying on the sofa, Philippa, when I went in before dinner, and my heart coveted it and my lips burned to kiss it, and—”
“O Lawrence!” was her cry, “my bracelet!” and then there was silence, during which he sat with his eyes on her face in a mute reproach, evidently worse to her than death. At last she could bear it no longer, and lifting her head she gave him one look.
It seemed to recall him to himself. Grasping her hand, he uttered one short sentence, but that was full of meaning. It was this: “And yet you married me!”
The pallor of her cheek disappeared in a flush that made her absolutely dazzling.
“I loved you,” she murmured, “and I knew, that is, I had heard, that a wife could not be called upon to testify against her husband.”
He gave a sudden cry, and his arms closed passionately round her. He did not tell her that that was an old and antiquated law, no longer in force at this day; he only whispered words of love and consolation, and when, ten minutes from that time, they left the room and I at last succeeded in escaping from my hiding-place and from the house, it was with the conviction that I had left two noble hearts behind me, whose happiness, if not their worldly prosperity, was assured.