She flushed and for the first time her eyes fell from their resting-place on Mr. Jeffrey’s face.
“I loved her reputation,” was her quiet answer, “and—” The rest died in her throat.
But we all—such of us, I mean, who were possessed of the least sensibility or insight, knew how that sentence sounded as finished in her heart “and I loved him who asked this sacrifice of me.”
Yet was her conduct not quite clear.
“And to save that reputation you tied the pistol to her wrist?” insinuated the major.
“No,” was her vehement reply. “I never knew what I was tying to her. My testimony in that regard was absolutely true. She held the pistol concealed in the folds of her dress. I did not dream—I could not—that she was contemplating any such end to the atrocious crime—to which she had confessed. Her manner was too light, too airy and too frivolous—a manner adopted, as I now see, to forestall all questions and hold back all expressions of feeling on my part. ‘Tie these hanging ends of ribbon to my wrist,’ were her words. ‘Tie them tight; a knot under and a bow on top. I am going out— There, don’t say anything— What you want to talk about will keep till tomorrow. For one night more I am going to make merry—to—to enjoy myself.’ She was laughing. I thought her horribly callous and trembled with such an unspeakable repulsion that I had difficulty in making the knot. To speak at all would have been impossible. Neither did I dare to look in her face. I was touching the hand and she kept on laughing—such a hollow laugh covering up such an awful resolve! When she turned to give me that last injunction about the note, this resolve glared still in her eyes.”
“And you never suspected?”
“Not for an instant. I did not do justice either to her misery or to her conscience. I fear that I have never done her justice in anyway. I thought her light, pleasure-loving. I did not know that it was assumed to hide a terrible secret.”
“Then you had no knowledge of the contract she had entered into while a school-girl?”
“Not in the least. Another woman, and not myself, had been her confidante; a woman who has since died. No intimation of her first unfortunate marriage had ever reached me till Mr. Jeffrey rushed in upon me that Tuesday morning with her dreadful confession on his lips.”