He recoiled sharply, with a gesture of complete disbelief.
"How do you know?" he demanded. "They are strangers to you. I have known them in their own home. All the world credits their marriage, and—"
"All the world does not know what transpired in this house sixteen years ago, when Edwin Urquhart stopped here with his bride on his way to France."
He stared, seemed shaken, but presently hastened to remark:
"Ah, madame, you acknowledge that she is his wife. You said bride. One does not call a woman by that name without acknowledging a marriage service."
"The woman he brought here was his bride. Edwin Urquhart is no common criminal, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."
It was hard to make him understand. It was hard to undermine his trust, step by step, inch by inch, till he found no hope, no shred of doubt to cling to. But it had to be done. If only to avert worse calamities and more heart-rending scenes, he must know at once, and before he took another step in relation to Miss Urquhart, just what her position was, and to what shame and suffering he was subjecting himself by accepting her love and pledging his own.
The task was not done till I had shown him this diary of mine, and related all that had just occurred in the room below. Then, indeed, he seemed to comprehend his position, and completely crushed and horror-stricken, subsided into a dreadful silence before me, the lines of years coming into his face as I watched him, till he became scarcely recognizable for the lordly and light-hearted cavalier whose dreams of love I had so fearfully interrupted some half hour or so before. From this lethargy of despair I did not seek to rouse him. I knew when he had anything to say he would speak, and till he had faced the situation and had made up his mind to his duty, I could wait his decision with perfect confidence in his fine nature and nice sense of honor.
You may, therefore, imagine my feelings when, after a long delay—an hour at least—he suddenly remarked:
"We have been a proud family. From time immemorial we have held ourselves aloof from whatever could be thought to stain our honor or impeach our good name. I cannot drag the unfathomable disgrace of all these crimes into a record so pure as that of the Roche-Guyon race. Though I had wished to bestow upon my wife a name and position of which she could be proud, I must content myself with merely giving her the comfort of a true heart and such support as can be provided by a loving but unaccustomed hand."