And now, after only the slightest pause, Lady Elliston proved how deep, how unflinching was her courage. She had guarded her illicit passion all her life; she revealed it now. "I do love him," she said. "I have never loved another man. It is he who doesn't love me."
From the black depths where she seemed to swoon and float, like a drowsy, drowning thing, the hard note of misery struck on Amabel's ear. She opened her eyes and looked at Lady Elliston. Power, freedom, passion: it was not these that looked back at her from the bereft and haggard eyes. "After twenty years he has grown tired," Lady Elliston said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was the centre; he always came back to me.—I saw the end approaching about five years ago. I fought—oh how warily—so that he shouldn't dream I was afraid;—it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is afraid,—the brutes, the cruel brutes,"—said Lady Elliston;—"how we love them for their fear and pleading; how our fear and pleading hardens them against us." Her lips trembled and the tears ran down her cheeks. "I never pleaded; I never showed that I saw the change. I kept him, for years, by my skill. But the odds were too great at last. It was a year ago that he told me he didn't care any more. He was troubled, a little embarrassed, but quite determined that I shouldn't bother him. Since then it has been another woman. I know her; I meet her everywhere; very beautiful; very young; only married for three years; a heartless, rapacious creature. Hugh has nearly ruined himself in paying her jeweller's bills and her debts at bridge. And already she has thrown him over. It happened only the other day. I knew it was happening when I saw him here. I was glad, Amabel; I longed for him to suffer; and he will. He is a libertine of most fastidious tastes and he will not find many more young and beautiful women, of his world, to run risks for him. He, too, is getting old. And he has gone through nearly all his own money—and yours. Things will soon be over for him.—Oh—but—I love him—I love him—and everything is over for me.—How can I bear it!"
She bent forward on her knees and convulsive sobs shook her.
Her words seemed to Amabel to come to her from a far distance; they echoed in her, yet they were not the words she could have used. How dim was her own love-dream beside this torment of dispossession. What—who—had she loved for all these years? She could not touch or see her own grief; but Lady Elliston's grief pierced through her. She leaned towards her and softly touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand; she held the hand in hers. The sight of this loss of strength and dignity was an actual pain; her own pain was something elusive and unsubstantial; it wandered like a ghost vainly seeking an embodiment.
"Oh, you angel—you poor angel!" moaned Lady Elliston. "There: that's enough of crying; it can't bring back my youth.—What a fool I am. If only I could learn to think of myself as free instead of maimed and left by the wayside. It is hard to live without love if one has always had it.—But I have freed you, Amabel. I am glad of that. It has been a cruel, but a right thing to do. He shall not come to you with his shameless love; he shall not come between you and your boy. You shan't misplace your worship so. It is Augustine who is beautiful and noble; it is Augustine who loves you. You aren't maimed and forsaken; thank heaven for that, dear."
Lady Elliston had risen. Strong again, she faced her life, took up the reins, not a trace of scruple or of shame about her. It did not enter her mind to ask Amabel for forgiveness, to ask if she were despised or shrunk from: it did not enter Amabel's mind to wonder at the omission. She looked up at her guest and her lifted face seemed that of the drowned creature floating to the surface of the water.
"Tell me, Amabel," Lady Elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. You will live; you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your splendid boy, and live."
Amabel slightly shook her head.
"Oh, why do you say that? Has it hurt so horribly?"
Amabel seemed to make the effort to think what it had done. She did not know. The ghost wailed; but she could not see its form.