"I wish to ask you one question before you go," she said, as his hand was on the handle of the lock; and she spoke in a voice that was almost goddess-like; that hardly betrayed, but yet that did betray, the human effort. Bertram paused, and again turned to her.
"In your accusation against me just now—"
"I made no accusation, Caroline."
"You not only made it, Mr. Bertram, but I pleaded guilty to it. But in making it you mentioned Mr. Harcourt's name. While you were absent in Paris, I did talk with that gentleman on our private affairs, yours and mine. I hope I am believed to have done so because I regarded Mr. Harcourt as your friend?"
Bertram did not understand her, and he showed that he did not by his look.
"It is difficult for me to explain myself"—and now she blushed slightly—very slightly. "What I mean is this; I wish to be acquitted by you of having had recourse to Mr. Harcourt on my own account—from any partiality of my own." She almost rose in height as she stood there before him, uttering these words in all her cold but beautiful dignity. Whatever her sins might have been, he should not accuse her of having dallied with another while her word and her troth had been his. She had been wrong. She could not deny that he had justice on his side—stern, harsh, bare justice—when he came there to her and flung back her love and promises into her teeth. He had the right to do so, and she would not complain. But he should not leave her till he had acquitted her of the vile, missish crime of flirting with another because he was absent. Seeing that he still hardly understood her, she made her speech yet plainer.
"At the risk of being told again that I am unfeminine, I must explain myself. Do you charge me with having allowed Mr. Harcourt to speak to me as a lover?"
"No; I make no such charge. Now, I have no right to make any charge on such a matter."
"No; should Mr. Harcourt be my lover now, that is my affair and his, not yours. But had he been so then— You owe it to me to say whether among other sins, that sin also is charged against me?"
"I have charged and do charge nothing against you, but this—that you have ceased to love me. And that charge will be made nowhere but in my own breast. I am not a jealous man, as I think you might know. What I have said to you here to-day has not come of suspicion. I have thought no ill against you, and believed no ill against you beyond that which you have yourself acknowledged. I find that you have ceased to love me, and finding that, I am indifferent to whom your love may be given." And so saying, he opened the door and went out; nor did he ever again see Miss Waddington at Littlebath.