She broke off suddenly, remembering that she had not intended disclosing the name of her guest.
"Dr. Ashton?" Helen returned, fixing her eyes upon her companion, and unconsciously speaking with a deliberation which gave especial weight to her words. "Yes; I know him. We went to Paris together."
"Together! Was he a friend of your husband? How did you know whom I meant?"
There was no perceptible pause before Helen answered; but meanwhile she determined to throw aside all concealment. She could no longer stand before Arthur Fenton's wife with the humiliation of even a tacit deception between them. She felt a spirit of defiance rising within her. Who was this woman that she assumed the right to judge them all by standards for whose narrowness only contempt was possible! At least she would rise above all conventional prejudices, and no longer tacitly ask, as by silence she had done, exemption from the harsh judgments of Mrs. Fenton's creed.
Helen was too womanly not to shrink from this disclosure, and she had been too thoroughly educated in the faith by which Edith lived not to understand just how her life would appear seen through the latter's belief. Disconnected with a question relating to the marriage relation and by implication casting reflection upon her delicacy and even purity of life as a woman separated from her lawful husband, Helen could have met with dispassionate reasoning whatever assault Edith made upon her. This point was too vital, it touched too closely the core of her woman's nature, and although she retained perfectly her self-control, there was a pulse of passion in her voice when she spoke.
"Dr. Ashton," she said unflinchingly, "is my husband."
"What?" cried Edith.
"We have not found it convenient to live together," Helen continued, with increasing calmness, a faint tinge of contempt creeping into her voice, "and so since my return from Europe I have taken my mother's name to avoid gossip. Dr. Ashton and I are very good friends still."
"And did Mr. Fenton know this?" asked the other, very pale.
"Certainly; although you understand that it is not a matter which we discuss with the world at large. I pass, I believe, as a widow; though I have never done or said any thing to give color to that idea."