“Evelyn, you wrong me. For mercy’s sake do not upbraid and taunt me so unjustly!”
In vain she held out her hands imploringly, while tears rolled over her crimsoned cheeks, and sobs impeded her utterance. Mrs. Gerome laughed bitterly.
“What! I wrong you? Have you gone mad, instead of your victim? Miss Dexter, you and I can scarcely afford 415 to deal in mock tragedy, and though you make a pretty picture kneeling there, I have no mind to paint you yonder, where I put your colleague, Judas. Is it not a good likeness of your lover, as he looked that memorable day when the broad banana-leaves overshadowed his handsome head?”
She rapped the canvas with her clenched hand, and continued, in accents of indescribable scorn,—
“Do you kneel as penitent or petitioner? You come to crave my pardon, or my husband?”
The governess had bowed her face almost to the carpet, like some fragile flower borne down by a sudden flood; but now she rose, and, throwing her head back proudly, answered with firm yet gentle dignity,—
“Of Mrs. Gerome I crave nothing. Of Evelyn Carlyle I demand justice; simply bare justice.”
“Justice! You are rash, Miss Dexter, to challenge fate; for, were justice meted out, the burden would prove more intolerable to you than that King Stork whom Zeus sent down as a Nemesis to quiet clamorous frogs. Justice, let me tell you, long ago fled from this hostile and inhospitable earth and took refuge beyond the stars, where, please God, you and I shall one day confront her and get our long-defrauded dues. Justice? Nay, nay! the thing I recognize as justice would crush you utterly, and you should flee to the Ultima Thule to avoid it. I divine your mission. You come as envoy-extraordinary from my honorable and chivalric husband, to demand release from the bonds that doom me to wear his name and you to live without that spotless ægis? Since my fortune no longer percolates through the sieve of his pocket, and legal quibbles can not now avail to wring thousands from my purse, he desires a divorce, in order to remove to your fair wrists the fetters which have proved more galling to mine than those of iron.”
“Evelyn, insult must not be heaped upon injury. As God hears me, I tell you solemnly that you have seen your husband since I have. Upon Maurice Carlyle’s face I have never looked since that fatal hour when I last saw yours, ghastly and rigid, against the background of guava-boughs. From 416 that day until this, I have neither seen, nor spoken, nor written to him.”
“Then why are you here, to torment me with the sight of your face, which would darken the precincts of heaven, if I met it inside of the gates of pearl?”