“Really!” she said, with her sweetest smile. “This is to be a very, very private conversation! Hand me my smelling bottle, Frederick. Not that one; the diamond and the turquoise one your father gave me yesterday. There are no bounds to my husband’s generosity.”
“It is a pity,” I said, “that such a nature as his should be trifled with.”
“It would be a thousand pities!” she replied. “Who would be so unkind! Not you, I am sure; your heart is too tender; you are too fond of your father. As for me, he knows my feelings for him. He is husband, friend, and father, all in one, to me. His exact words, I assure you. Trifle with such a man! No, indeed; it would be too cruel! Come and sit here, by my side, Frederick. If you refuse, I declare I will ring for my maid, and will not speak to you—no, not another word! Now you are good; but you look too serious. I hate serious people. I love pleasure and excitement. That is because I am young and not bad looking. What do you think? You can’t say I am ugly. But perhaps you have no eyes for me; your heart is elsewhere—in that locket on your chain. I must positively see the picture it contains. No? I must, indeed!—and then I will be quiet, and you shall talk. You have no idea what an obstinate little creature I am when I get an idea into my head, and if you don’t let me see the inside of that locket, I shall ring for my maid. Thank you. Now you are good! It is empty, I declare. It is a pretty locket. You have good taste.”
There was no picture in the locket; it was worn on my chain from harmless vanity. I had disengaged it from the chain, and she held it in her hand. Suddenly she turned her face close to mine, and said, in the same languid tone, but with a certain meaning in it,
“Well?”
“Grace,” I said, “shall I relate to you the story of Sydney Campbell?”
The directness of my attack frightened her. Her hands, her lips, her whole body trembled; tears filled her eyes, and she looked at me so piteously that for a moment I doubted whether I was not sitting by the side of a helpless child instead of a heartless, cruel, wicked woman.
“For shame, to take advantage of a defenceless girl! You don’t know the true story—you don’t, you don’t! What have you seen me do that you come here, because I happen to have married your father, to threaten and frighten me? What can you say against me? That I have been unfortunate. O, Frederick, you don’t know how unfortunate! You don’t know how I have been treated, and how I have suffered! Have you no pity? Even if I have committed an error through ignorance, should I not be allowed an opportunity to reform? Am I to be utterly abandoned—utterly lost? And are you going to crush me, and send me wandering through the world again, with no one to love or sympathise with me? That portrait of mine which was in Mr. Pelham’s pocket-book, and which Sydney saw, was stolen from me, and what was written on the back was forged writing. If a man loves me, can I help it? It is nothing to do with me whether he is a gentleman or a blackguard. Pelham loved me, and he was a cheat. Was that my fault? Have pity, have pity, and do not expose me!”
She had fallen on her knees, and had grasped my hands, which I could not release from her grasp, and as she poured out her piteous appeal I declare I could not then tell whether it was genuine or false. I knew that, if this woman were acting, there is no actress on our stage who could excel her. What a danger was here! Acting thus before me, who was armed against her, how would she act in the presence of my father, who had given her his heart? But soon after she had ceased to speak, my calmer sense returned to me, and I seized the point it was necessary to drive home.