“Forgotten you!”
“That you should have been captivated,” continued Susan, in a more hurried tone, “by one so superior to me in all things as Lucretia, is very natural. I thought, then—thought only—that nothing could cloud your happiness but some reproach of a conscience too sensitive. For this I have met you,—met you without a thought which Lucretia would have a right to blame, could she read my heart; met you,” and the voice for the first time faltered, “that I might say, ‘Be at peace; it is your sister that addresses you. Requite Lucretia’s love,—it is deep and strong; give her, as she gives to you, a whole heart; and in your happiness I, your sister—sister to both—I shall be blest.’” With a smile inexpressibly touching and ingenuous, she held out her hand as she ceased. Mainwaring sprang forward, and despite her struggle, pressed it to his lips, his heart.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, in broken accents, which gradually became more clear and loud, “what—what have I lost!—lost forever! No, no, I will be worthy of you! I do not, I dare not, say that I love you still! I feel what I owe to Lucretia. How I became first ensnared, infatuated; how, with your image graven so deeply here—”
“Mainwaring—Mr. Mainwaring—I must not hear you. Is this your promise?”
“Yes, you must hear me yet. How I became engaged to your sister,—so different indeed from you,—I start in amaze and bewilderment when I seek to conjecture. But so it was. For me she has forfeited fortune, rank, all which that proud, stern heart so prized and coveted. Heaven is my witness how I have struggled to repay her affection with my own! If I cannot succeed, at least all that faith and gratitude can give are hers. Yes, when I leave you, comforted by your forgiveness, your prayers, I shall have strength to tear you from my heart; it is my duty, my fate. With a firm step I will go to these abhorred nuptials. Oh, shudder not, turn not away. Forgive the word; but I must speak,—my heart will out; yes, abhorred nuptials! Between my grave and the altar, would—would that I had a choice!”
From this burst, which in vain from time to time Susan had sought to check, Mainwaring was startled by an apparition which froze his veins, as a ghost from the grave. The door was thrown open, and Lucretia stood in the aperture,—stood, gazing on him, face to face; and her own was so colourless, so rigid, so locked in its livid and awful solemnity of aspect that it was, indeed, as one risen from the dead.
Dismayed by the abrupt cry and the changed face of her lover, Susan turned and beheld her sister. With the impulse of the pierced and loving heart, which divined all the agony inflicted, she sprang to Lucretia’s side, she fell to the ground and clasped her knees.
“Do not heed, do not believe him; it is but the frenzy of a moment. He spoke but to deceive me,—me, who loved him once! Mine alone, mine is the crime. He knows all your worth. Pity—pity—pity on yourself, on him, on me!”
Lucretia’s eyes fell with the glare of a fiend upon the imploring face lifted to her own. Her lips moved, but no sound was audible. At length she drew herself from her sister’s clasp, and walked steadily up to Mainwaring. She surveyed him with a calm and cruel gaze, as if she enjoyed his shame and terror. Before, however, she spoke, Mrs. Fielden, who had watched, as one spellbound, Lucretia’s movements, and, without hearing what had passed, had the full foreboding of what would ensue, but had not stirred till Lucretia herself terminated the suspense and broke the charm of her awe,—before she spoke, Mrs. Fielden rushed in, and giving vent to her agitation in loud sobs, as she threw her arms round Susan, who was still kneeling on the floor, brought something of grotesque to the more tragic and fearful character of the scene.
“My uncle was right; there is neither courage nor honour in the low-born! He, the schemer, too, is right. All hollow,—all false!” Thus said Lucretia, with a strange sort of musing accent, at first scornful, at last only quietly abstracted. “Rise, sir,” she then added, with her most imperious tone; “do you not hear your Susan weep? Do you fear in my presence to console her? Coward to her, as forsworn to me! Go, sir, you are free!”