“No, no!” cried Florence vehemently. “I never comprehended your half-sorrowful, half-angry allusions to the past. I thought it was of papa and his unfortunate speculations you spoke so angrily. Truth to tell, I have always supposed that some entanglement you did not care to confess to me occasioned your varying manner and your declaration that it was too late for us to love each other.”
“And you have never been another’s, my Florence—my darling!” Mr. Aylwinne murmured, as he joyfully caught her to his breast. “How cruelly I have been deceived! How cold—how unkind I must have appeared to you! And yet,” he added, releasing her and again looking doubtful and unsatisfied, “and yet there is something here I do not understand: I saw you at the Albany—I heard you crave an interview with the profligate lieutenant, and—oh, Florence!—I was the maddened witness of your tears and disappointment when you learned that he had quitted England.”
“And listened,” Florence added, with bitterness, “to the whispers of a man who is, by your own showing, as vile as his master. I insist that you tell me all he said!”
“For what purpose?” he asked. “Surely you must be well aware that your own candid statement will outweigh anything he may have told me.”
But Florence, whose pride had been aroused by his suspicions, persisted, and by degrees drew from him the whole story.
He had partially recognized in the veiled lady waiting to see Lieutenant Mason the form and features of the fair girl he loved devotedly, despite the rejection his suit had received. Shocked to behold her at such a place, he had questioned the servant, obtained equivocal answers, and bribed him to confess more.
His avarice awakened by the sight of Mr. Aylwinne’s gold, this fellow, who really had nothing to tell concerning Florence, poured into the ears of his credulous listener the history of his master’s connection with Julia Denham. Careful to mention no names, he told it more by hints and half sentences than an open relation of facts; and Mr. Aylwinne left him at last, sadly convinced that the beautiful young creature at West Street, Brompton, who had gone through the form of a marriage with Lieutenant Mason was Florence Heriton—the gentle, trusting girl whom for years it had been his cherished dream to win.
This, then, explained all that had so long perplexed Florence in his behavior. It was because he believed her morally if not legally bound to another that he had avoided her. It was in pure compassion that he had, after the first start of surprise, rejoiced that she had found an asylum beneath his roof. Now it became easy enough to find a meaning for all he had said that had hitherto sounded mysterious, as, for instance, his allusions to the recollections of her wrongs as being too painful to bear retrospection.
And then the flush faded from her cheek and left her deathly pale, for she remembered that she had nothing but her own simple assurance to oppose to Mr. Aylwinne’s deeply rooted conviction that she was the unhappy girl Lieutenant Mason had wedded and deserted.
Then in her distress, anger at his credulity began to make itself felt, and, drawing herself up, she proudly said: