“It was no fancy, unfortunately. I saw and spoke to your wife.”
“Saw and spoke to my wife?” he repeated. “My dear Gwendolyn, you are certainly dreaming. I have no wife.”
“She told me that her husband refused to acknowledge her, and that, having no one to befriend her, she could not assert her rights,” pursued Lady Gwendolyn, without heeding his denial. “And, poor thing! she quite wrung my heart, she looked so dejected and hopeless.”
“But not through any fault of mine.”
“Why do you try to deceive me, Colonel Dacre? When a man has committed such a wrong as you have done, the only atonement he can make is a full confession. Treat me frankly now, and I will forgive you everything.”
“Forgive everything! What do you mean, Gwendolyn? I want your love, not your forgiveness. I do not deserve the former, I am aware; but I have certainly done nothing to make it necessary for me to claim the latter.”
“Perhaps you look upon bigamy as a very small offense.”
“But I have never committed bigamy, Gwendolyn. Indeed, until I saw you I never wanted even to commit matrimony.”
“Then who was it I saw in your house?”
“I have a crazy protégée in the village, whom I allow to wander about the park, as she is perfectly harmless. She has very strange delusions, and may have taken it into her head that she is married to me, and I am trying to keep her out of her rights. Who shall answer for the hallucinations of a disordered brain?”