Oh that I had dared to answer, "He is my father. Covered with shame and humiliation, I acknowledge my parentage, which makes me so unworthy to bear your unsullied name. My darkened spirit would hide itself behind a cloud, to escape the villain whom nature disowns and reason abhors." But, unknowing the contents of the mysterious note, unknowing the consequences to himself which might result from its disclosure, remembering the injunction of my dying mother, to be to him a guardian angel in the hour of danger,—I could not save myself from blame by revealing the truth. I could not stain my lips with a falsehood.
"I never saw that man before," I replied. "Most husbands would think modest confusion more becoming in a wife, than the indignation which he usually deems it his own prerogative to exhibit. If I have been insulted, methinks you should wreak your vengeance on the offender, instead of me,—the innocent sufferer. It would be more manly."
"Would you have had me make the theatre a scene of strife and bloodshed?" he exclaimed.
"No! neither would I have you bring warring passions into the peaceful bosom of your own home."
"Is this you?" he cried, looking me sternly and sorrowfully in the face. "Is this the gentle and tender Gabriella, who speaks in such a tone of bitterness and scorn?"
"I did not know that I spoke bitterly!" I exclaimed. "Oh, Ernest, you have roused in me a spirit of resistance I tremble to feel! You madden me by your reproaches! You wrong me by your suspicions! I meant to be gentle and forbearing; but the worm will writhe under the foot that grinds it into dust. Alas! how little we know ourselves!"
With anguish that cannot be described, I clasped my hands tightly over my heart, that ached with intolerable pangs. I had lost him,—lost his love,—lost his confidence. Had I seen him in his grave, I could scarcely have felt more utter desolation.
"I told you what I was," he cried, the pale severity of his countenance changing to the most stormy agitation. "I told you that the cloud which hung over my cradle would follow me to the grave; that suspicion and jealousy were the twin-born phantoms of my soul. Why, then, rash and blind, have you committed your happiness into my keeping? You were warned, and yet you hastened to your doom."
"Because I believed that you loved me; because I loved and trusted, with a love and faith more deep and strong than woman ever knew."
"And I have destroyed them. I knew it would be so. I knew that I would prove a faithless guardian to a charge too dear. Gabriella, I am a wretch,—deserving your hatred and indignation. I have insulted your innocence, by suspicions I should blush to admit. Love, too strong for reason, converts me at times into a madman. I do not ask you to forgive me; but if you could conceive of the agonies I endure, you would pity me, were I your direst foe."