“That she is in love with you,” she said, with almost vulgar frankness. “You think that she would have consented to marry you if you had been a commoner, and just a mere nobody?”
He was silent, but he glanced at Esmeralda under his knit brows.
“Trust me that, with all her seeming simplicity, she knows the worth of the bargain she has made. Do you think that you are the first man who has made love to her?”
His face grew dark.
“You are unjust to her,” he said.
She laughed bitterly.
“And you take up her defense,” she said. “Has it come to that already?”
“For God’s sake, be silent!” he said, almost fiercely. “What is done is done. You know how necessary, how inevitable it was. You yourself advised—yes, drove me to—the doing of it. Do not make my duty harder and more difficult than it is.”
“Is it so hard, so difficult?” she murmured, with a thrill of gratification. “Forgive me, Trafford! You can not know, understand, what I feel, what I suffer! Yes, I advised you, I helped you. But—but all the same, I—I am a woman, and, ah! do not forget that—that I love you! Can I help envying her the wealth that gives you to her? Don’t expect too much of me!”
“Forgive me, Ada,” he murmured, penitently; but, even as he spoke, he looked across the room at Esmeralda, and her face, radiant with happiness, smote him with remorse.