“What—what is that you say, Esmeralda?” he asked, almost inaudibly.
“That is not true—and you know it!” she said. “Wait; I don’t want you to answer me, to talk to me as if I were a child, an ignorant girl. I—I should hate to have you lie to me. Besides, it is too late.”
He stood like a man bewildered by a sudden blow.
“Too late!” he echoed, mechanically.
“Yes,” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “Oh, if it were not—if it only were not! Lord Trafford, it—it is not my fault that we were married. I only knew the truth afterward—soon afterward; but it was afterward. I know now—now that it is too late—that you married me for—for—”
She paused; the shameful words threatened to choke her.
“Go on,” he said, with an awful calmness.
—“For my money!” she said in a whisper, and with downcast eyes, as if it were she who was guilty.
He did not start, but a hand seemed to grasp his heart. It was so true—and truth is often so ghastly, so all-powerful and insurmountable.
“How—who—”