“But I know all now. Ever since I found out the truth I have been thinking—thinking until I thought I should go mad! All the way here, while you thought I was asleep, I was going over it all, and my eyes were opened, and I—I understood! It was the money you wanted; and not only you, but the duke, and Lord Selvaine, and Lilias—” Her voice grew thick.
“No—no!” he exclaimed, hoarsely. “Not Lilias!”
“Yes,” she said, sadly; “I blame her more than the rest, for she is a girl, a woman, and understood. She knew I was ignorant and didn’t know the ways of the world; but she is a great lady, and she ought to have been above—above sacrificing me!”
The word stung him like the cut of a whip. His lips set tightly; but he said nothing. What could he say?
“You all thought of yourselves and your family pride, and—nothing of me!” she went on, after a pause. “I was only a nobody, something little more than the girls who work in the fields: why, I am little better!”
He spoke at last.
“Esmeralda—be just; I—no one of us but respected, admired—”
“I know,” she said, with a deep sigh. “My money made you forget what I was. Lady Wyndover used to say that it was no matter what I did. I didn’t understand that, among other things, but I do now. And I do not blame her for the part she has played.”
She spoke with a kind of calm, pitying contempt.
“She could not help doing what she did, being what she is. She thought that nothing mattered so that I was a marchioness, and would be a duchess some day. I do not blame her, though—though she has been as cruel as the rest of you!”