“It was no good to me. It has never been any good. All the things I have bought with it I never cared for. I hate it—I hate it now! It is the cause of all—of all my misery. I was happy at Three Star.” Then the longing of her heart broke from her in a despairing cry. “Oh, my God! why did I ever leave it?”
She sunk into a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. He stood for a moment motionless, then he went to her side, and looking down at her with pallid face, said, hoarsely and slowly, as if he were weighing every word:
“Esmeralda, listen to me; I understand now; I know all you feel. I will not ask you who told you—how you discovered the truth. It is the truth—partly. Esmeralda, it was the desire of the money—and I curse it now as you do—that led me to yield.”
“I know it,” she whispered, brokenly.
“Yes, there shall be no concealment, no evasion. It was the money. You say you can not understand how I could have been so—mean, so bad. You can not. You do not know the need that urged me on, the devil of family pride that thrust me forward. See, I speak to you now as to a woman—you can not call yourself ignorant any longer. I will speak—yes, as man to man—the truth and the whole truth. Esmeralda, we were nearly ruined; we stood on the brink of utter destruction; in a few months Belfayre would have been sold over our heads. There was only one person who could save it, only one way of saving it. It is a way that is common, all too common. Men—women—of the world think nothing of it; no one shrinks from it. I could save my people, the place, by marrying money, and—”
“You deceived, sacrificed me!” she said, slowly.
He made a gesture with his hand.
“I will deny nothing that is true,” he said. “I asked you to be my wife because you were rich—yes.”
She rose, her eyes fixed upon him, her breath coming fast, and he met her gaze steadily, almost calmly.
“At that time I did not love you.”