He dropped his head in his hands, and hid his face.
Lady Wyndover sat and gazed beyond him, breathing hard.
“I hear all you say,” she said, at last, huskily, “and still I repeat: it is not true. Esmeralda is incapable of it—and Norman! Yes, he, too, is incapable of it!”
He groaned in his anguish.
“He is only a man—and he loved her—loved her before I saw her, and she—have you forgotten already how beautiful she is? He is only a man, not an angel from heaven to withstand a temptation which only an angel could resist. Why”—he laughed bitterly—“had I been in his place I should have done the same.”
Lady Wyndover broke into a storm of tears.
“If I were only dead!”
“Wish her dead!” he said, grimly. “She has chosen a life worse than death!”
“I don’t believe it!” she reiterated, firmly. “No, if—if she were to confess it to me here at my knees, I could not believe it. I should think her mad, as I think you. She may have gone; that I can understand, but she has not betrayed you. Esmeralda! She is the soul of truth and honor.”