He looked at her steadily, and then, as if he had read the answer to his unspoken question in her pure eyes, he drew a long breath.
“It was his fault, then?”
“Yes,” she said in a whisper. “Don’t ask me to tell you all, Varley. I—I couldn’t. It would be like tearing open a wound; and it would do no good. We are separated forever!”
She turned her head away from him, and he saw her lips quiver.
“Do you mean that he has been bad to you?” he asked. “Remember that I am your guardian.”
She was silent a moment. Not even to Varley could she tell the whole sordid story of her misery and humiliation.
“He—he never loved me. It was my money he wanted, and not me. You know how rich I am? I did not know the truth—I was just an ignorant girl, strange to their ways and the way they think about such things—I didn’t discover it until after we were married.”
He bent forward a little and just touched the sleeve of her dress. The tender, pitying caress almost shattered her self-restraint.
“And that’s not all. He had married me for my money, but all the while there was some one else. Oh, Varley! Varley!” She hid her face in her hands and her slight figure shook.
Varley rose from the table and went outside the hut. His face was deathly white, and his dark eyes were alight with a terrible fire. He shook from head to foot like a man torn by an internal devil, and his hands, thrust in his pockets, were clinched so tightly that the nails were driven into the soft palms. But he said not a word, though every vein in his body throbbed with a curse.