With a wild hysterical rapidity she poured forth a sort of excuse of her own conduct. She recalled all that I had seen her suffer of insult and shame; the daily outrages passed upon her; the slights which no woman can or ought to pardon. She spoke of her friendlessness, her misery; but, more than all, her consuming desire to be avenged on the man who had degraded her. “Your father, I knew, was the man to do me this justice,” she cried; “he did not love me, nor did I love him; but we both hated this wretch, and it seemed little to me what became of me, if I could but compass his ruin.”
I scarcely followed her. I bethought me of my poor mother, for whom none had a thought, neither of the wrongs done her, nor of the sufferings to which she was so remorselessly consigned.
“You do not listen to me. You do not hear me,” cried she, passionately; “and yet who has been your friend as I have? Who has implored your father to be just towards you as I have done? Who has hazarded her whole future in maintaining your rights,—who but I?” In a wild rhapsody of mingled passion and appeal she went on to show how Sir Roger insisted on presenting her everywhere as his wife.
Even at courts she had been so presented, though all the terrible consequences of exposure were sure to ring over the whole of Europe. The personal danger of the step was-a temptation too strong to resist; and the altercation and vindication that must follow were ecstasy to him. He was-pitting himself against the world, and he would back himself on the issue.
“And, here, where we are now,” cried I, “what is to happen if to-morrow some stranger should arrive from England who knows your story, and feels he owes it to his host to proclaim it?”
“Is it not too clear what is to happen?” shrieked she; “blood, more blood,—theirs or his, or both! Just as he struck a young prince at Baden with a glove across the face, because he stared at me too rudely, and shot him afterwards; his dearest tie to me is the peril that attaches to me. Do you not know him, Digby? Do you not know the insolent disdain with which he refuses to be bound by what other men submit to; and that when he has said, 'I am ready to stake my life on it,' he believes he has proved his conviction to be a just one?”
Of my father's means, or what remained to him of fortune, she knew nothing. They had often been reduced to almost want, and at other times money would flow freely in, to be wasted and lavished with that careless munificence that no experiences of privation could ever teach prudence. We now turned to speculate on what would happen when he came back from this shooting-party; how he would recognize me.
“I see,” cried I: “you suspect he will disown me?”
“Not that, dear Digby,” said she, in some confusion, “but he may require—that is, he may wish you to conform to some plan, some procedure of his own.”
“If this should involve the smallest infraction of what is due to my mother, I 'll refuse,” said I, firmly, “and reject as openly as he dares to make it.”