“Yes! She interprets it this way and that. She cannot bear to believe another woman has any real right to separate them.”
“Separate them! The scoundrel knocked her down for loving him still, and fled from them both. Was ever guilt more clear? If she doubts that he is a villain, tell her from me he is a forger, and has given me bills with false names on them. The bankers gave me notice to-day, and I was coming home to order him out of the house when this miserable business happened.”
“A forger! is it possible?” said Fanny. “But it is no use my telling her that sort of thing. If he had committed murder, and was true to her, she would cling to him. She never knew till now how she loved him, nor I neither. She put him in Coventry for telling a lie; but she was far more unhappy all the time than he was. There is nothing to do but to be kind to her, and let her hide her face. Don't hurry her.”
“Not I. God help her! If she has a wish, it shall be gratified. I am powerless. She is young. Surely time will cure her of a villain, now he is detected.”
Fanny said she hoped so.
The truth is, Zoe had not opened her heart to Fanny. She clung to her, and writhed in her arms; but she spoke little, and one broken sentence contradicted the other. But mental agony, like bodily, finds its vent, not in speech, the brain's great interpreter, but in inarticulate cries, and moans, and sighs, that prove us animals even in the throes of mind. Zoe was in that cruel stage of suffering.
So passed that miserable day.
CHAPTER XXI.
INA KLOSKING recovered her senses that evening, and asked Miss Gale where she was. Miss Gale told her she was in the house of a friend.