He might as well ask the question, for a sound that resembled no ordinary, no human sound, came from her lips. He went on:
"Why were you not frank and honest with me, Dora?—why did you not await my return, and tell me?—why did you not trust me? Do you know what I should have done if you had so trusted me? I should have said that my proposition to you had been made under a great mistake, not knowing your true name; and I should have released you then and them from all ties that bound you to me."
She saw her mistake then; saw what short-sighted, miserable policy hers had been; but it was all too late.
"Surely," he continued, "you had lived with me long enough to know that I had some semblance of a gentleman, some faint notions of honor. There is no need to sneer, my lady; men do not reckon honor when they deal with what you were then."
"I know it," she cried, with sudden bitterness, in a voice that had no resemblance to her own.
"Why did you not trust me! I cannot—I shall never forgive you for the way in which you deserted me. Had you left me one line—only one line—telling me your true parents had claimed you, Doris, it would have saved all this."
"I had not time."
"Because you did not wish to make it. Even suppose that, to avoid detection, you had hurried from Florence, you might surely have sent me a line from England; even if you could not trust me with your name and address, you might have done that."
"I see it now. I might, nay, I should have done it. Will that admission satisfy you?"
"There is nothing in it to satisfy me," he said, angrily; "you had no right to desert me as you did, to treat me as you did—none in the world. Do you know what you cost me? Do you know that I went mad over losing you? that I searched for you day after day, month after month, hating my life itself because you no longer formed part of it! Do you know that the loss of you changed me from a good-tempered man into a fiend?—can you realize that, Lady Doris Studleigh?"