She thought I was not well. She did not know that it was fear which had blanched my face and made me tremble; she could not tell that it was horror which curdled my blood. Without any fuss—she was so anxiously considerate for me—without seeming to make any ceremony, she was so gracefully kind; she would not let me sit in the draughts; with her own hands she selected some purple grapes for me. This could never be the woman who had drowned a little child.
When dinner was over and we were in the drawing-room again, she drew a chair near the fire for me.
"You will laugh at the notion of a fire in May," she said; "but I find the early summer evenings chilly, and I cannot bear the cold."
I wondered if she thought of the chill of the water in which she had plunged the little child. I looked at her; there was not even a fleeting shadow on her face. Then she lingered for half a minute by my side.
As she drew near to me, I felt again that it was utterly impossible that my suspicions could be correct, and that I must be mistaken.
"I hope," she said, "you will not think what I am going to say strange. I know that it is the custom for some wives to be jealous of their husband's friends—some might be jealous of you. I want to tell you that I am not one of that kind. I love my husband so utterly, so entirely, that all whom he loves are dear to me. You are a brother, friend, everything to him—will you be the same to me?"
A beautiful woman asking, with those sweet, sensitive lips, for my friendship, looking at me with those calm, tender eyes, asking me to like her for her husband's sake—the sweetest, the most gracious, the most graceful picture I had ever seen. Yet, oh, Heaven! a murderess, if ever there was one! She wondered why I did not respond to her advances. I read the wonder in her face.
"You do not care for hasty friends," she said. "Well, Lance and I are one; if you like him, you must like me, and time will show."
"You are more than good to me," I stammered, thinking in my heart if she had been but half as good to the little helpless child she flung into the sea.
I have never seen a woman more charming—of more exquisite grace—of more perfect accomplishment—greater fascination of manner. She sang to us, and her voice was full of such sweet pathos it almost brought the tears in my eyes. I could not reconcile what I saw now with what I had seen on the Chain Pier, though outwardly the same woman I had seen on the Chain Pier and this graceful, gracious lady could not possibly be one. As the evening passed on, and I saw her bright, cheerful ways, her devotion to her husband, her candid, frank open manner, I came to the conclusion that I must be the victim either of a mania or of some terrible mistake. Was it possible, though, that I could have been? Had I not had the face clearly, distinctly, before me for the past three years?