"She overheard me tell Mr. Rathborne that I rejected and despised the love that he ventured to offer me," replied Marion, speaking in her clearest and most distinct tone.
A quick contraction of the brow showed how much the answer pained, if it did not surprise, Mrs. Dalton. "My poor child!" she said, as if to herself. Then she looked at Marion with something like a flash in her usually gentle eyes. "And do you hold yourself guiltless in this matter?" she asked. "If Paul Rathborne is a traitor to Helen—as he surely is,—have not you encouraged his admiration? Does not your conscience tell you that you have sacrificed her happiness for the gratification of your vanity?"
"No," replied Marion; "my conscience tells me nothing of the kind. How could I prevent Mr. Rathborne's folly? But, of course, I expected to be blamed for it," she added, bitterly. "That is the justice of the world."
"God forgive me if I am unjust!" said Mrs. Dalton. "I did not mean to be. But, Marion, this is not altogether a surprise to me. I have seen his admiration for you, and I have seen—I could not help seeing—that you did not discourage it."
"Why should I have discouraged it?" asked Marion. "I saw no harm in it. I could not imagine that because he found some things to like—to admire, if you will—in me, he would become a traitor to Helen. It is asking too much to demand that one turn one's back on a man because he is a shade more than civil."
Mrs. Dalton shook her head. "Those are merely words," she said. "They do not deceive yourself any more than they deceive me. You know that you have used this man's admiration as fuel for your vanity, and that so cautious and so selfish a man would never have acted as he has done if he had not felt himself encouraged. Do not misunderstand me," she added, more hastily. "For Helen's sake I am not sorry that this has happened. It is better for her, even at the cost of great present suffering, that her eyes should be opened to his true character. But you, Marion—how can you forgive yourself for the part you have played? And what is to become of you if you do not check the vanity which has led you to betray the trust and wring the heart of your best friend?"
The quiet, penetrating words—gentle although so grave—seemed to Marion at that moment like a sentence from which there was no appeal. Her conscience echoed it, her eyes fell, for an instant it looked as if she had nothing to reply. But she rallied quickly.
"I am sorry if you think I have wilfully done anything to pain Helen," she said, coldly. "It does not strike me that I could have averted this, unless I had been gifted with a foreknowledge which I do not possess. I could never have imagined that Mr. Rathborne would be so false with regard to Helen, and so presumptuous with regard to me."
The haughtiness of the last words was not lost on the ear of the listener, who looked at the beautiful, scornful face with a mingling of pity and indignation.
"You expected," she said, "to encourage a man's admiration up to a certain point, and yet to restrain his presumption? A little more knowledge of human nature would have told you that was impossible; a little more feeling would have kept you from desiring it." She paused a moment, then went on, with the same restrained gravity: "I am sorry if I seem to you harsh, but nothing in this affair is worse to me than the revelation it makes of your character. I am grieved by Helen's suffering, and shocked by Paul Rathborne's treachery; but for the first I have the comfort that it may in the end spare her worse suffering, and for the second I feel that it is not a surprise—that I never wholly trusted his sincerity. But you, Marion—what can I think of you, who, without any stronger feeling than vanity to lead you on, have trifled with your own sense of honor, as well as with the deepest feelings of others? What will your future be if you do not change—if you do not try to think less of unworthy objects and more of worthy ones—less of gaining admiration and more of keeping your conscience clear and your heart clean?"