“If I am compelled,” I answered, “but only in case I am compelled, I shall take the one possible, straightforward course, and shall tell to Lady Rollinson the story I have told to you.”
The baroness tried another tack.
“I have often heard it said,” she began, bitterly, “that it is only women who have no mercy upon women. Do you tell me, Captain Fyffe, that you can have the heart to hound this poor creature down, even if all you charge against her were true, if all her life until now had been one huge mistake? Is she to have no chance of amendment? Do not suppose,” she cried, “that your story convinces me for a moment! I am looking at your side alone, that is all.”
“Pardon me,” I felt constrained to answer, “I see no sign of any wish for amendment. The only defence yet offered lies in a gross and groundless accusation against myself. When I came here I had no idea that Miss Pleyel meant to be dangerous to me. I learn from you the course on which she has decided.”
“She!” cried the baroness. “She has decided upon nothing. Perhaps I have been led too readily to leap at a conclusion. She has made no accusation against you, poor thing; but I confess that I thought she was striving to defend you. She was terribly agitated by the chance sight she caught of you in the street last night. She has been weeping ever since. She gave me your letters with some broken words, which perhaps I may have misconstrued. If I have done you wrong, I beg your pardon. If I have done you wrong, I beg your forgiveness with all my heart. But surely, Captain Fyffe, you do not in cold blood propose to one woman that she shall throw another on the world, that she should cast her, however frail she may have been, into new temptations. You must let me tell you,” she hurried on, raising her hand against me to arrest any interruption I might have been disposed to make—“you must let me tell you that I exercise some little forbearance in taking this tone at all. No slander has ever touched my reputation, and I do not intend that it shall smirch it now. I have but to say I have been deceived to establish myself in the sight of all who know me. Tell me, sir, if you have ever heard a whisper against my honor. Did ever man or woman breathe a word in your hearing with respect to me which might not have been spoken of a sister of your own?”
The plain truth was that I knew nobody but Bru-now who had any acquaintance with the little lady's antecedents. He had certainly spoken of her often in terms which I should have been very sorry to have heard applied to a sister of mine if I had been so fortunate as to own one. But, then, Brunow was a man about town, and a braggart at the same time, and I had attached no more importance to his talk than to the irresponsible babble of a baby. It was not my business to repeat Brunow's stupid follies, and I kept silent. She, however, was not disposed to let me off that way, but pressed me for an answer.
“Madame,” I was forced to say, “I am not so impertinent as to call your reputation into question for an instant. I will not be so insolent as to sit in judgment upon so delicate a question for a moment. I have said all I had to say, and can see no reason for recalling any part of it.” I bowed, and made a movement to retire, but she flashed between me and the door, and faced me with supplicating hands.
“Think again, Captain Fyffe,” she besought me; “think again. Poor Constance is not the heartless wretch you fancy her. She is alone in the world; she is friendless, penniless. There is nobody to lend her a helping hand, nobody to believe in her wish to lead a better life but only poor little me. And of what avail is my belief in her, of what avail is my wish to lift her from the mire if you should go from me and trumpet her past abroad. I knew her, Captain Fyffe, when she was richer and happier than she is now, when she was received by society in St. Petersburg, when she was courted, admired, adored. I am sorry for her in my soul. It would wring my heart to let her go. And notice, Captain Fyffe, I am not trying to thrust her on the world, I am not trying to introduce her to any friend of mine. When you saw us in the street yesterday she drove out for the first time in my company in London. Ah, Captain Fyffe, we cannot do much good in this miserable world if we try ever so hard. I have never tried very hard. I have been a frivolous, butterfly, useless creature; but at my time of life, you see, one begins to have serious fancies. And it was mine to find this poor creature an asylum, where she might hide her head from shame, and be free of all temptation. You are a stern man, Captain Fyffe, you have shown me that, but do not be all justice and no mercy.” She actually cried and clung to me as she spoke, and even now it seems difficult to believe that there was no genuine feeling at the bottom of it all, though I know perfectly well that there was no ground for the merest scrap of it.
The situation was horribly embarrassing, and yet if I had been the most yielding fool alive there was no escape. It was simply impossible that I, with my eyes open, should permit any woman who openly associated with Constance Pleyel to associate with Violet.
“I have no wish,” I answered, “to speak one word to Miss Pleyel's disadvantage, and I have no right, to dictate terms to you; but if you should insist on continuing your acquaintance with Miss Pleyel and with Lady Rollinson, it will be my bounden duty to tell her ladyship what I know, and leave her to act for herself.”